UX Design Process

The UX Design Process

The user experience design process starts from getting to know about your user and empathizing with
them then defining their problems to your team and finally coming up with ideas on how to solve the
users problems.

Empathize with Users

Empathizing with your users means that you understand their feelings and emotions and how they feel
about yours or any other product.

Empathy Maps

An empathy map is a simple chart that contains all the details that we have learned about the user. An
empathy map learns how the user feels and what they say, do, and think about their problems.

A single empathy map contains information from a single user while a aggregated empathy map
contains data from a diverse group of people each having their own problems and feelings.

Each segment of people that you interview should have a different empathy map and then combine
relevant segments to form aggregated empathy maps.

Identify Pain Points

Before you get ready to solve problems, you need to make sure that your users actually have that
problem. You need to learn what needs a user has and what need they don't have. Because sometimes
people themselves don't know that they could benefit from something if it was given to them.

Your users pain points no matter how many they are they always fall into these categories:

Financial: This is when the user can't afford the product or the product is free but keeps asking to
buy the premium plan and it kinda is irritating when your working.
Product: This type of pain point is what UX designers are skilled at removing. Product pain points
mean that the UX of the product is not great for user and needs to improved because the user
keeps having the same problem over and over again.
Process: These pain points occur when the user is trying to something with your product but keeps
getting interrupted by paywalls or ads that stop him working and create hurdles in his path.

User Personas
User personas are fictional characters that you make from the research that you do. A persona helps
give the research character and user case study can be made using a persona.

User Journeys

A user journey is the process of how the user experiences your product and what are the things that
and what troubles does he encounter.

Week 2

User Stories

A user story is a story that you make up using the persona that you created. The story is created using
the persona's point of view and not yours and is mostly short or one-sentenced.

User stories are sometimes called scenarios but mean the same thing

User stories are helpful for getting a deeper understanding about your users and helps you to prioritize
the features that are the most important. User stories are also important for showing shareholders and
potential investors how your product is user-centric.

A good user story is like a fairy tale, It has a hero a that has to perform some task but there are many
troubles along his path to be complete his task. You are the one who guides him and makes his journey
easier.

A user story must contain a user that wants to do an action which benefits him in some way.

Edge cases
An edge case happens if your user has a specific requirement and your app doesn't support it. Or
sometimes he user doesn't have the required device to use your app.

If you want to make sure that your product works for all users and edge cases are just the thing to
make sure it does. Edge cases are unexpected or or rare situations that sometimes can interrupt the
user from doing their work.

The best way to handle edge cases is to do testing before launching, But keep in mind that even if the
product is live some times an edge case might appear and some of them are just unsolvable.

User story maps

Before you start any kind of journey you need a map to guide you. A user journey map is made from
the personas and stories that you have made.
A journey map is exactly like a regular map as it shows how and what a user has to go through to
complete his goal.

Week 3

Problem statements

A problem statement is clear and simple definition of the users needs that we need to address using
our products. They allow team members to focus on what is more important and provide a clear goal on
what features to ship or improve first. A problem statement should also contain some information about
the user like a mini persona.

Hypothesis statements

A hypothesis statement is the possible solution that you come up with for the problem statement.
Hypothesis statements sometimes start with an If, then statements. If something happens then our
product should do this is a generic If, then statement which helps UX designers to com up with
solutions to problem statements.

Value Proposition
A value proposition is when finish defining a users problems and then compare your product offerings
to the problem. You value proposition depends upon why should the customer use your product.

Value propositions are the reason people will buy your products instead of other products. What does
your product have that others don't? What makes your product better than others? These questions are
needed to be answered to create a great value proposition for your product.

The human factor

When designing a product one of the things to always keep in mind is that your product will be used by
Humans. Humans are not trained machines that'll use the product as intended.

Some will already have experience using similar products and will start using your product immediately
while some will get use to it and some will have to learn how to use it.

If you design is simple for everyone to use, isn't complex, and allows anyone to complete their work
without any disturbance then you'll receive positive feedback but if at any point in the user journey he is
stopped he will give a negative or neutral review which you would need to turn into a positive one.

Psychological influences

Colors play a vital role in our lives, Blues calm the mind while reds show dominance or anger.
Most apps have big call-to-action button near the place where you rest your thumb on the screen that is
used for the main function of the app is different from rest of the buttons so that your focus goes to it
first. This is called the Von Restorff effect.

According to a study humans can only focus on the first seven items in lists and that's why mobile
navigation have less than six items in them so that you don't get distracted or they use sub menus if
they have a lot options.

Week 4

User ideation

Ideation is the process of coming up with different ways to solve a particular problem. The more ideas
you have the more creative you can get.

You and your team can brainstorm as many ideas as possible and note each one down on a sticky note
or a journal.

Your ideas should also be aligned with your company's business models and needs. The total budget,
pricing models and design choices should be aligned with the business's personality.

Solving problems
The how might we method is used to ideate solutions during the ideation phase the phrase: How might
we followed by a question allows your brain to think specifically to find solutions on how to solve the
problem and the more creative ideas you'll get the more out-of-the-box ideas will come to you.

Scoping the competition

A competitive audit is a report of your products direct and indirect competitors to see how they handle
their business and what tactics or marketing campaigns have worked for them and which one has
failed.

Direct competitors will target the same audience as yours with a similar product like yours meanwhile
indirect competitors will sometimes have a similar product but target audience will be different and vice
versa.

Make sure to find out whatever is lacking or not up-to the mark in your competitors products and then
add them into your product but don't copy the whole thing. Even if something worked for them it might
not work for you as your trying to build an overall better product.

Conducting a competitive audit

The first step in a competitive audit is to make your goal as clear as possible and make sure your team
knows it. It could be you want to boost sales or make short term users long term, whatever it is it should
be clear and concise.

Next you need to make chart listing everything about the competitors. A spreadsheet is preferred but
you can use a white board or sticky notes as well. Step three includes marking out the specific aspects
between both the products.

Step four includes doing research about the similar aspects and how the competitors product is
different from yours. In the final step is to analyze all of your findings and try to find patterns or recurring
themes in both products.

Crazy eights

Crazy eights are eight drawings or sketches on a single piece of paper that we draw using a pencil or
marker after we come up with multiple ideas and then pick out the top eight ideas.

Sketching on paper rather than doing it digitally is preferred because it allows for more creative freedom
and is a lot more faster than sketching on a computer or tablet.