Digital User Experience

Digital technology is a part of everyday life for billions of people around the world, and the competition for our attention is fierce. User Experience (UX) is vital to the success of any business selling digital products, because users are more discerning than ever.

Customers increasingly expect digital product design to be intuitive, easy-to-use, intelligent and responsive to their needs. They also expect their digital technology to cost less, but do more than ever before.

Our research in digital user experience looks at how humans interact with digital technology, and seeks new ways to improve the way we use it. Through the work we're doing, we're helping businesses improve the quality and usability of the digital products they offer, and improving their customer retention. 

We're exploring how better and broader access to digital technology has created an industry of miniaturisation, and made previously prohibitively technology such as Virtual Reality (VR) affordable, with lightweight and easy-to-use headsets now being made at low cost.

With children now growing up in a world where digital technology is a part of everyday life, we're also studying how wider access to digital technology is changing user demographics – and researching what that means for the future of digital product design. By understanding how digital technology works today, we're helping companies and consumers make sensible decisions about how to design and use digital technology in the future.

Private and public sector organisations use our research outputs to develop digital technology solutions that lead to better engagement, user experience and user outcomes. For example, our research was used to create mobile phone speech software for users with Parkinsons and to help blind and partially-sighted people access their digital heritage through the project Sensing Culture.

Methods

We measure the impact of digital experiences on people using experiments, data analytics and log analysis. We also explore user experience processes using qualitative research techniques such as ethnography, focus groups, interviews, rapid prototyping, user testing, usability testing, think aloud protocol and grounded theory. 

We research what people want to get from digital tech and we advise on the best way of meeting their needs and wants. We find out from audiences what they think they want, then use that information to design products, take them back to the user and find out if what they asked for is what they really need. We explore what people need now and what they'll need in the future, so the business process behind a platform can be better designed.

Discover our areas of expertise

Digital user experience is one of 7 areas of expertise in the Digital and Creative Technologies research area. Explore the others here.

Interested in a PhD in Digital & Creative Technologies?

Browse our postgraduate research degrees – including PhDs and MPhils – at our Digital & Creative Technologies postgraduate research degrees page.