The User Experience Landscape of South Africa

Abstract

Industry in South Africa is becoming increasingly aware of the need for user experience design in the development of products and services. Problems experienced with usability prevent people from accessing, and eventually adopting technology, and a deep understanding of the users' needs is needed for building a successful service. User experience activities, such as user research, can be used to understand how people live their lives, in order to more effectively respond to user needs with informed, relevant and innovative design solutions.Together with this increased awareness and appetite, is the emergent challenge where those who constitute the field of user experience (practitioners, service providers, content providers, scholars and those requiring user experience services) often understand the field differently and in different ways.The aim of this paper is to describe the current landscape of the field of user experience in South Africa and gain insights into the field's maturity such that further research and recommendations may assist in its positive growth. A survey was used to gather feedback from 105 respondents currently involved in the user experience field in South Africa. The user research methodology focused on: defining the goals of the survey; determining the user profiles; planning the survey; running the survey; analysing and reporting the results. Results provided insights into the demographics, experience, education, job titles, salaries, challenges of user experience practitioners, and the user experience community of practice in South Africa.