How I conduct UI projects
An approach of how I got to deploy the UX process on projects
UX research provides a set of activities to help focus product design on the people that will use it.
UX Research has to start from the business
Everything that is not requested might need a complete redesign to be integrated
This might sound counter-intuitive, UX focus on the people yet if the management team is not on board it will succeed.
The first research is internal, what is the company trying to achieve, what are the goals and motivation and to what extend thing can be changed via research on customer. I have learned that UX always has a scope and you have to focus only on what is within your control.
UX goal:
Research is done to help meet a business ambition with peoples situations.
Starts with desk research and lecture study
In class, you would often jump immediately on scheduling interview and preparing questions. What we don’t always know is that there are thousands of psychological and behavioural study already available online. There are countless resources from people inside the company. I have found we can save a lot of time to search from the desk to aggregate a list of information and assumptions to be tested.
Empathy Map
Understanding personal trainers
Persona
Focus on speech therapists
Challenge findings with interviews and surveys
“You are not your user” this mantra can never be repeated enough, whatever was found, you need to challenged findings with real people. Responses can sometimes be hard to be consolidated, I placed together this “feedback board” to help see information from large researchs.
Highlights the main issues and brainstorm for solutions
So far, we have only worked toward understanding possible issues, the solution is yet to be found. Brainstorming for ideas in a small team is one of the best ways to make emerge disruptive ideas. Here we worked on MIRO in this custom made ideation canvas.
And of course, always test and iterate wireframes
Great you have found the problem and selected an idea to be developed. You could work alone on multiples screens and flow, but you will always need an external check, testing both internal and external to get on the right path.
I have found it is also great to talk to developers at this stage to get insight on how they see how we could build a solution.
Learnings & outcomes
UX provides with a framework to find solution
I love making UX research because I love being challenged with a complex problem, there is a lot of this to be discovered and countless stories to learn from. But I also have to acknowledge the dark side of UX. While the goal is to find new solutions, you have to be within a project that is looking for a change. If everything has already been decided and cannot change, there is no point in doing research.
