Customer loyalty is fleeting, especially when there's so many channels and opportunities to lose it.

Marketers work tirelessly to target customers with the most relevant message or incentive on customers' preferred channels, but even the best efforts can backfire. In fact, 77% of consumers say they become frustrated when they get push notifications or text messages for promotions they're not interested in.

Whether it's online, in-store, or talking with customer service teams – the sum of each interaction impacts overall customer loyalty, and a single misstep will cost you.

That’s where experience design (XD), user experience (UX), and customer experience (CX) come into play. These may seem like industry jargon – cx vs ux, it gets confusing fast – but more and more businesses are recognizing that overall “experience” is the key to winning customers over and retaining their loyalty long-term.

Let's review how XD and UX are complimentary, and 5 key UX focus areas to enhance your digital customer experience.

You'll learn:

1. Is experience design the same as UX?
2. What is experience design with example?
3. What does an experience designer do?
4. What is UX design and why is it important?
5. What are the 5 elements of user experience design?

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Is Experience Design the Same as UX?

Experience design is not the same as UX, but both XD and UX place a strong emphasis on understanding and addressing the needs, wants, and limitations of the users.

• Experience Design (XD) is an all-encompassing, broader approach that considers every aspect of a user's interaction with a brand, both online and offline. It aims to create holistic experiences that foster engagement and satisfaction.
• User Experience (UX), on the other hand, is more singularly focused on optimizing individual digital interfaces to improve usability, accessibility, and interaction design.

When thinking about experience design vs user experience, there is a huge overlap in goals and approaches.

Put simply, UX is a subset of XD, while experience design covers a wider range of design practices and considerations.

Let’s dive deeper into XD and UX concepts.

In Action - What is Experience Design with an Example?

Experience design is about creating high-quality interactions, leaving a lasting positive impact. Experience design examples can focus improvements on a product (like a mobile app), a service (by evaluating the end-to-end service experience), or even a team (by improving a workplace or processes).

Take Whereoware’s client VOTE411's new website redesign. VOTE411 aimed to enhance every voter's journey by enabling users to easily identify polling places and search candidate information to build a personalized ballot based on what matters to them.

This holistic approach ensured that every touchpoint, from informational content to the voting preparation process, was designed to be intuitive, accessible, and empowering. Check out how Vote411’s created a personalized voting experience.  

What Does an Experience Designer Do?

An experience designer plays a pivotal role in shaping and refining a user’s interaction with a product or service.

Beyond just crafting tech interfaces for phones, apps, websites, email programs, or computer interfaces, etc. – they must understand users' needs, design strategy, and design principles.

An experience designer's goal is to create seamless, intuitive, and enjoyable experiences that meet users' needs at every touchpoint.

Let's look closely at a subset of experience design - UX design.

What is UX Design and Why Is It Important?

UX design focuses on the design of a single interaction (at a time) with the end-user in mind. It's about making a web experience or digital product functional, enjoyable, and usable.

UX design examples include:

• Improving the navigation and CTAs of a mobile app to make it easier to take action and to earn rewards.
• Optimizing the payment process for a user ‘checking out’ to decrease steps, add visuals, or improve messaging to reduce bounce rates.
• Refreshing the information architecture of a landing page to see if moving the webform to a more prominent location entices more people to convert.

These examples directly influence user satisfaction, engagement, and ultimately, brand loyalty.

What are 5 Elements of User Experience Design?

Taking the lead to improve your users’ experience and unsure where to start?

5 Essential Elements of your UX Design Process:

• Usability – improving the ease with which a user can understand and use the system.
• Accessibility – designing inclusive experiences that everyone can use, regardless of ability.
• Visual Design – creating aesthetically pleasing interfaces with distinct branding and color schemes.
• Information Architecture - organizing information for easy discovery and navigation.
• Interaction Design – incorporating interactive elements that surprise and delight users, such as clear hover states and intuitive popups, all while adhering to web standards for predictability and affordance. Design affordance looks at elements to see if they’re intuitive and work as expected.

Experience Design Matters

UX and XD share common goals, but their approaches and scopes differ.

Experience design aims to satisfy and delight users across all touchpoints, whereas user experience takes a narrower scope, ensuring a website or app is as intuitive and enjoyable as possible.

Looking for experience design services?

Whereoware elevates the entire customer journey across data, design, development, and strategy to help clients create deeper and more profitable customer relationships. Let's talk.

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