What is the secret to UX?
One of the questions that I get asked is “What is your thinking during the UX process” or how do you translate User Profiles into tangible things such as “Screens.”
Today I am writing the intro to a training module for UX and I wanted to share some of the thoughts of what I am going to write:
1. There is no “Secret” or “Magic Process” — Listening to customers and end users as to their needs is the first step. The better you understand and document these needs the easier it will be to define the experience.
2. Understanding the business goals and getting stakeholders (eg clients) to agree and prioritize these is the second most important thing.
3. Defining the brand really helps to contain what directions you might take. I like to define that first because I believe that “Who you are” determines who your clients are. Though it’s logical to understand current and desired customers first — I have seen this backfire many times. Why? Because I have seen client’s state current customers and who they desire to have as customers and noticed that when these are not aligned with who you are the business can come across disingenuous or “tone deaf”. Reality is that they go back and forth and regardless of which you do first you will need to align them eventually.
4. Translating needs and goals into features and layout is an exercise that requires you to know what current best practices are for the platform you are designing for. This determines much of the form. Therefore you need to know things such as the latest mobile best practices and look at how others are doing it. (The Audit) The rest is filling in these formats with the most relevant approach based on your understanding of the user and business goals.
5. You are designing both the “Business” and “Visual Materials” at the same time. Therefore your “Business Strategist Self” and “Designer Self” need to work together at the same time. No matter how you slice it you will need to understand and enjoy the design of business. The reason why agencies have separated the roles of Information Architecture and Visual Design is because traditionally the interest of designers is more emotional, visual and form based not function based. To do both you have to “Dual process” and this is quite difficult for many. Including me. That is why I love to do the UX process LIVE with others, it allows me to do the thinking out loud, I do poorly working on my own sitting at a desk. I have the tendency to get distracted, surf the web, get up and go elsewhere, talk to those around me and my work takes too long. So why not just do it in a way that I like. Talking to people and getting up and pacing around. Boom problem solved. But the truth is that it actually makes it much faster and more accurate because I am leveraging the brains of everyone in the room. Like a “multi-processor” computer.
At the end of the day defining the brand, the user needs and the business goals then understanding how the top competitors are solving the same problems and crafting a solution that synthesizes both is how I do it. The sketching and creating of wireframes etc is then fairly straight forward. The thinking and deciding is always the part that slows down the process.
I hope this gives you an insight and that I am getting closer to explaining my process.
Much love,
-jc
