Google UX Design Specialization:- Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate
I’m happy to share my experience on Google UX Design Specialization:- Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, Ideate which is the 2/7 course in the Google UX Design Certificate. I try to write an article about my experiences from each of these courses.
Each course of the Google UX Design Certificate is broken into weeks. You can complete courses at your own pace, but the weekly breakdowns are designed to help you finish the program in about 5 weeks total. I personally complete it in just 3 weeks.
This part of the course focused on empathizing with users, which is the first phase of the design process. These hands-on activities will help you understand user perspectives and pain points.
So, what design skills can you expect to develop during this course? Here’s a preview of the hands-on activities I have completed in this course.
Week 1:
Understand the role of research in design
I started with the basics in understanding the role that UX research plays in the design process. I also examined how UX research fits into the development of a product, including foundational research, design research, and post-launch research. As a UX designer, it’s your job to put the user front-and-center in everything you do. In this part of the course, I explored the role of research in the design process to help you empathize with users.
Explore UX research methods
In the first week, I explored UX research methods and their benefits and drawback. Also, I learned which method should be used for research. Then they were introduced to two ways to categorize research methods:
- Primary & Secondary Research
- Quantitative & Qualitative Research.
As part of that conversation, I went through the benefits and drawbacks of popular research methods, like secondary research, interviews, surveys, and usability studies.
Identify types of bias in UX research
Personally, I faced very first time this term called ‘Bias’. Favoring or having a prejudice against something based on limited information is called bias. I got some ideas about identifying and avoiding biases and learn how to overcome biases.
Week 2:
I dig into one of the most important parts of the UX design process: Empathizing with our users. In week 2, I learned what Empathy is and how it’s applied in UX design. I also discussed the importance of understanding user needs, behaviors, and motivations. The best thing designers can do to create good user experiences is to Empathize. Empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s feelings or thoughts in a situation.
Empathize with users
Empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s feelings or thoughts in a situation. Empathizing with potential users is important to every step of the design thinking process.
Recruit interview participants
As a UX designer, always focus on the user and the experience they’ll have with the product you’re designing. In this week, I learned about the first phase of the design process, empathizing with users, which is critical when it comes to creating a great user experience. In order to empathize with users and understand their pain points, you’ll need to conduct interviews with real people who might use the product you’re designing.
Documenting user interviews
As you conduct interviews, it’s important to have a plan for documenting the information your participants share with you. This part of the course covered both what conducting interviews might look like in a future job as well as guidance on completing the interviews as an independent UX designer.
Empathy Map
This was optional and gave a little idea about the Empathy Map. An empathy map is an easily understood chart that explains everything designers have learned about a type of user. An empathy map consists of four squares, which show what the user Says, Does, Thinks, and Feels. The word user goes in the middle, right where these squares intersect.
Identify user pain points
Pain points are any UX issues that frustrate the user and block the user from getting what they need. Most pain points fall into one of four categories:
- Financial pain points are user problems related to, you guessed it, money.
- Product pain points. These are usually quality issues related to the product.
- Process pain points. These are frustrations that stop the user going from point A to point B.
- Support pain points. When users interact with your product, they might have questions. If they can’t find answers to their questions, they won’t feel supported.
- Understand personas
In UX design, personas are fictional users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users. Personas can help us identify patterns of behavior in users. These patterns might point to a common pain point that a group of users experiences. While personas are fictional, we don’t make these characters up from scratch, we build them based on research. Personas build empathy and put a face to the user. Personas tell stories. Personas stress-test designs.
Week 3:
Week 3 continues to explore some of the ways UX designers build empathy with users of the products they designed for. It started with user stories which are fictional, one-sentence stories that connect the needs of a potential user to a specific action and benefit. After that, I learned about user journey maps, a tool used by UX designers to understand the obstacles a user faces while interacting with a product. Lastly, explore some strategies for keeping accessibility top of mind during the empathize phase of the design process.
Craft user stories
Another helpful way to understand users is to build a user story around their experiences with your product. A user story is a fictional one-sentence story told from the persona’s point of view to inspire and inform design decisions. This is a great opportunity to use your imagination as you create the stories that capture the needs of your users.
Consider edge cases
An edge case is a rare situation or unexpected problem that interrupts a standard user experience. Good UX anticipates edge cases and reroutes users back to the happy path when things don’t go as planned. In edge cases, the obstacle is often beyond the user’s control to fix.
Create a user journey map
A user journey is the series of experiences a user has as they achieve a specific goal. User journeys are built off the personas and stories you’ve already created. They help you think and feel like the user, which is super important. A journey map is just what it sounds like, an illustration of what the user goes through to achieve their goals.
Consider accessibility when empathizing
Accessibility is not just designing to include a group of users with varying abilities. Instead, it extends to anyone who is experiencing a permanent, temporary, or situational disability. Designing with accessibility in mind means making sure.
Week 4:
Week 4 came with solve some problems that users are facing and told how a UX designer solves them before facing a user.
User Problem statement
A problem statement is a clear description of the user’s needs that should be addressed. Problem statements align the team on which user problem to focus on, giving everyone a clear goal.
Determine a value proposition
It’s important to start thinking about how your product meets user’s needs. This is known as a Value Proposition. A value proposition is a reason why a consumer should use a product or a service. You can think of this statement as the reason users will be interested and willing to engage with your product. Value Propositions ensure that users have a reason to use the product that you are designing or creating.
Understand human factors
This was an option cheptaer. The human factor describes the range of variables humans bring to their product interactions. In this case, human factors were the pilots’ varying skill levels.
Week 5
I hope you are enjoying my article. Week 5 came with the Ideation phase of the design thinking process, where we focus on understanding design Ideation, conducting Competitive Audits, Brainstorming Approaches.
Understand design ideation
Ideation can be defined as the process of generating a broad set of ideas on a given topic with no attempt to judge or evaluate them. The broad set of ideas part is really important. Ideation is all about coming up with lots and lots of ideas. The no-judgment part is important too. We need to be able to explore all ideas without judging them and throwing them out. Some of the craziest ideas can actually prove to be really valuable.
Competitive audits
A competitive audit is an overview of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. A competitive audit is just one tool to explore ideas for designs, so we can learn from others about what has worked and not worked. This includes: Identifying your key competitors, Reviewing the products that your competitors offer, Understanding how your competitors position themselves in the market, Examining what your competition does well and what they could do better, and considering how your competitors talk about themselves.
Crazy Eights
Crazy Eights, another popular design ideation exercise intended to help you think of several ideas in record time. Remember that this is one of many possible ways to ideate. You’ll develop ideation methods that work best for you as you explore them over time.
Conclusion:
As I reached the finish line! I should feel great about the knowledge I got during this course. This course taught me the basics of UX Research, and where it brings value within the design thinking process. My personal favorite part of this course was Empathize with users, and why it’s important to do so before you start designing. I explored personas, wrote a user story, identified happy paths and edge cases, and discovered the benefits of user journey maps. The defining the user problem, by creating problem statements and hypothesis statements a clear vision for design. The second favorite part was Ideation through the use of competitive audits and brainstorming exercises. I continued working on my career growth by building my portfolio which I’m creating doing this course.
Overall it was a great experience of knowing things that will help in my professional career.
Thanks for reading
