Empathise, Define, Ideate and Build

UX research through the Google UX course brings to light the best user research practice when it come to creating designs, which are;

1. Empathise with users
2. Build an empathy map
3. Understand user pain point
4. Explore personas
5. Write user stories
6. Identify happy paths and edge cases
7. Discover the benefits of user journey maps
8. Write problem statements and hypothesis statement

Research is one of the critical aspect of UX research, there are different types of research namely;

FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH: this research method answers the questions

• What should we build?
• What are the user problems?
• How can we solve them?

DESIGN RESEARCH: this is all about brainstorming how the tool or website should be built.

POST-LAUNCH RESEARCH :this answers the question “Did we succeed?”

As a UX researcher one is required to posses the following qualities:

1. Empathy: this is the ability to understand someone else’s feelings.
2. Pragmatism: this is the ability to focused on reaching your goals.
3. Collaboration: the ability to work with a range of professionals.

When employing research methods before designing there are 4 sets of research materials namely;

PRIMARY RESEARCH: this is a research conducted by oneself.

SECONDARY RESEARCH: this is a research that uses someone else’s gathered information, and this is often done by product leads.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH: this research focuses on data that can be gathered by counting or measuring based on a survey o many people, therefore providing statistical answers.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: this research is focused on observations.

There are 3 method in which research is carried namely;

1. Interviews: this is a face-to-face meeting process done on small amount of audience.
2. Surveys: this method employs the examination of the opinions of a group of people, this is method involves a larger audience.
3. Usability Studies: this method involves testing prototypes of of a products or features of the product, to show KPI(Key Performance Indicator: a critical measures of progress towards an end goal.)

EMPATHY PHASE:

Empathy is the identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person. Empathy is a skill required in UX research and to properly employ empathy properly one need to create an empathy map.

EMPATHY MAP: this is an easily understood chart that explains everything designers have learned about a particular/type of user, the informations includes;

• What the user says
• What the user does
• What the user thinks
• What the user feels

When empathising as a designer you get to know a user’s pain point.

USER PAIN-POINT: A stage where a user gets frustrated or worked up when using a product. There are 4 types of user pain points namely;

1. Financial Pain-point
2. Product Pain-point
3. Product Pain-point
4. Process Pain-point
5. Support Pain-point

Personas, User Story, and User Journey are also a method employed to design thinking.

PERSONA: these are fictional users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users. Personas tells a user stories, and the benefits are as follows;

• It helps build empathy
• It tells a user story
• It stress-test designs.

USER STORY: this is a fictional one-sentence story told from the Persona’s point of view to inspire and inform design decisions. User story has its advantages which are;

• It prioritises design goals
• It unites the team around a clear goal
• It inspires empathic designs decisions by making a designers approach user-centred.
• It personalises pitches to stakeholders

USER JOURNEY: the sense of experience a user has as they interact with your product. User Journey is sub divided into 2 namely;

1. Happy Path: a user story with a happy ending or overall experience.
2. Edge Cases: this happens when things go wrong that are beyond the user’s control. These are few pro tips to solving edge cases;

• Create personas and user stories
• Thoroughly review the product before launch
• Use wireframes

Mapping out User Journey is necessary and these are the steps required:

STEP 1: add each action in the journey until the user reaches their goals

STEP 2: add description for each actions, what task does the user have to do.

STEP 3: add how the user feels at each point, guesstimates are okay.

STEP 4: add opportunities for improvements, this is where new ideas may come from.

Below are the benefits of User Journey mapping;

1. It helps UX designer create obstacle free path for users.
2. It reduces impact of designers’ bias.
3. It highlights new pain-point.
4. It helps identify improvement opportunities.

User Journey and accessibility design goes hand-in-hand and one of the major term is CURB-CUT EFFECT; a phenomenon that describes how products and policies designed for people with disabilities end up helping everyone.

DEFINE PHASE:

In the define phase certain statements or situations are taken into place, namely:

PROBLEM STATEMENT: a clear description of the user’s need that should be addressed. A good problem statement must have the following;

1. Human centred design
2. Broad enough for creative freedom
3. Narrow enough for design solutions

Example of a good problem statement should contain the following;

• User’s name
• User’s characteristics
• User’s need
• insight

Benefits of problem statements are;

1. It helps to establish goals
2. It helps in understanding constraints
3. It helps define design liabilities
4. It create benchmark for success

HYPOTHESIS STATEMENT: our best educated guess on what we think the solution to a design problem might be. There is no standard format for creating a hypothesis statement, it is more of an “If/Then” statement.

