As we get into a more connected world, we are flooded with products all around. The challenge for us User Experience Designers, is to ensure that the products we design are loved by a wider audience for better acceptance. After all good User Experience is what will differentiate the good from the bad.
One of the simple exercises I do almost daily is to spend a few minutes observing the products, systems and services around us. There are somethings that we just love and do mind using it again and again. On the other hand there are a lot of products that require an extra effort to be used. The ones that we love are easy to use, have low learnability and is very intuitive in nature.
The other thing I also do is to not just look at UX in the context of web applications, websites or mobile applications. I try to look deeper into UX in things like public transportation, service delivery, children play areas, shopping malls etc.
Recently I gave a talk at the UI UX conference on the same.
I also mentor at an online learning community called SlideRule, and one of the questions I was asked by a participant was, whether one should keep separate things in mind when designing for learning systems as compare to that of mobile applications. My reply was that, while the context and application could change, the fundamental principles of User Experience remain valid and of utmost importance throughout.