Operation: Save Cursed Prince — Translating research actionable items to a design plan

Episode #3: Building your plan and starting the action

Top of the morning to you, lovely design community! Hope everyone is enjoying the summer vibes going all around and is in the mood to pick up where we left off last time.Get yourself a nice refreshing drink and let’s see what are we going to do with the long list of issues & needs we compiled.

nope, come back here, I can help

What do I do with all that?!

so if you remember last time, we have compiled a list of user needs based on research and existing issues. Here’s the best order to tackle them, from my experience, feel free to shift as you see fit:

1. Blockers: Issues that are critical. Which is any UX or UI issue preventing users from completing any core journey like checkout for example. Even if they require more resources, these should always be solved first to avoid losing more users.
2. Important flows that users are finding difficult to complete and need to be rethought from UX point of view. Like finding an item in an online store. Users know a certain item exists they just find it hard to find it without good search or category browsing to be able to buy it. Some people find it easily but most don’t. Make sure to give this kind of flow high priority.
3. Important flows that users don’t know about. Like when the main monetizing feature of a product gets overlooked by users even though they use the rest of the features normally. Rethink layout, entry point and marketing strategy.
4. Enhancements which are changes to flow or UI that can make a product more usable, more accessible and with better performance.
5. Observations. Items that are based on the researcher’s experience and require more research and looking into.

Plan is done! now what? —Ideate & Create the right IA.

Starting with thee most urgent item, see where it exists in a flow and make a journey map to make sure that you consider how user reach the touchpoint, what they are thinking and feeling at the time, and decide what is the best UI pattern or flow to provide this particular user need.

If you perform that for each one of the actionable items in your plan, you will know:

1. what are the design and layout/flow changes required.
2. where these changes exist in the app.

Tip: it’s such a great help if at this point you create a sitemap that shows what content and features exist at each point. It will be your checklist as you make your wireframes.

organization feels awesome, no? Figjam has nice templates for sitemaps. So does Miro, use them to save time 😉.

Wireframe it

now since you know exactly what to implement and where, all you have to do it wireframe it to experiment with different solutions for each problem. Maybe OCR something instead of a long form, or let users tap a bunch of logos to customize their experience instead of searching … you can have a round of testing with wireframes, but I personally don’t recommend it.

Pro tip: If you’re super busy & you’re wireframing for yourself, pen & paper are you best friends. Forget about fiddly wireframing software and finding the right kit, just sketch your screens and get going.

Keep your papers as iterations, that’s why I didn’t say a whiteboard.

UI next time 😍 we will be talking about super super flows for the extra busy designer to design killer UI in record time!

thanks for reading. Stay tuned for UI & testing ! Lots of love and #keepdesigning!