Role-Playing and UX Design

The most important part of user experience design is ultimately to keep the user in focus, but what happens if you don’t? You may present some unwanted bias and lose sight of the user at some points in the process. When beginning to wireframe and looking at the information architecture, it’s especially important to remember who your users are and how they would use your product. An easy tool that my team used to maintain user-centered design was role-playing activities. It was a fun way to make sure that the users’ voices continued to be heard while putting ourselves in their shoes and truly understanding what they would need to successfully use a product to their advantage.

After testing concepts on potential users, my team wanted to make sure that we were advocating for what each user liked and disliked about each concept and why. Each member of my team assumed the role of one of our potential users that were tested and voiced their needs and concerns for each concept. This role-playing activity allowed us to understand what each user prioritized and allowed us to draw commonalities, which in turn helped us design our wireframes with the users in mind.

In another project, my team had settled on a direction for a concept, however, we wanted to know how the user would move through the product. We decided to use a role-playing activity to again put ourselves in the users’ shoes. I acted as our persona while another teammate moderated, and I walked through the product recounting all of the needs, goals, and frustrations of the persona to understand how the site would need to be organized. It was a fun and helpful activity that helped us keep the spotlight on the user.

To successfully solve problems in UX design, we have to continue to refer back to what we know about our users. Role-playing is and fun and collaborative way to keep that user front and center throughout the process.