Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate
Week 2
Week 1
How to empathize with users
Ask lots of questions.
Become more observant.
Be an active listener.
Keep current on UX research.
Request input.
Have an open mind.
Recruit interview participants
Screener Survey
A screener survey or simply screener, for short, is a detailed list of questions that helps researchers determine if potential participants meet the requirements of the research study.
determine the goals of the interview
What do you want to learn from the interviews?
Are there certain user problems or pain points that you need to empathize with?
Are there any characteristics of users you want to interview?
How much information should we have to ensure we get a comprehensive and balanced set of data?
Why?
aim to form a Representative Sample
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find potential interview participants
Family member
Friends
Current or former colleagues
Managers
Professional networking sites
Online groups based on personal interests
Other methods
third-party research recruiting agency
connect with research participants through paid services
Prepare for user interviews
Script interviews questions
Research the users.
Collect supplies
Practice
Identify user pain points
Pain points are any UX issues that frustrate the user and block the user from getting what they need.
Types of Paint Point
Financial
Product
Process
Support
Conducting a user interview
Create personas
User Group
A user group is a set of people who have similar interests, goals, or concerns
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Benifits
Build empathy
Tell Stories.
Stress-test designs.
Meeting
Build a good rapport.
Thanks the participant for coming
Review legal details
Gather basic details
Let the participant know there are no right or wrong answers.
Conduct the interview
Follow interview etiquette
Ask open-ended questions
Take notes
Highlight compelling quotes.
Document observations about participants
Consider recording interviews.
Wrap up the interview
Giving users a chance to share final thoughts about any items discussed during the interview.
Always thank the participant again for their time.
Empathy Maps
An empathy map is an easily understood chart that explains everything designers have learned about a type of user.
Types
One user empathy map
An empathy map consists of four squares, which show what the user says, does, thinks, and feels.
Aggregated empathy maps
gathered from multiple users.
Craft user stories
User Story
Is a fictional one-sentence story told from a persona's point of view to inspire and inform design decisions.
Avantages
User stories prioritize design goals
Unite the team around a clear goal
Inspire empathetic design
Personalize pitches to stakeholders
Consider edge cases
Happy path
describes a user story with a happy ending
Edge case
is a rare situation or unexpected problem that interrupts a standard user experience
Spotting and resolving
create personas and user stories
thoroughly review the project before launch.
use wireframes
Create user journey map
User journey
is the series of experiences a user has as they achieve a specific goal
Benifit
helps UX designers create obstacle-free paths for users
reduces the impact of designer bias
highlights new pain points.
Identify improvement opportunities.
Consider accessibility
Curb Cut Effect
A curb cut is the name for the slope of the sidewalk that creates a ramp with the adjoining street.
curb-cut effect is a phenomenon that describes how products and policies designed for people with disabilities often end up helping everyone.
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Week 3
problem statements
A problem statement is a clear description of the user's needs that should be addressed.
Good problem statements
human-centered
broad enough to creative freedom
narrow enough to be solved by a design solution
effective problem statement
establish goals.
understand constraints.
define deliverables
create benchmarks for success.
hypothesis statements
A hypothesis statement writes out our best educated guess on what we think the solution to a design problem might be.
value proposition
A value proposition is the reason why a consumer should use a product or a service.
two important questions
What does your product do ?
Why should the user care?
Understand human factors
The human factor describes the range of variables humans bring to their product interactions
psychological concepts
Mental models are internal maps that allow humans to predict how something will work
Psychology Principles
Von Restorff effect or isolation effect
when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered
Serial position effect
when people are given a list of items, they are more likely to remember the first few and the last few, while the items in the middle tend to blur.
Hick's law
the more options a user has, the longer it takes for them to make a decision
impatience, limited memory, needing analogies, limited concentration, changes in need, needing motivation, prejudices, fears, making errors, and misjudgment
The 5 Ws and H: who, what, when, where, why, and how
Who is experiencing the problem? Knowing your users and their background is key to creating successful solutions for them.
What are the pain points you’re trying to solve? Determining a user’s pain points early allows you to answer the rest of these questions and clarify the context of the pain points.
Where is the user when they’re using the product? A user’s physical context matters to your design.
When does the problem occur? Maybe it’s right after the end of a long and tedious process, or maybe it’s something that happens daily. Knowing when the problem occurs can help you better empathize with the user’s feelings.
How are users reaching their goals by using the product? Understanding how users reach their goals allows you to map the user journey that they take through your product.
Why is the problem important? Knowing how this problem affects your user’s experience and life will help to clarify the potential consequences.
Week 4
Design Ideation
the process of generating a broad set of ideas on a given topic with no attempt to judge or evaluate them
Ideation
Rainstorms out loud
Document all idea
Focus on qunatity
Do not allow evaluation
Gather a diverse team
Question the obvious
Evaluate the ideas
Evaluate ideas
Feasible? Is it technically possible to build?
Desirable? Best at solving user problem
Viable Financially beneficial for the business?
Conduct competitive audits
Scope the competition
Competitive audit
Is an overview of your competitors' strengths and weaknesses
Learn from competitive audit
Identifying your key competitors
Reviewing the products that your competitors offer
Understanding how your competitors position themselves in the market
Examining what your competition does well and what they could do better
Considering how your competitors talk about themselves.
Direct competitors
Have offerings, meaning products, services, or features, that are similar to your product and focus on the same audience.
Indirect competitors
Have a similar set of offerings, but focus on a different audience than you, or they have a different set of offerings and focus on the same audience as you.
Benefits
Inform your design process.
Solve usability problems.
Reveal gaps in the market
Provide reliable evidence
Limits to competitive audits
Stifle creativity
Depends on how well you interpret the findings.
Not all designs work in all use cases