UX Design Process¶
Purpose
To explain the Human Centered Design approach Countable takes to its user experience process.
Scope
Gives an overview of our three-phase process, and describes the many tools we use throughout that process.
Process Overview¶
There are three major phases: User Research, Prototyping and Feedback. These will overlap and repeat to some extent.
User Research¶
It’s valuable to front-load much of the user research in a software project so other work can be informed by information about real users, not our assumptions.
Persona Development¶
First, identify the people who will interact with the work product (Personas). Ideally, find a real person who embodies each persona and stay in contact with them to collect feedback throughout the product development.
Make a list of personas, and use those persona names consistently from now on.
Interviews¶
Interview representatives of each Persona to answer the following:
- What problem are you solving for the persona? Why does that problem matter to them? What words do they use to describe the problem?
- What is your Persona currently doing about this problem (prior to your solution)?
- Take advantage of your “Fresh eyes” at this time, to identify needs does the user have that they’re not consciously aware of. It’s fine if you turn out to be wrong about these, just write them down to validate later.
Other Research¶
Interviews should be the primary source of information about your users, but you may supplement this with surveys, anecodotes from your product owner (the client, most often) and other data sets to inform stories.
Stories¶
- Write user stories. This is a functional spec of your software. Be clear about what is should do for users.
- Validate your stories with the product owner and users, and adjust.
Prototyping¶
It’s beneficial to involve your personas and other stakeholders in the below steps where practical (co-design workshop). This speeds up the “validation” step, below.
- For any project with a user interface, create wireframes that support the important user stories. Validate these against conversations with the target market.
Depending on the project, you may also want to develop:
- For projects with nontrivial sequences of interactions over time, consider a customer journey map, or process diagram (BPD).
- For projects with many user interfaces or many views, develop an Information Architecture diagram to show how different user interfaces are linked.
- For projects with nontrivial off-screen actions, consider storyboarding the actions a user must take related to their use of the product.
- Other project-specific resources as needed to get everyone on the same page about any aspect of the user experience which is important to more than one the stakeholders.
Validation¶
- Validate your wireframes and other planning materials with the product owner and users, adjust, and repeat until everyone on your team has a clear shared vision.
- You’re now ready to hand off the wireframes to technical team members to build a functional prototype (Prototyping).
Feedback¶
While user experience design can be front-loaded in a project somewhat, it’s critical to continue throughout the project to ensure incremental improvements are made and a great end result is achieved.
- Conduct usability tests (Usability Testing) of the functional prototype as you iterate on it, each sprint.
- Perform follow-up interviews on users after they’ve tried the product.
- Build a feedback mechanism (chat widget, form, etc) into the User Interface for a quick easy way to get contextual feedback from users.
- Ensure developers understand the critical user flows in order to align with acceptance criteria for automated tests.