Total Experience Quality: Integrating Performance, Usability, and Application Design

As the number of consumption models has grown, so has the burden on application designers. From desktop to Web to phone to tablet and beyond, designers create an entirely new UX for each target platform – but often in a vacuum. When new platforms launch, performance is typically an afterthought to be “optimized” later. Decisions that are made during design can be barriers to performance down the road. To consider the entire user experience it is important to think about performance as part of the entire UX equation.

User experience is heavily dependent on underlying technical structure, and those structural choices are often dictated by usability. To navigate the possibilities of native, hybrid, and responsive designs – and the myriad of backend services that support them, UX designers must have an intimate knowledge of the limits to which they can push app performance. Only then can they make educated, value-driven decisions about experiences.