Ahoy, UX sailors! A day full of UX design workshops in Bristol’s harbour
UX Design | UX Techniques | UX Good Practices (UX Bristol 2017)
by Brett Mazoch, published in A Designer’s Thoughts
Most people want software that improves their daily lives in intuitive and efficient manner. That is the reason why properly designed user experience (UX) is an important topic in the digital world nowadays. A good UX is, in my opinion, a presumption of having happy users which results into successful products. A brilliant opportunity to get deeper into designing user experience was UX Bristol conference on 14th July 2017, which I attended since I am curious about UX design and I live in that great city.
Apart from the curiosity that it never rains in Bristol when is taking place, the conference brings together design-minded professionals enabling them to practice UX design techniques. The day was dedicated to 12 workshops and every workshop involved cooperation of usually 5 to 7 people on a given exercises. The attendees could choose up to 4 workshops. Most of them were pretty exciting, so it made my choice quite difficult.
I believe that every product can tremendously benefit from cooperation with experts or organisations specialised on user experience. How? By establishing UX design processes and following proven design methods supported by UX best practices. Some of them were introduced during the workshops so let’s have a look at my insights which I think could add value to your products.
Contents
- Measure and evaluate digital impact
- Consistent, connected, cross channel CX
- Let’s talk about strategy
- Managing co-design UX workshops
01 — Measure and evaluate digital impact
In the first workshop Tim Dixon from UX consultancy company Nomensa, outlined how to measure and evaluate digital impact of projects by his framework through inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes and impact analysed from the perspective of:
- innovation (e.g. value derived from the creation of novel products or processes),
- internal process (e.g. value derived internally for organisations through efficiency),
- social/audience (e.g. value from understanding the user),
- economic (e.g. increased productivity/net).
Dixon mentioned an importance of defining SMART metrics (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely). Once the metrics are set, 1. measure them by monitoring tools and user research, 2. analyse collected data and 3. react accordingly. The framework is handy to support evaluation of the current state, our decisions and our next actions based on reasonable data. The impact-oriented approach is effective way of introducing to others positive results of UX design through data-driven examples.
02 — Consistent, connected, cross channel CX
Take UX beyond CX (Customer Experience) — from screens to physical environments. That was the message expressed during the second workshop by Bristol based UX consultant Alan Colville.
CX is the sum of all experience a customer can have over the duration of relationship and interaction with services and products. This is important to consider especially during a research of the users. Rather than jumping straight into analysing of their typical characteristics, we should focus on their end-to-end experience.
Coville believes in a journey driven research based on the context within the experience take place. For example, when designing personas and their journey maps, expand your focus also to the characteristics such as action triggers, the context of the actions, ping points, trusted channels, organisation perception and others. You will be awarded by more useful information about users.
03 — Let’s talk about strategy
“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” — a good strategy can prevent us from doing so, but what is a good and bad strategy? These questions were explored by Sophie Dennis, a freelance consultant at NHS Digital.
Dennis pointed out that a good strategy helps us make decisions and gives us a purpose. But for instance apps and digital transformation are common examples of bad strategies. They often suffer from being so called “shiny thing” strategies, where the shiny thing is a solution looking for a problem, rather than a strategy. We should avoid it.
I think that a good strategy gives a fuel and direction to UX design process which then has the power to drive us through challenges on the way to great user experience. Crucial is to set a concrete, tangible and feasible goals, be aware of the most significant barriers to success and follow the strategy to achieve desired positive change.
04 — Managing co-design UX workshops
Co-design session guided by UX agent in a group of stakeholders, designer/developer representatives and users empowers participants to find right design solutions. How to manage such a session was explained by Stavros Garzoni, a former president UXPA UK and UX Google Expert.
Co-design UX workshops are an excellent way of capturing ideas and making decisions. There are some good practices to follow. For example, have clear and visible instructions available during the exercises, collaborate with key stakeholders in advance to establish the objectives, brief participants ahead etc. The key is a solid preparation. Garzoni advised to develop our own checklists which should cover tasks needed to do beforehand, during, straight after, the day after and ASAP after the session.
At the end, the result of a co-design session should be a design solution, but there is another, which is also important in my opinion — all participants should feel they were really involved because it builds a firm connection with the solution.
Final thoughts
During the conference, I learned about good practices for example in designing user’s needs and goals by personas and persona journeys or defining measurable metrics to analyse the impact of our solutions. We also discussed other topics as for instance ethnographic users research or usability testing, which I rate as very important topics. At the end, it was exciting to see many Bristol based UX experts and companies present in the conference. That makes me very happy about Bristol as a city with professionals interested in UX design.
An outstanding user experience needs to be designed. However, UX design is a very broad field and should involve a cooperation of purposefully led people supported by industry-proven methods and tools. This is the reason why it is so challenging!
The chance of creating excellent user experience can be increased:
- by including UX design expert into the product team,
- by incorporating right UX design methods into to the design process.
I believe that user-centred approach should be part of every product design/development. As a result of that, the outcomes will be reflected in users efficiency and happiness and on top of that also in business success.
How do you approach in designing user experience? What UX methods do you use? What challenges do you need to overcome? I will be happy to read about them, just comment below if you want to share your ideas…
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The article was written by Břetislav “Brett” Mazoch while working as a designer in England. He moved there from the Czech Republic to follow his traveller’s dreams and work passion — UI/UX Design and Front-end Development.
