7 Things learnt from a UX meeting.

As an UX intern and a junior UX designer, it is a wonderful chance for me to learn from others during a specific UX meeting. I’m lucky enough to have a great mentor, a UX strategist, who teaches me a lot of things during the meeting and everyday work.

The purpose of this meeting was to emphasis and critique the script for a user testing. The script and prototype (which I made) were presented by one of my colleagues, and my mentor gave us a lot of suggestions by asking us questions constantly and giving her own opinions. Here are the 7 things I learnt from her in this meeting.

I. Set the appropriate goal.
Having an appropriate goal for the testing/task. This means that the goals should make sense when considering the general goals (both the companies’ business goal or the design goal for the whole system) and other design decisions. Always ask questions such as, “why do we set this goal?””Does this goal match the actions which users are going to take?” A right goal guides the correct direction for the whole design process.

II. Is the scenario reasonable?
The scenario that we set for users should be consistent with our design aim and user pictures. Bad scenario can mislead users to confusions or misunderstanding the task, which can give us a bad result or guide our design in a wrong way.

III. The purpose of every task.
Always think about the purpose of each task before letting users to perform. What do you want to test? What do you expect users to do? Make every task worthy.

IV. Why do you do like this?
In this case, it means “Why are you testing it like this (This may have something to do with the decisions made before)?” What would happen if you test like this? What influence does this sentence have on users if you ask in this way? Make sure that every task you design, or even every word you use is reasonable and meaningful.

V. Think like a user.
Think about what would you think of the task if you are the user taking it? What action would you do? And will you perform it correctly? This could also help make the task more reasonable before launching to users. Besides, the script of the user testing should also speak like a real people talking with the users, instead of giving orders.

VI. Focus on every detail.
Every detail worth discussing. Some details can cause discomfort or misunderstanding to users. Discuss and test the details if needed, and it will make the design perfect.

VII. Thinking mode.
The most important thing that I’ve learnt from my mentor, is her thinking mode. This is probably why she can be the leader of the team. She can oversee from a general aspect, to combine the big picture with the small tasks. She always focuses on the purpose of every step we take. Thinking critically is an important part of her thinking mode. By throwing a bunch of questions, waiting for us to answer, she can carry the team moving forward smoothly. This is probably the most important thing that Chinese designers lack, since we were not training to think critically from a very young age.