What is User Experience Design?

UX design is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between users and a product.  In other words, it is the process of designing products that are useful, easy to use, and delightful to interact with.

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What are the different disciplines of user experience design?

• User Research - Understanding the people who use a product or system through observations.

• Information Architecture (IA) - Identifying and organizing information within a product or system in a purposeful & meaningful way.

• Content Strategy - Planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content.

• Interaction Design (UxD) - Designing the interactive behaviors of a product or system with a specific focus on their use.

• Visual Design - Designing the visual qualities of a product or system in an aesthetically pleasing way.

• Usability Testing - Measuring the quality of a user’s experience when interacting with a product or system.

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What is user centered design (UCD)?

User-Centered Design is a process that brings the user’s needs into consideration from the beginning of the project. While projects inherently take into consideration a set of defined business objectives and technical requirements, they often fail to consider the user’s needs.

 

What are some UCD methods to better understand users?

• Contextual inquiry – Process by which a researcher watches the user do their normal activities and discusses what they see with the user.

• Personas - Fictitious characters created base on research of user types in order to help solve design questions.

• Use cases - Documenting the tasks users need to perform and understanding their purpose.

• Surveys – One way to gather feedback from larger population (can be both quantitative and qualitative).

• Focus Groups - A form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product.

• User Journeys / Journey Maps -  A Journey map is a visual or graphic interpretation of the overall story from an individual’s perspective of their relationship with a product over time and across channels.

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What attributes would you use to describe a product that has a great user experience?

• Useful / Valuable –It has a useful purpose and adds value for the user

• Desirable – Users want to use the product

• Usable – Users can easily accomplish the tasks they expect to be able to do with the product 

• Intuitive – Users easily learn how to use the product without training

• Accessible – All users (even ones with disabilities) can use the product

• Credible – The user trusts that content is accurate and that product is safe to use

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What are some typical steps taken when doing good user experience design?

• Understand the user and the tasks they need to accomplish (through user research methods)

• Utilize ways of documenting concepts to aid in understanding

  • Process flow diagrams

  • User Journeys / Journey Maps

• Begin to design the basic experience (information architecture, content, and interactions)

  • White boarding

  • Wireframes

  • Low fidelity Prototypes

• Test the basic designs to make sure users find them usable and intuitive (usability testing) then iterate to make improvements

• Review the design with internal stakeholders (product owners, engineering, etc) to make sure everyone is comfortable with proposed design.

• Apply visual design and specific interactions/transition effects, and in some cases produce high fidelity prototype.

• Work with engineers to ensure that what is built is a close as possible to what was designed.

• Continue to gather feedback from users of the product/feature over time.

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What are some great reference sites for UX designers?

• Smashing Magazine 

• LukeW

• UX Booth

• MockPlus

 

What are some great books for UX designers?

• Don’t Make Me Think - By Steve Krug

• The Design of Everyday Things - By Donald A. Norman

• The Elements of User Experience - By Jesse James Garrett

• A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making (2nd Edition) - By Russ Unger & Carolyn Chandler

• About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design- By Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, Christopher Noessel

• Predictable Magic - Deepa Prahalad

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What are importance considerations when running usability testing?

• Development of scenario(s) to test (user tasks)

• Recruitment of proper candidates

  • Size of population (generally 5 is considered enough to find most issues)

  • Role

• Type of test

  • Hallway testing -

  • Moderated usability test - an unbiased facilitator sits talks with the user, reading aloud the task and prompting the user to think aloud as he or she accomplishes the task.

  • Unmoderated usability test - conducted online, at the user’s convenience.

  • A/B test – Used when designers are struggling to choose between two competing elements.