What are User Pain Points? - UX Terms to Know
Breaking Down User Pain Points: What You Need to Know
Pain points in UX are problems that users face when they use a website or an app. Spotting these problems and finding ways to fix them can make using a site or app much easier and more enjoyable.
Our product manager, Dani breaks down exactly what UX pain points are in this short, informative video:
Pain point example
Let's look at a real-life user pain point example. You're shopping online late at night. You pick what you want and go to check out. Suddenly, the site tells you to create an account.
That’s great and all, but what if you don't want to make an account? You look for the guest checkout option but have a tough time looking for it because it's in tiny text under the login button.
Struggling to find the next option is a pain point and increases a user’s cognitive load - which nobody wants! The hard-to-find, poorly signified guest checkout option slows down your shopping and makes you think twice about buying anything. Now you might be thinking, “Maybe I didn't need that funky pencil sharpener that looks like a carrot peeler…”
Now, what’s the opposite of pain points in UX?
Let’s call them solutions. They’re the parts of a site or app that may have had issues before, but now make users happy because they work well.
Identifying pain points and their solutions is a big part of user-centered design. Through techniques like creating user personas or taking usability heuristics into consideration, UX researchers and designers can start to build a mental model of users' experiences and identify what might frustrate them.
Creating solid wireframes and prototypes can help visualize these pain points too by offering an early opportunity to address them.
Asking good questions during user research can also help find pain points, like "What part of the website frustrates you?" or "What made the checkout hard?"
Reducing pain points in UX is an ongoing process of minimizing design debt and ensuring inclusive design . When designers map out these issues, they can see where users might run into problems. After understanding what the pain points to focus on, designers and engineers can then work together to make the site or app better.
The goal is always to make things easy and efficient for the user. When we get rid of pain points in user experience, users have a better time and are more likely to come back.
To wrap up, by finding and fixing these issues through atomic research and collaborating with stakeholders, we can make sure users enjoy their experience.
The concept of addressing pain points is what UX is all about - making sure that users don't hit any snags and that they find what they're looking for quickly and easily. And in the end, maybe that late-night shopper will buy that quirky pencil sharpener after all!
