User Experience and User Interface are the must-to-know buzzwords of modern times. You hear them at job interviews, during small talks with your friends at coffee shops, or during the presentation speech of some new product releases by Big Tech companies. But what is the User Experience after all? What does it mean and how would you explain that to a person you know?

We’ve noticed that there is no absolute definition of what User Experience Design is. So, in this brief article, we are going to check what people say about UX design and we will try to define this for you (and us).

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Martyn Reding, a Head of Digital Experience at Virgin Atlantic, defines the UX Design this way:

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Marieke McCloskey, Director of UX Research at LinkedIn, said:

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We like both of these statements, however, at White Marker, we believe the UX design is bigger than just products. The last person we’d like to cover is Don Norman, Co-Founder and Board Member at NN/g (Nielsen Norman Group), who we think nailed it with a full and extensive definition of what UX design is:

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Now, at White Marker, we define it in the following way:

“User Experience Design (UXD) is the process of influencing controllable variables to cause a positive emotional response when a person interacts with a product, environment, or brand.”

There are two key requirements that User Experience has that set it apart from other types of design. The first one is UX Design requires interaction, without interaction it’s just design. This is what makes UX Design so fun, exciting, and energizing.

The second requirement is a repeated tested validation. Without this validation, you’re simply guessing, and that’s why you need to be able to put something into the world and see if it’s working and you get the results that you want. Then you bring it back and re-adjust it the way you need it. That’s where we get extra control over the user experience journey and may positively influence consumers’ interaction with the brand.