People have differing views on UX. Some seem to strongly believe having a UX-led approach in product development is the key to success. Some say they see it as a complementary component, like a cherry on top of a sundae. It makes everything better, but no one stops eating ice cream without it. And some are in denial of it mainly, equating UX with colouring some screens and screens only.

Though I do not agree with all of these views and believe in UX’s transformational power, I can relate to how each interpretation comes to fruition. Forming an opinion around UX and its functionality is not independent of context. What you’re working on and for whom you’re building solutions heavily affect the way how you feel about it. If you’re personally doing something cutting-edge tech-wise and solving problems that were deemed unsolvable before, you may intrinsically not give high praise to the idea of UX, especially at first. Because in your view, what users should value is the technical shrewdness behind the scenes that allows something unique. You may well have fallen in love with your product, and your architecture and think that it alone should and will be the answer to all needs. But, the thing is, which I also think is applicable broadly in our lives, reaching a consensus is a two-way road. The depth of your thinking is only as deep as the recipient’s understanding of it, nothing more. You can do everything in your power to tell the world that your product is the best one, yet it only becomes a reality if your user base agrees with you by using it. Unrealised reality, in other words, does not make you wrong, but also can not hold truth unless you close your trades and your claims’ value in user adoption. Otherwise, even though you’re unquestionably right, that does not mean much, considering that you’re in the game for results. You can get an award or might be praised highly too, but the results you’re going after have pre-defined definitions and user engagement plays a weighty role in deciding the fate of your assertions one way or another.

On the flip side, you may be a heated UX fan. Yet, taking a methodic approach to UX efforts and doing everything by the book may turn out to be overkill and mostly will not yield the outcomes you seek. It actually follows an S curve: certain things you do add up pretty linearly and create value for users, but after a certain point, the impact you see as a result of your efforts gets almost flattened. Because, most of the time, users do not only choose your product for its slickness or well-designed user flows. They use it because it solves a problem or a need for them. You’re actually allowed to be as sketchy in your UX efforts as your users’ irritation threshold. From your information architecture to user flows, all UX solutions can absorb a certain amount of error or display a certain amount of inconsistency unless they make your users irritated and trigger them to discover another solution. Unless your sloppiness pushes users off the cliff, you’re allowed to make mistakes and aren’t expected to build perfect products UX-wise all the time.

Going back to the defence of UX efforts, on the other hand, the notion of user experience rather underscores a set of principles and puts forward a well-defined formula on how to approach problems. Designing screens to make your database playable and turning hard-to-read formulas and formula bars into easily clickable buttons is one thing. But, UX means something more, much more than that today. It’s a certain way of taking on problems and developing solutions. It’s about making sense of how certain people live their lives and how they behave in particular settings. It’s about infusing meaning into digital solutions by observing how one suffers and how one gets happy. Observing the ways of humans, their relationship with each other and with the digital world, building hypotheses upon those interactions, and defining solutions accordingly is what UX is. It is no less than a systemic approach to solving problems in that regard. The saying goes “Defining the problem is half the solution”, and the rest is ascribed to the solution itself. UX completes this equation in fact, by turning a well-solved problem into something useful. If you give someone a hard problem and provide a manual for a good solution, they probably could not make something out of it. UX chimes in right that point, and by taking human behaviour into account, makes such a solution legible and usable for its target audience.

I agree that UX alone can not solve problems or does not make your product superb, but it can make your product stand out. It cannot crack a technical problem or invent something out of thin air but it can make your solution look the best in the competition. Regardless of the brilliance you show developing your product, your success mostly depends on users’ perception of it, whether or not they’d like to integrate it into their lives. Do not fall in love with the design or engineering sides of things, fall in obsession with how people think and act. Understanding people will help you build the best products.