Introduction to my UX design process
Have you ever heard the following “All you need is a process?”. No, because you don’t, what you might need is structure. Then why do we have a design process? Well, a process creates structure, and I guess the corporate fellas would prefer you call it a “Design Process”.
Why I prefer structure rather than Process
Too many times designers follow these steps like a to-do list, ticking off each step without being aware of each step’s relationship.
Process — “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.”
Structure — “the arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of something complex.”
Although “not wrong” we take these steps to achieve a solution. In UX to really solve a problem, you need to understand the relationship between each step in the process and how the steps add value to the next ultimately contributing to your solution. Too often we “just do the steps” without it contributing to the right solution”
Before you get all angry at me, yes you should have some sort of process. So to keep everyone happy let’s call it the UX Design Process but don’t forget the importance of structure.
Why a UX design process?
Let’s start why not
Why do techies love their lingo? If you are too cool for the UX design process there is always the “Design Thinking Process” :) Well isn’t that great another process maybe this one will make me a better designer — you’ve guessed it if the process isn’t adding value then it’s not.
What it should be
In short, the results and learnings from each step feed into the other steps, in the end, creating a user based solution based on research and evidence.
What is the UX design process?
In the end, most designers are both analytical and creative and your process should make sure you use both of those skills.
Everyone is different and therefore I think your process is yours to create and improve on. I will share with you as a guideline my “process”.
1. Understand
“I can explain the problem for you, I can show you the problem but I cannot understand the problem for you.”
To kick off any project I need to understand the business goals, product, technology, marketing strategy, and what they currently know about the user.
How do I understand?
Well first you listen, and you listen carefully and then you ask questions and you ask a lot.
In a traditional sense, its called stakeholder interviews, requirement workshop, brainstorming sessions, etc. I don’t care how you do it but you need to do what you need to in order to understand the problem.
In the end, you should have some hypotheses on a problem. Not a solution to a problem.
2. Research — Understand better
What do I need to know in order to solve this problem?
What do I not know?
What do I need to know?
Am I solving the right problem?
Is there another problem that needs solving?
How do I research?
You probably heard about qualitative and quantitive research, well bingo this is where you would do that. Depending on what I need to know will determine which type of research I need to do.
Who are our users?
What’re our users' goals?
What can we learn from our users' behaviour?
What’re the competitors doing that we should be doing or not doing?
This is where you bring out your user surveys, competitive analysis, field research studies, experience maps, and analytics.
What do you do with the research?
It’s not just in a folder gathering dust you need to develop user personas, user tasks, and wire flows.
Pro tip: Remember to validate your user persona’s once you've done usability testing and update them.
3. Ideate your research
Well, you’ve done all that research for a reason. Take out your sharpies and sticky notes.
I now know my user’s goals, I have a better understanding of their behaviour, context, and frustrations.
How do I ideate?
I start by writing down user tasks and create wire flows to sketch out potential options. (I don’t guess this, it’s based on the research we’ve done in the previous step— use your persona’s!)
How can our users achieve their goals?
How can we make that journey as easy and frictionless as possible?
What do you do with the ideations?
You share it with your team or better yet you get your team involved (as they should be in the entire process). Once you have chosen an idea that will solve your user goals, you design wireframes
Pro Tip: Wild ideas are welcome it’s important to not judge as it kills creativity.
4. Design your ideas
This is where you use your visual skills if you are not the one designing then your UI designer would be the go-to. Make sure to brief your designer properly if they weren’t in the process for some odd reason.
How do I design?
I use the wire flows and user tasks from the ideation step to visually design the screens.
What’s important: I write them down so that I can visually emphasize these elements.
What’re secondary elements: I write them down they will be visual “little less emphasized”
All the rest that is required for the business, product, and add’s value to users accomplishing their goals.
Now I start designing the layout, finding a look, and feel setting up a consistent style.
What do you do with the designs?
This is an easy one :) You build a prototype to test them with real users.
Pro Tip: Run the user tasks and see if users can accomplish their goals.
5. Test your designs
We made assumptions early on now it’s time to validate those assumptions.
How do I test?
Build the prototype you want to test with users — depending on your users you can also use wireframes
Write down user goals from our user persona’s
Create user tasks from the user goals for participants to do in the test — also allow time for the user to free-flow their tasks
Recruit your users (Use calendly for scheduling your participants)
Setup your testing space, physical or remote testing
Test & prep how you are going to do the actual testing
Collate feedback on a spreadsheet or any tool you prefer
Testing time — make sure your participants are comfortable and know what to expect
Report on your feedback — spreadsheet, presentation it’s up to you
Don’t get caught up in the “usability high”
We can get caught up on all the things we didn't anticipate but remember we are trying to solve a specific problem. The things that we will action needs to be related to the problem we are solving. Make a separate list of all the other things that need improvement but not the priority right now.
Remember on measuring the following:
How long does it take to complete the tasks?
How do they actually complete the task? Or do they?
How did they experience the task?
This is only touching the tip of the iceberg there is so much more detail in each of these steps.
What do you do with the test results?
The important focus is to make sure your improvements are actionable and focused on the problem.
Overview of testers
Key findings + Priority of actionable tasks
Tester specific context, pain points, good things & additional notes
Resources — video’s for the team to watch
Pro Tip: Invite team members to watch or hold a usability session for them to watch afterwards.
6. Measure
I see this one left out on most Design Thinking Processes. When your design solution is implemented it’s important to measure the success or failure of your solution.
This is where you show your value as a designer
How do I measure?
I use qualitative and quantitative methods
Qualitative gives us insight into what is wrong and quantitative gives us insight into why it’s wrong
Why you need both:
I use Google Analytics (or similar tools) to identify problem areas
I use Hotjar, A/B tests (or similar tools) to gain insights into the problem areas (from GA) to better understand the current user behaviour
Measuring UX could be a book on its own, for now, use methods that will help you measure and improve the success of your metrics.
What do you do with the measures?
Measures are only useful if you know what to do with them. Work with your team and business to discuss and prioritize implementing improvements.
Don’t forget to also present your successes for implementing a solution and how it improved key metrics.
Pro Tip: Check out Google’s HEART framework to improve and measure UX
And then you do it all over again :)
In an ideal world, you get the time, resources, and budget to go through your process.
Not all projects are equal and the reality is that you would most likely adjust your process to get the most from your time, budget, and resources to find a solution within those limitations.
In the end, make sure what you do, adds value to the solution.