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"Throwing some UX on it" means updating a product's visual design without addressing how it actually works for users. It almost always produces short-term wins and long-term disappointment. Good UX isn't a coat of paint you apply at the end. It's a process you bake in from the beginning.
What Does "Throwing Some UX on It" Actually Mean?
It's one of the most common requests our team at Drawbackwards hears: "We want to redesign our product/app/website." In many cases, that's a legitimate and well-considered goal. The business has been making incremental improvements, and it's finally time for a larger-scale redesign that incorporates customer feedback, research findings, and strategic alignment.
But sometimes, the stakeholder just wants to make it look better.
That's "throwing some UX on it." And it's a problem.
Like a beautifully remodeled home with plumbing issues buried beneath those gorgeous hardwood floors, a product that looks great on the surface but doesn't actually work for users isn't going to produce the results you're after. Poorly placed switches, doors that won't stay shut, a foundation quietly filling with water. Pretty doesn't fix any of that.
Just because it's pretty doesn't mean it's practical.
Why Does Aesthetic-Only Design Fail?
Good visual design matters. But it's also fleeting. Subjective. Trendy. Surface-level.
Once someone digs just a little deeper and sees that the product underneath doesn't meet their needs, they move on. And how can your product make a real impact if it's all vanity and no value?
How Target's $1M+ Redesign Became a Cautionary Tale
Even the biggest brands working with the biggest names in design aren't immune to UX failures.
In 2011, Target undertook a massive redesign dubbed "Everest." The goal was to move off Amazon's technology platform and update the site's visual design. The style was classic Target: minimalistic, lots of white space, true to the red-and-white brand palette.
When the site launched right before the busiest shopping period of the year, shoppers found a glitchy mess: broken links, endless errors, poorly placed ads, missing registries, carts with minds of their own, and enough obstacles to prevent people from completing their purchases. It even crashed completely for most of the day when designer Missoni launched their new collection on the site.
Target's site had one job: make it easy for customers to buy. And it failed miserably.
A cautionary tale about focusing too much on how it looks and not nearly enough on how it works.
How Does Design Thinking Produce Better Results?
PayPal shows exactly what happens when you do this right.
What Did PayPal Do Differently?
While Target was "throwing some UX" on their site, PayPal was beginning a more strategic redesign of their own.
Like PayPal's business, their website and app had started small and grown quickly. More and more products were added over time, making it difficult for customers to find what they needed and complete key tasks, like signing up and processing transactions.
In 2014, Lead UX Designer at PayPal Ross Stuart (now Sr. UX Designer at Amazon) helped the team outline several clear goals for the redesign.
Help new customers understand:
- What PayPal is and the value it provides
- How to make their first transaction
Help existing customers:
- Use PayPal on mobile
- Better understand their activities and transactions
- Send money from person to person
PayPal's culture had evolved as they saw the downfalls of purely aesthetic design. That's why they kicked off this redesign with research.
What Is "Customer-Driven Innovation" and How Did PayPal Use It?
PayPal believes in "Customer-Driven Innovation," a lean approach to identifying customer problems before usability testing, so they can confirm they're solving the right problems and then validate solutions. This process involves collaboration between Design, Product, and Technology teams, with the customer as the main stakeholder keeping everyone aligned.
To guide the redesign, PayPal's UX team used the design thinking process:
- Empathize: Conduct customer interviews and field studies to understand values, motivations, and how people actually use PayPal's products
- Define: Summarize primary Jobs to be Done into Customer Stories that serve as a "North Star" for the UX team, and create customer journey maps to identify gaps in the experience
- Ideate: Brainstorm as many possible solutions as possible to fill those gaps and fulfill the Jobs to be Done
- Prototype: Create rough sketches and prototypes of each potential solution
- Test: Test prototypes with real customers in the usability lab, iterate, and decide what to build
Stuart admits that getting stakeholders on board with this research-based, iterative, user-centered approach didn't happen overnight. But it became much easier once they got in front of customers and started seeing the value.
What Results Did PayPal's Redesign Produce?
After launching the new website and app, PayPal saw significant increases in:
- Account completion
- The number of users connecting their banks and cards to their PayPal account (key to enabling customers to make their first transaction)
- The percentage of people sending money to other users
- Positive customer feedback around understanding their transactions better
Stuart attributes these results to PayPal's company-wide focus on the user experience.
"I always ask, 'Who are we creating this experience for?'" he explains. "It should be for the end user, and any new ideas need to be vetted by our customers, or we could spend tons of time and money building the wrong thing."
"That's why anytime we can get customer input, it's a good thing. It will drive value for them, which provides value for the business."
What Is Design Thinking and Why Does It Matter?
Design thinking is a practical yet creative methodology that guides you through empathizing with users and the problem first, then diverging to brainstorm numerous ideas for solutions, and converging to identify the best one. It also embraces iteration, and the idea that the design process is never truly "done."
The idea first surfaced in the 1960s and 70s before becoming more popular in the 1980s and 90s, thanks to Peter Rowe's 1987 book Design Thinking and the Stanford University d.school.
Diego Rodriguez, a partner at pioneering design firm IDEO, puts it well:
"Stop treating design as a noun. We would all be better off treating design as a verb, a process, a way of approaching challenges which designers and non-designers alike can learn to use to create positive change in the world."
Design is no longer pure aesthetics that appeal to personal taste. It's a critical-thinking process that solves business problems, produces millions (often billions) in ROI, and truly makes a difference in someone's life.
How Is Design Thinking Different from Classical Design?
Classical (aesthetic) design starts with inspiration, moves to planning an idea, then makes it look good. Design thinking starts with the problem, not the palette.
Design used to begin by looking for inspiration, maybe sketching an idea, then making it come to life. But as PayPal and many other brands have realized, problem solving requires more thinking and research than simply making something pretty.
Startups and tech firms aren't the only ones adopting this process. Some of the world's largest companies, including Google, IBM, and Deloitte, are snapping up design thinkers and embedding design throughout their organizations, because they've seen how it unlocks endless possibilities for better experiences and better results.
Don't Throw UX on Top. Bake It in from the Beginning.
Whether you're developing a product, relaunching a website, or undertaking any design-related project, UX can't be an afterthought or a buzzword used to describe visual garnish. It has to be user-centric, consider both interaction and visual design, and be baked into the process from the very beginning.
"Throwing some UX" on your product may be a quick win, but without in-depth, long-term dedication to the overall user experience, the win will be short-lived.
When user success is at the forefront of everything you do, business success is bound to follow.
Design thinking is the key to producing meaningful results and ROI, not just making something pretty.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "throwing some UX on it" mean? It refers to redesigning a product's visual appearance without addressing how it actually functions for users. It treats UX as a cosmetic layer rather than a foundational process.
Why did Target's Everest redesign fail? Target focused heavily on visual updates but launched a site riddled with broken links, errors, missing registries, and an unreliable cart. It looked right but didn't work. The site's core job was to help customers buy things, and it couldn't do that.
What is design thinking in UX? Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that starts with empathizing with users, defines the real problem, generates multiple possible solutions, prototypes the best ones, and tests them with real users before building anything. It treats design as a process, not a deliverable.
How did PayPal use design thinking to improve their product? PayPal used a five-step design thinking process (Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test) guided by their "Customer-Driven Innovation" philosophy. The redesign resulted in measurable improvements in account completions, transactions, and customer satisfaction.
When should UX be brought into a product redesign? From day one. UX isn't a finishing touch you apply after engineering and product decisions are made. It needs to be part of the process from the very beginning, or you risk building the wrong thing beautifully.
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