What UX Is

User experience design has spiraled wildly out of control since the release of iOS with the iPhone a couple years ago. Menus have become passé. Navigation is supposed to be touch friendly. Hell, even Microsoft is getting rid of the ubiquitous Start menu, having already eliminated (or at least hidden) the File and Edit menus.

These changes are not improving usability. Changing usability, yes, but not fundamentally improving the usability of an application.

Usability is not a measure of how easy something is to use, although that is often an important factor. Rather, it's a measure of how effectively something helps you complete your work.

Software isn't usable because very often, what we do with software isn't possible in the real world. Unfortunately, we keep trying to create digital representations of physical things in a futile effort to make things easier to understand, more "intuitive*."

Why are we doing this? Why do we keep forcing users into arbitrary folder structures to store files?  Aren't there cases where a single file makes sense in two locations?  Does a user care where a file is stored as long as he can find it? Does it even make sense to require users to save files?

These are the types of questions an effective UX designer will ask.

It's unreasonable to expect that every user will sit down with an application and instantly understand how to complete their work. In some cases, I'd argue it doesn't even make sense to try making an application instantly understandable. There will always be an upper bound on the number of functions an application can perform before it becomes necessary to start stashing things in menus. And that's okay! Users will put up with questionable UX if the software improves their lives. They will not put up with beautiful UX and no functionality.

There are some obvious things to avoid. The California DMV provides a particularly egregious example:

Outside silly problems like this, though, good UX is achieved through an understanding of user goals. Understand your users, understand their goals, and you'll construct an interface that gets out of their way.

*"Intuitive" is a word whose incessant use in IT leaves me confused and angry. The word has no meaning because it results in no action. Ask a user "is this intuitive?" and they'll say yes or no, providing absolutely no help and forcing you to ask the better question, like "what about this tool makes it easier or harder to accomplish this task?" "Intuitive" is not a quality of software. It is a buzzword.