The Beginning and The End of The User Experience
#37: How far is user experience beyond digital?
Welcome to Fundament, a weekly product design newsletter where we share actionable tips and insightful stories with the worldwide design community.
In today’s episode:
Does user experience only relate to the interface of digital products?
User touchpoints with a product or service.
Where is UX in the context of all experiences, and what is CX?
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The beginning and the end of the user experience
As designers, we often discuss the user experience of various products, covering aspects such as usability, aesthetics, and problem-solving. This is hardly surprising, as these are typically our main areas of responsibility. Without a doubt, they are key elements of user experience, but does UX begin and end with interactions that are strictly tied to using a digital product? Absolutely not.
So, where does the user experience truly begin, and what does it encompass if it’s not limited to using a digital product? Let’s start by revisiting Don Norman’s definition of user experience.
User experience encompasses all aspects of the end user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.
Referring to this definition, we can simply say that user experience encompasses all touchpoints between the user and the brand, starting from the very first interaction, no matter where it takes place.
Different touchpoints
So, let's look at some examples of touchpoints that influence user experience and perception of a product or brand.
Branding and marketing
This is often the first touchpoint. People see an advertisement for a product or service that evokes specific emotions, positive or negative. At this stage, a first impression is formed, which can either encourage or discourage further action.
What matters here is how the user learns about the app, whether the marketing communication is clear and consistent, and whether the user understands what the product offers and why it's worth using before they download it or sign up.
Effective branding and marketing efforts that resonate with the target audience create a positive experience right from the start before the user even engages with the product. Additionally, they should align with the actual product experience to avoid disappointment.
Registration and onboarding process
Another key touchpoint is registration and onboarding, especially in B2B and B2C applications. At this stage, the user decides to try our product and encounters our interface for the first time.
It’s worth considering whether users can start using the app quickly and without friction. Is the registration process intuitive? In the case of online stores, is registration truly necessary to complete a purchase?
Ideally, users should begin by learning the basics, with more advanced features introduced gradually. A step-by-step approach, rather than overwhelming them with options upfront, helps build confidence. This is particularly important in more complex applications, where onboarding can determine whether users stick with the product long-term.
Using the product
After successful registration and onboarding, the user can continue using our product. Of course, the frequency of use varies significantly—it depends on whether it’s an app they need daily or, for example, an online store they visit less frequently but regularly (in which case, other touchpoints also play a role).
We know that the primary goal of a digital product is to meet user needs and solve their problems. If it fails to do so, users won’t stay with us for long. Beyond that, factors like overall usability, aesthetics, performance, stability, and the absence of errors also come into play.
If users encounter difficulties in navigation, unclear messages, slow performance, or bugs—or, most importantly, if the product doesn’t meet their expectations—their experience will be negative, regardless of previous touchpoints. And in most cases, that will lead them straight to a competitor’s product.
Payments and refunds
When making payments online, users expect to complete the transaction using familiar and trusted payment methods. Anything that raises concerns in this area will interrupt the process and significantly lower the overall user experience.
Additionally, you can surely notice the difference between the return process for a product purchased from an online store that includes a completed form and a return label at the store's expense versus a process where you have to print and fill out the form yourself and send the product back at your own cost.
It's important to ensure that users can easily return purchased products and that the payment options are familiar and do not raise suspicions that could discourage them from making a purchase.
Delivery and order fulfillment
The absence of a preferred delivery method, long shipping times, or high costs can often trigger negative emotions among potential customers. This, in turn, can lead to a poorer overall experience and may even result in the customer abandoning their purchase—even if they are already at the final stage of the buying journey.
It’s worth assessing whether the delivery process is smooth and meets customer expectations. Does the user receive notifications about their order status, including any potential issues or delays? Are orders shipped promptly, and can customers choose a delivery option that suits them at a reasonable price?
Customer service and support
Another extremely important touchpoint. Sooner or later, users are likely to encounter issues. They might struggle to complete a task in the app, or their order could get lost, or they face significant delays.
People have a natural tendency to focus more on negative experiences than positive ones—this is known as negativity bias. How we support users when they face problems makes a huge difference.
