UX/UI Challenges
Aidan Foster is the founder of Foster Interactive, our partner in designing and building websites for B2B and higher-ed clients. This is part of a conversation he had with Brent Weaver on The Digital Agency Show podcast, where Aidan talked about putting user experience at the front of the conversation about website development.
Q: What is user experience design?
A: UX design is when you identify the needs of your website's audience and the needs of your organization, and you systematically find the overlap — the boundary between those two things. That overlap is where people can solve their problems with your solution.
Q: Why should organizations focus on user experience design?
A: If you design a great-looking website but your clients or customers can't easily find the content they want, because it isn't organized according to their needs and goals, the website isn't effective. It may look great, but if it's not meeting your business goals, you're basically throwing away money. You wouldn't design a house without thinking about how people want to live in it. The build looks very different for a couple than it does for an eight-person, multi-generational family. It's the same with websites — we build them with the user at the front of the conversation.
Q: When did you begin to think about UX as a primary concern?
A: UX came to the forefront alongside responsive design, around 2010. We had to start building websites that worked on mobile and tablet, and it was a major shift. It wasn't enough to scale a desktop site down — we had to think about whether people would access information differently on smaller devices. That was really the start of putting user needs at the foundation of a website, not an afterthought.
Q: What's your process for user experience design, and what if a client can't afford it?
A: We begin with research on the intended audiences, trying to understand them and build navigation structures that make sense to them. On a limited budget, that can be as simple as an email survey to your clients or customers. On bigger mandates, we do in-depth interviews with internal and external stakeholders. One especially useful group is customer service — what they're hearing, what the complaint calls are about, which support requests come up most often.
We divide target audiences into user personas and dig into their specific wants, needs, and the content they're likely looking for. When it comes to the information architecture, we actually test the structure rather than assume it. That could mean tree testing — putting someone representing each persona through a task, like finding a professor's contact info or booking a squash court on a university site — and seeing whether, and how quickly, they get there. If you can't afford testing with a real sample group, ask a friend to try the tasks. It's a way to validate your assumptions before you spend real money building the site.
If any agency says they have the answer for you before any user research is done, they're basically just making it up. Skip that step and you risk a more expensive problem later: a website that doesn't work and has to be redone.
Q: Do a company's needs typically align with those of its users?
A: Businesses have their goals, and users usually have quite different ones. We need to understand both — our discovery process is how we systematically find where they overlap. When someone visits your site, they need to learn quickly how your solution solves their problem. A well-designed structure lets each user group ignore what they're not interested in, so they can find what you can actually offer them.
Q: What's one of the biggest challenges when working with clients to put users first?
A: Getting internal stakeholders to agree. We have to bring them in at the right milestones and be open to disagreement. But if we have a strong pulse on the audience and can show the research, it helps build consensus — it reframes the conversation away from internal opinion and toward fact-based decisions for the end user. Often we have smart people bringing good ideas to the table, and instead of debating endlessly, we pick the two best and run a quick user test. Then we can measure which works better instead of guessing. Everyone brings their own assumptions to a project, but we're not the end audience — we always have to be ready to challenge our own biases with real testing.
Q: How can people learn more about UX?
A: Don't Make Me Think and Rocket Surgery Made Easy, both by Steve Krug. Cornerstones of the field. I recommend both.