03/12/2021
Ramp up fast and become the most valuable design contributor in your organization.
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Our 6 Step Approach To UX Design Process
1.Kick-off
We first fully understand the client’s product and business first, which gives us a fair idea about who their target audience is. We also analyze the data provided by the client during any of the previous studies, which provides us scientific ground to base our hypothesis.
2.Empathize
Research: Not Google Based, But User Based
Many designers or design agencies start the research in the UX design process by Googling. They search for some inspiration, competitor’s product, or any other products with the same functions.
But let us warn you that it is not the ideal way. It leads to the formation of conclusions at a very early stage and may take the design process in the wrong direction.
Also, most of the newbies mistake user research with understanding the user. It isn’t completely true. Research in UX design is meant to understand the problem and pain points of the users. To achieve this, researchers try to gain insights into the user’s life and behaviour.
To do research in its truest sense, you must consider using the following research methods:
User Interviews
Field Surveys
Diary Studies
Card Sorting
A/B Testing
Tree Testing
5 Second Tests
Usability Testing
Research is not just limited to understanding the user’s problem. It is also about exploring the client’s product, company, industry, and competitors.
3.Define
USER PERSONAS
A user persona is a fictional representation of your ideal user. Whether you’re developing a smartphone app or a mobile-responsive website, it’s very important to understand who will be using the product.
While creating the user personas, we ensure to have the following things:
Persona Name
Photo
Demographics (gender, age, location, marital status, family)
Goals and Needs
Pain Points
Behaviours
Personality Traits
EMPATHY MAPS
An empathy map is a simple, easy-to-digest diagram with 4 quadrants (SAYS, THINKS, DOES, and FEELS) that captures knowledge about a user’s behaviours and attitudes. It is a useful tool to help teams better understand their users.
One important thing you should keep in mind is that empathy maps are not an alternative to user journey maps. It is just a pictorial representation of a mindset of an ideal target user.
4. Ideate: Think & Solve
Once we have empathized and fully understood the users’ needs and problems, we start to think about possible solutions.
In our ideation process, all the members of the design team come up with different ideas on a particular topic without judging or criticizing anyone’s idea. Our goal here is to come up with as many ideas as possible.
We try to uncover and explore new angles and avenues – to think outside the box. To get our creative juices flowing, we begin with brainstorming sessions.
BRAINSTORMING
It is an effective way of generating a large number of ideas very quickly. In brainstorming, we verbally exchange ideas with other team members, which has a snowball effect and probability of discovering a blended solution.
Once we have all the possible ideas, we shortlist the most appropriate solution and then start to weave user stories and journey maps to have an overview of the user’s process of using the product.
USER STORIES & JOURNEY MAPS
User stories are short, simple descriptions of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new capability, usually a user or customer of the product. It basically captures the essence of a user using the product in a fictional scenario.
A user journey map is a visual representation of a customer’s relationships with a product/brand over time and across different channels. We create user journeys to make our user flows much easier, as we have a bird’s eye view of the process.
USER FLOWS
User flows are a more advanced form of user journeys, which describes the outcome of each and every action that the user will perform. The role of user flows in the UX design process cannot be overlooked as it helps us to understand the user journey thoroughly and not miss out on any of the features in the final product.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Information architecture is the creation of a structure for a website, application, or other projects, that allows us to understand where we are as users, and where the information we want is in relation to our position. It results in the creation of site maps, hierarchies, categorizations, navigation, and metadata.
We create information architecture by taking the user’s input through the card sorting technique. This helps to remove any bias and create a structure that is more ideal and acceptable to the target users.
Once information architecture is ready, we obtain approval from the client to proceed to create the wireframes.
SKETCHES
5.Design: Value for users
WIREFRAMES
A wireframe is a two-dimensional outline highlighting the structure of the web page, anticipated user flow and behaviour, the interface, and the functionality of the overall product.
DESIGN SYSTEM
MOCKUP DETAIL
PROTOTYPE
DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS
CLICKABLE PROTOTYPE
6.Test
Tests the product internally
Test with stakeholders
External test with potential users
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Best regards,
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Lê Đức Hưng
Founder/ CEO/ Digital Strategy Advisor Tom Agency
w: bit.ly/TOMAgency
