your audience is part of your UX

August 30, 2013

UX design is a lot like filmmaking. We design an experience.

When you are making a film it is easy to forget that the audience is working too, drawing conculsions and projecting expectations
I was struck by how Jon Boorstin described the design practice in “Making Movies Work: Thinking Like a Filmmaker.” Our audience, their preconceptions, hopes and fears, are the essential part of the experience. They bring context with them. It’s tempting to oversimplify, especially when we attempt to reach a large audience, but our creative works, especially software, sit within a larger world and come to life in the minds of the people who interact with them.