Musings on User Experience Design
The state of UX in Africa(Nigeria) and the way forward.
After a great time speaking on ‘UX Best Practices for non-designers” to about 15 developers at Student Computational Intelligence, I went back thinking about current challenges we face in the region and how User Experience Design (UX), which is not yet a core part of product design can be evangelized and advocated for — all to the development of high quality apps in the region.
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I am and will always remain a strong proponent of high quality product development ( apps, games, animations etc ) in our region. I have seen lots of never-used-apps/sites that are being given birth to on a daily basis — they get at-least an install-try-and-uninstall time by most users. We need to rethink our efforts as designers/developers/product managers/CEOs/tech enthusiasts/writers etc, and spearhead a single-eyed focus on User Experience design.
Listed below are some of my thoughts as we try to shift this our current mode of building products to a user centered design one.
1. Most designers in the region are still graphic designers
Design is not only crafting beautiful user interfaces (UIs). Design is problem solving which tries to answer the what/why/how/when/where of a product.
Most designers I have met wrap their UI beautification job description as “I am the UI/UX guy” but when you interact more with the person, you will find out that they are busy “painting and polishing” done products that the developers put together.
Real UX design is the design behind the visuals. It’s problem solving, it has a process that spans the entire lifecycle of a product development and UI is just a minute part of that. Jesse James Gareth in his book The Elements of User Experience made us to understand that visual/graphic design is just on the surface in achieving the best user experience.
A designer, before starting any project should understand the ambitious goal— the user needs and the business needs, how to take research into consideration, in which he then asks lots of questions, understands patterns, users’ common behaviors, best practices etc. He does them just to be sure he understands, lives and breathes his users. On his to-do list are also user testing, prototype, constant feedback on what is going on , iteration etc. If the mentioned points resonate with you, only then can you say that you are a UX designer. So hope you now know what we should be doing as UX designers? So whatever it takes, our advocating for a UX revolution should not be taken for granted — take online courses, read lots of books, attend great design conferences, read lots of articles on design etc as you get ready for this movement.
2. Big industry players need to lead by example
It’s time that designers in top companies/organizations in the region started launching products that their unique approach in providing solutions should become a standard for local designers too. If you look closely at the design world globally, there is always something to learn from Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Amazon, design firms etc but our local equivalents are not helping matters at all. Konga, an online retail store did something amazing with the integration of Progressive webs apps(PWA) which is truly a “lead by example” portrayal by their designers. I witnessed their designers share their PWA knowledge with local designers at a UX meetup in Lagos. So why can’t other tech companies join this move?
During my UX talk at SCI.ng, we analyzed the user registration form for Jumia online store who claim to be one of the biggest online retail stores in the region. We did notice that they overlooked one of the most common thing that should be taken care of in a registration form — Formatting fields. Firstly, we wondered what a birthday field was doing on a user’s first registration form on an e-commerce website and secondly, I was able to fill in “AX/GB/TSIE” for the birthday fields in the provided input format and guess what? No validation at all. And the funniest part was that they validated it and completely signed me in.
see also A minimal, easy to do sign up form redesign for Jumia.com I did during my 100 days UI(UX) challenge.
What can upcoming designers learn from such act? Crappy design can be forgiven if done by an amateur or be seen among starters but not by a big player. Please, great companies that we all adore, come to the ecosystem’s rescue by using various means to talk about design at your companies. You can start a dedicated company design blog, talk about your product design approaches, let us know how you value design at your company, organize design related events and activities — all these will go a long way in putting design first.
3. We don’t need more developers at the moment
The target audience I spoke to were all learning to program or are developers. They teach passionate students how to program which is awesome. But stop reading and look at most hires in most companies and you will see that the ratio of developers to designers is way too high. I recently was at one of the fastest growing tech companies in Nigeria and still the ratio of developers to designers was more than 20:1. It shows the extent we lack real designers. We have to push for more and more designers if we actually want to start creating products that make high impact.
Globally, the push has been for better collaboration and communication among developers and designers which is great and should be encouraged also. But my point is that even if more humans won’t be added, at-least more understanding of UX practices, principles, user behaviors, research, user testing, sketching user flows etc should be preached to developers too.
4. Where went the “designathons”, “prototypathons”, “UXathons” in the region?
Well, I can remember when hackathons became a daily meal in Lagos, Nigeria. On every other newsletter by Co Creation Hub or some tech sites you would always see something like “upcoming developer hackathons, programming hackathons, pitch x , y and z etc, sign up now to attend”. I have been to some of them and mostly the people that do the real stuff at those events are the developers, designers just take back sit surfing the web for the best UI template they can adapt.
But we can add to that, let’s encourage pure design related hackathons, do lots of design conferences, have lots of design thinking/ sprint sessions at developer events. And one great thing about design is that anybody can participate in it, stakeholders, developers, designers, marketing team, sales department etc. I would love to see more events around this in the nearest future in the region. If you are reading this and very much interested in high quality apps from our region, then push for stuff like this anywhere you are working or actively involved in. This will help shift focus to a better understanding of the users we’re developing for, will make developers/designers become more user aware and more collaborative and clear communication among cross functional teams.
Special shout out to folks already doing amazing things like UXLagos now known as USABLE which is an informal community consisting of people interested in User Experience (UX) design and designing for humans. As a member, I have seen great conversations and initiatives come out form there. They are very consistent and true to the founding vision and call. And also to Google who ran UX Masterclasses in Nigeria which got everybody talking about UX. They invited top Google designers and the participants of the masterclass were exposed to practical introduction to what UX is all about and also how they can work the basics of user experience design into their product development cycle.
5. UX advocacy and evangelism in the region will go a long way
Have you ever challenged your CEO about the need for UX in your company? Why is it that even with the understanding that the issue is user related, we still go about using the same old traditional ways of product development? Who will help convince stakeholders, our colleagues, our grandmas, our clients, our businesses to see UX as that which makes a truly great product?
Everybody needs to preach, evangelize and advocate for UX in our region. We can’t keep producing bunch of low quality apps and think we will grow at the right time. UX advocacy is not about designers now, It’s about everybody in tech pushing for a better process during product design that is centered around the users. Not sales. Not profits. Not getting more users. But in solving problems by always having the users in mind.
How can this be done — I will be taking some cues from interaction-design.org:
- Let people understand what UX is and how it affects product development. Explain to them using basic things in life that is already natural to them.
- Use official standard references to explain to them what you do. Use stats, how UX can measured, how UX has changed some industries etc.
- Let them know it’s totally an iterative process, always about the user, impact the changes can bring, that it includes a multidisciplinary team etc.
- Let them also know that design is not “COLOR PAINTING” over a finished product. Which is what most companies do — After they are done building a product they hire or invite the designers to give it some “cool finishing touches”. Let them know it does not work that way and give them great examples of companies that have failed/succeeded because of lack or value for UX.
If we can keep preaching this, I am sure that product development will shift it’s focus from being centered around the business to being centered around the user.
Well, more can be said but this is a great way to kick start the conversation around advocating for UX in our region. Feel free to “pour out your heart/ideas/suggestions/feedback/ etc“ in the comment section.
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Also check out my 100 days of UI(UX) design
