User experience is not only limited to how your website or application interacts with its user. It’s related to everything that has an interaction with a user. It could be a medical device, automotive devices, coffee maker, home security system or even virtual museums. It all requires user interaction and thus need an intuitive UX design to deliver a good user experience.
If you are a UX designer and wondering to explore your footprint in the industry beyond websites and apps, here are some underrated applications of UX design to explore new opportunities in your field.
06 Most Underrated Applications of UX Design
You’re probably doing a great job while working as a UX designer. It’s time to tap into new markets to expand your learning curve.
1. UX Designs for Coffee Maker
I read a case study available on the internet, in which a team of 5 people study a person named “Mark”. Mark comes home drained of energy, he considers the idea of drinking a strong coffee to replenish his energy. Unfortunately, his wife said that their mill broke down recently. Now this coffee lover finds a unique way to get coffee through a delivery service but still made it himself. The following points show how he makes his coffee online from an XYZ website and has it delivered from the same XYZ cafe.
- First, the website allows him to choose the coffee beans / ingredients he would like to grind in his cup.
- The second step was to choose between the country, where the beans came from / the flavor of the coffee / the method of coffee filler / the strength of the coffee he wanted.
- After ticking off custom coffee making, the XYZ website made it to the payment method and delivery details.
With simple steps, Mark enjoyed the spectacle of making coffee and yet it was a ready-to-drink delivery method.
2. UX design for Virtual Museums
A group of people tested this thing as their class project. The way I found it interesting to create a virtual museum for children, to collect things from all over the world and put them in one place. Children love to explore new things, with a physical touch which may sometime lead them to break, ruined, be stained, or worse destroy those antique things that are kept in museums for decades. Let’s discuss a few benefits of this project:
- A virtual museum helps children see and create details of objects and learn new interesting facts about the history that is associated with the particular object.
- Another factor is that many parents are too busy managing them instead of learning by watching them. Thus online visitors can make their children learn more with a 360 view of all these objects.
- One major advantage I found is that visitors can learn about thousands of antiques from around the world under one roof.
All you have to do is visit the museums to gather all the required information and then create tabs for each museum with their country/city’s name.
3. UX Design for Automotive Industry
Modern automobiles are capable computers that keep us informed, happy, and connected while driving. Today’s cars are equipped with a variety of advanced technologies, including real-time traffic and news alerts, self-driving and self-parking features, music and movie streaming services, and more. Following are some points to keep the driver motivated to stay focused on roads while having UX design.
- UX designers collaborate with internal automobile design teams to match the user experience to driver reach, line of sight, left- vs. right-handed driving, etc.—all factors that potentially affect driver safety.
- UX designers need to consider about how to customize the driving experience for multiple drivers while building features. A good solution is to create user profiles.
- To maintain legacy systems, UX designers must continually innovate for new models while future-proofing designs.
Whereas, passenger experience, ride-sharing experiences, and the retail aspects of car buying and selling are just a few of the many other areas of automotive UX designs that need to explore.
4. UX Design for Medical devices
Due to the importance of devices to patients’ lives and well-being, it is crucial to guarantee a positive user experience (UX) when designing and manufacturing medical devices. A positive user experience will ensure security, usability, and error reduction.
Thoughtful UX design in medical devices can really help people. There are hundreds of reasons why medical devices, tools, and methodology will help humankind in cases of emergencies. The safety, usability, and error avoidance of medical equipment has all increased as a result of improving the user experience. As a result, patient outcomes and the dependability of healthcare personnel both improve.
Here are some medical devices that needs UX design.
- Some medical devices include smart watches, fitness-tracking apps connected to smartphones, and smart devices. These devices help the user to self-monitor and analyze the impact of routine activities on their health.
- Using remote patient monitoring (RPM) technology, patients can be monitored outside of normal clinical settings, improving access to care and reducing the cost of providing it.
Apart from these, both UX and user retention have increased from time to time while wearing attractive and fun devices. It helps people take better care of themselves and their loved ones.
5. UX Design for Fitness Apps
Personally, it is very difficult for me to go to a gym. The idea of visiting a gym makes me more tired than actually visiting it. Similarly, many of us make numerous resolutions every year which don’t lasts more than a week. So here I am thinking that integrating a gym-going habit with UX design will help me and others to keep this year’s resolutions. Here are a few points to keep in mind while making a user experience for the Gym:
- The application will ask for my current weight/height, work routing, and my exercise goal.
- An avatar of me will perform all the gym activities in the mobile application which will show the fatigue and impact on my work routine.
- This application should include some features like; Exercise cycles and rest times that pop up in my notification bar, my fatigue level after half an hour of exercise and accordingly, and workday streaks that can affect my fatigue level when broken down.
This way, many of us can join an actual gym and enjoy a healthy routine.
6. UX design for Video games
Mobile games, console games, VR games, all needs an intuitive user experience. And when there’s a need for user experience, there’s a need for UX design. Sometimes these UX designers at game companies have different titles, such as UI artist, Game Designer, Technical Artist— but the responsibilities are typically the same.
Final Note
Every product a user interacts with is UX. Whether it’s a Coffee makers, watering cans, video games, Virtual events, automobile devices, all have UX. While UX is often focused on experiences that manifest through UI, every experience a person has with a product or service should be designed. So, now you have got a list of the most underrated applications of UX design. Whether you’re a designer or a product seller, consider these examples as inspiration and find your fit. See how you can expand your career in UX design.
