How does a typical UX design process work, how long does UX design take? (FAQ)

We can summarize a UX design process in four stages; discovery, definition, design and deployment.

Discovery

It includes market research, stakeholder interviews, user researches and, if applicable, auditing of existing design.

Definition

Defining the target audience, identifying existing problems with the product or in the market, determining priorities and the user’s journey from A to Z.

Design

Sharing your ideas and solutions with the client, followed by the information architecture that will be built according to the nature of the business, the wireframe phase (you can also research this), the design of user interfaces, interactive prototyping if necessary, and the creation of style guides.

Distribution

This stage is not related to the UX designer in most scenarios, but it is worth to know. This includes the stages of adaptation to mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android, HTML and CSS coding of the web pages, and all other front-end development processes, usability and software tests, and then publishing it with “final distribution”. Although UX designers are not directly involved in this process, they should be aware of what stage they are at and whether there is a glitch.

After that, the UX process does not end. The user experience has to constantly change and evolve like a living organism, it is not a situation where we can say “it’s ok now, we published it and we don’t need to look at it again”.

How long does UX design take?

It can vary depending on many factors. Depending on the scope and requirements of the projects, there is a UX design process that takes 1 week or 5–6 months.

For example; There are mobile application interfaces that I have been designing for 2–3 years.

As I mentioned in the previous section, this is not a “done, move on” process most of the time. If you’re freelancing and doing project-based work, of course, you’ll have to incur additional charges for repetitive UX research and design processes. In other words, the person who gets a UX design service from you does not buy a lifetime support with it, it should not mean that. However, in a full-time job, it is useful to monitor the performance of your work at reasonable intervals, to intervene when necessary, and to start the process again if you think there is a “need”.

Originally published at https://blog.numancebi.com.