UX Process
There are 5 key phases of UX Process
1. Product definition
Product definition is one of the most important phases in UX design and it’s actually done before the product team creates anything. Before building a product, you need to understand the real scope of the product. The product definition phase sets the foundation for the final product. During this phase, UX designers brainstorm around the product(basically, the concept of the product) with stakeholders.
This phase usually includes:
- Interviewing stakeholder: interviewing key stakeholders to gather insights about business goals.
- Mapping out value proposition: thinking about the key aspects and value propositions of the product: what it is, who will use it, and why they will use it. Value propositions help the team and stakeholders create consensus around what the product will be and how to match user and business needs.
- Sketching the concept: creating an early mockup of the future product (can be low-fidelity paper sketches of the product’s architecture). This phase is concluded with a project kick-off meeting. The kick-off meeting done by all this stakeholders is to set proper expectations both for the product team and stakeholders. It covers the outline of the product purpose, team structure, communication channels (how they will collaborate and work together), and what stakeholders’ expectations are (such as KPIs and how to measure the success of the product).
2. Product research
Once you’ve defined your idea, the product team moves to the research phase. This phase includes user research and market research. Good research informs design decisions.
This phase can include:
- Individual in-depth interviews (IDI). A great product experience starts with a good understanding of the users. The in-depth interviews allows us gather qualitative data about the target audience — their needs, wants, fears, motivations, and behavior.
- Competitive research. Research helps UX designers understand industry standards and identify opportunities for the product within its particular niche. Understanding of the competition(s), going through the competitor’s strategy to test outcomes.
3. Analysis
Analysis id done to draw insights from data collected during the research phase, moving from “what” users want, think and need to “why” they want, think and need it.
This phase of the UX process usually includes:
- Creating user personas. Personas are imaginary characters that represent the different user types for your product. They are the realistic representations of your target audience.
User persona usually showcases the person’s gender, age, motivations, and more. As shown below:
- Creating user stories. User story helps designers understand the product interactions from the user’s point of view. It’s usually defined with the user’s wants and goals. As shown below:
- Storyboarding. Storyboarding is a tool that helps designers connect user personas and user stories. As the name suggests, it’s essentially a story about a user interacting with your product. It is represented as below:
- User journey Maps: User journey maps shows the user flow within your final product.
4. Design
When the users’ wants, needs, and expectations from a product are defined, the UI/UX designers move from creating information architecture (IA) to the actual UI design. An effective design phase is both highly collaborative (requiring active participation from all team players involved in product design) and iterative (repetition of a procedure done to continually improve a design or product).
The design phase usually includes:
- Sketching. Sketching is the easiest and fastest way to visualize our ideas. It can be done by hand drawing on a piece of paper, on a whiteboard, or in a digital tool. It helps during brainstorming to help the team visualize a broad range of design solutions before deciding on which to choose.
- Creating wireframes. A wireframe is the skeletal view of a design that helps designers visualize the basic structure of a future page, including the key elements and how they are placed together. Designers often use wireframes as a foundation for mockups and prototypes.
- Creating prototypes. A prototype is the sample version of a final product i.e the interaction experience (the look and feel). It may be low-fidelity (clickable wireframes) to high-fidelity (coded prototypes).
- Creating design systems.A design system is a set of standards to manage design at scale by reducing inconsistencies while creating a shared language and visual consistency e.g components, patterns, and styles that help both designers and developers stay on the same page regarding the design.
5. Testing (validation)
Validation is the last step in the design process. it helps the teams know if their design meets their user’s needs. Usually, the validation phase starts after the high-fidelity design is ready, because testing with high-fidelity designs provides more valuable feedback from end-users.Testing enables the team validates the product with both stakeholders and end-users.