How a company responds to issues and questions matters. Does the user receive quick and helpful answers? Do they even have an easy way to contact customer support or technical assistance? Additionally, having clear and accessible instructions is just as important—whether a user doesn’t understand a feature or simply wants to find a solution on their own without reaching out for support.
Reviews and feedback
The final touchpoint, which is often one of the first, is user reviews. Reviews have a huge impact on user decisions. People check TV reviews before making a purchase, search for the best hotels for their vacations, and analyze which car performs better. The same applies to the digital products and services we design. If a product a user is interested in has low ratings, they’re likely to walk away. On the other hand, a high number of positive reviews can encourage them even more.
It's worth encouraging users to leave reviews about our product—genuine reviews without any manipulation. If users are satisfied with what we offer, they’ll leave positive feedback that can help us attract even more customers.
Providing an easy way to share feedback improves the user experience, especially when they see that the company actually responds to it.
It’s crucial that users can effortlessly leave feedback, receive a response, and, most importantly, see that their input is being used to improve the product or service.
User Experience and Customer Experience
As we can see, the experiences users have with a product or service extend far beyond just the product interface.
It's worth mentioning the term Customer Experience (CX), which refers to the entirety of the user's experience with a brand — from the first contact, through interactions with the product, to customer service, sales, and even post-sales activities.
User Experience, often understood in the context of the usability of a user interface, is one component of Customer Experience. Good user experiences influence the overall perception of the brand, but as seen from the described touchpoints, it is not the only area that needs to function well. A company with an excellent UX product but weak experiences in other areas, such as marketing, customer service, or the purchasing process, will not be perceived favorably by users. On the other hand, well-managed CX areas, even with a poor product, can also influence a positive brand perception, although ultimately, the quality of the product itself remains crucial.
Conclusions
Analyzing the above touchpoints, we can be certain that the user experience extends far beyond just using the digital product. Each of these touchpoints carries with it a specific experience, either positive or negative, that affects the user’s overall perception of the product and the brand.
It is also important to emphasize that touchpoints are not separate, independent entities but elements of one large process the user goes through. This can be clearly illustrated by a customer journey map. This is why all these elements need to be well-connected and aligned to ensure a consistent, high-quality experience.
Looking at these touchpoints, it becomes evident how many people and departments influence the user experience, from marketing and customer support to developers, product owners, and UX designers, as well as everyone else involved in creating products and processes.
For us, as UX designers, this knowledge is extremely important. We must understand that we are not the only ones responsible for user experiences; it’s the result of the work of many teams. Unfortunately, in practice, this work is often done in isolation, and not everyone is aware of what UX really is and how to nurture it. Additionally, there are various technological limitations to consider. As designers, we should, whenever possible, collaborate with other departments, support them, and educate them about UX.
Finally, I have a piece of advice, especially for beginner designers. Since we now know how many people and factors influence the final user experience, it’s important to remember that we won’t always have control over everything. We will encounter decisions and opinions that we can’t influence. Our job is to take care of the user experience the best we can, but we must accept that not everything will be within our control.
This also shows that before harshly criticizing solutions we see on the internet, it’s worth considering the full context. Often, what we are evaluating is the result of decisions made by many teams who are working towards their own goals and, unfortunately, rarely collaborate with each other. We never know all the circumstances that influenced the final outcome, which is why it’s easy to make hasty conclusions and unfairly blame specific designers for certain solutions.
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Michel Achkar
Michel is a User Interface Designer based in Manama, Bahrain. With over a decade of experience blending fine art, graphic design, and digital art, Michel has honed his skills as a versatile designer. Currently, he specializes in UX/UI design and product ownership, focusing primarily on fintech solutions.
"User Experience, often understood in the context of the usability of a user interface, is one component of Customer Experience." Those two terms have been thrown around so long by so many who've misunderstood and/or misinterpreted and spread the misinformation, albeit often with good intentions, that now people think they know which is which. But I think it shouldn't be so hard to get it right. We need only know a little design history. Don Norman wasn't the first to the term user experience but he was among the first to use it at Apple, when, where, and how it began to matter to design, and the business: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience/
In summary, you have it exactly backwards. Cx is one channel and potential touch point within the holistic Ux journey. I don't say this to debate definitions. On the contrary, I don't care what people call things. But we should at least know where Ux came from and what it meant when it became worth knowing. "User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products." -Don Norman.