Design has its own set of psychology which deals with human factors; this describes the range of variables humans bring to their product interactions. Common human factors that inform design are;

1. Impatience
2. Limited memory
3. Needing analogies
4. Limited concentrations
5. Changes in needs

There are techniques in which human factors can be predicted;

1. MENTAL MODELS: internal maps that allows human to predict how something works.
2. FEEDBACK LOOPS: the outcome a user gets at the end of a process.

There are common Psychological phenomenal in the world of design namely;

VON RESTORFF EFFECT (ISOLATION EFFECT): this is when multiple, similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered, e.g a Call-To-Action button.

SERIAL POSITION EFFECT: this is when people are given a list of items, they are more likely to remember the first few and the last few, which means the items in the middle tends to blur.

HICK’S LAW: the more the option a user has the longer it takes for them to make a decision.

IDEATION PHASE:

During the ideation phase a designer is to come up with a lot of design concepts, ideation in the real world includes;

• Brainstorm out loud
• Document all ideas
• Focus on quantity
• Do not allow evaluation
• Gather a diverse team
• Question the obvious

These are standard ways to evaluate ideas;

1. Feasible: it should be technically possible to build
2. Desirable: it should be best at solving the user’s problem
3. Viable: it should be financially beneficial for the business

It is beneficial to per-take in COMPETITOR AUDIT when ideating

Competitor Audit is the process of identifying your product competitors. This process has its benefits which are;

1. It helps in identifying your key competitors
2. Reviewing the products that your competitors offer
3. Understanding how your competitors position themselves in the market, e.t.c.

The types of competitor includes;

DIRECT COMPETITOR: these are competitors offer similar products to your product and focuses on the same audience.

INDIRECT COMPETITOR: these competitors have a similar product but focuses on a different audience, or have a different product but focuses on the same audience.

Benefits of Competitor audit;

1. It informs your design
2. It solves usability problem
3. It reveals gap in the market
4. it provides reliable evidence

Limitations of Competitor audits;

1. It stifles creativity
2. It is totally dependent on how well you interpret the findings
3. Not all designs work in all user case
4. It needs to be done regularly

These are the following step to take when making competitor audits;

STEP 1: Outline your goal

STEP 2: Create a spreadsheet with a list of your competitors

STEP 3: Call out the specific features you want to compare

STEP 4: Research each company

STEP 5: Analyse your findings

STEP 6: Summarise your findings in a report

STORYBOARD: these are series of panels/frames that visualise, describe and explore user’s experience with a product. There are 4 elements of storyboards namely;

1. Character: the user in your story
2. Scene: this helps us imagine the user’s environment
3. Plot: the benefits/solutions of the design
4. Narrative: the user’s need to a problem and how the design will/should solve it.

There are 2 types of storyboards;

• Big picture Storyboard
• Close up Storyboard

CREATION PHASE:

In this phase our ideas are to be brought into creations through fidelity designs;

LOW FIDELITY DESIGN: simple sketch of idealised design that is less reformed or polished, mainly a wireframe

WIREFRAME: a basic outline of a digital experience, like an app/website.

The following are purposes of wireframe;

• It establishes the basic structure of a page
• It highlight the intended function of the product
• It saves time and resources

And the benefits of wireframes are as followed;

1. Inform the elements to include in your design
2. It helps in catching problems early
3. It get stakeholders to focus on structure
4. It saves time and effort
5. It helps to iterate quickly

One can make a wireframe on a plane sheet of paper with a pen, pencil or marker or make use of a digital wireframe tool like Figma, this is a tool both for creating high and low fidelity designs as well as prototypes.

When creating a wireframe one of the best practise to partake in is the use of information architecture.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE: This organises content to help users understand where things are in a product and where the information they want is.

Importance of IA;

1. It organises and defines the overall structure for the app/site
2. It provides a high-level view of a product
3. It helps stakeholders review your designs.
4. It helps engineers understand how to organise the data
5. It allows your idea grow and iterate with the design

When designing a designer is to make sure the limit or be creative with the use of deceptive patterns, these are UX methods that takes users into doing/buying something they wouldn’t otherwise have done/bought. The various types are;

• Roach motel
• Forced continuity
• Sneak into basket
• Hidden cost
• Confirm shaming
• Urgency
• Scarcity

Overall, I got to understand deeply the various stages involved in design thinking process.

• Empathy and how to create empathy maps
• Definition
• Ideating
• Building, how to build both high and low fidelity wireframes, on paper or using Figma.