UX Design cheat sheet: Go-to tools & techniques
It’s always a great conversation starter when someone asks me what I do for a living, especially if they’ve never heard of User Experience (UX) Design before.
I often use the example of taking a lift to explain it, highlighting that UX design is at its best when you don’t have to think about the actions you’re taking. Instead, you follow through intuitively. And, before you know it, you’ve arrived at your desired floor.
UX Design is most noticeable in its absence—like when you step into a lift and find yourself uncertain about where you are or which button to press.
Since UX design is relevant to almost every physical or digital product, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. The truth is, you’ll need to adapt your methods depending on the problems you’re solving and the resources available to you.
At MPB, we strive to design simple, intuitive experiences that bring value and delight to our customers. Lucky for me, as a UX designer at MPB, I have a wide range of tools and data at my disposal throughout the exploration, design and analysis phases.
Here, I’ll run through a few of my go-to tools and techniques, which you might find useful, too.
Early discovery: The problem/outcome space
This part might be handed to you by a product manager, stakeholder or client. But before diving into any design work, it’s critical that you get familiar with the problem you’re trying to solve and the outcomes you’re hoping to drive.
Problem statement
What is it?
A concise description of an issue that a product or feature is intended to solve. It outlines the context, who it affects, and the impact it has, serving as a guide for discovery and design.
There are many templates available online but a format I find useful is:
[Someone] is trying to [do something] and they [outcome of action] because of [X], causing them to feel [Y].
Here’s an example:
Returning customers are trying to change their password and fail because they can’t find the ‘my account’ section, causing them to feel frustrated.
Where does it go?
Add it to your Lean Product Canvas or Assumptions Map (see below), or refer to it on a delivery ticket.
Lean Product Canvas (LPC)
What is it?
A one-pager that helps deconstruct product opportunities into key ideas and assumptions. Designed by Ash Maurya, it has become standard in our industry for distilling and prioritising product ideas.
You can adjust it to your specific organisation’s needs. But most commonly, it will include sections covering things like the problem definition, what ‘good’ would look like, hypothesis statement, potential costs/risks and more.
Where does it go?
It becomes a reference point for your project, and you’ll revisit it during later stages of the design and development process, to minimise scope creep and ensure you’re on track.
Assumptions mapping
A collaborative process which helps to identify, prioritise and validate assumptions related to a product or service.
In a UX context, assumptions are beliefs or hypotheses about users — their needs, behaviours and problems they might encounter while interacting with your product.
You start by listing your assumptions, then plot them on a 2x2 grid according to their importance and how much supporting evidence there is to back them.
Opportunity Solution Tree (OST)
Probably one of my favourite processes to follow during discovery, Teresa Torres’ Opportunity Solution Tree framework is a way to collaboratively explore and visualise the paths you might take to reach a desired outcome.
The top of the tree should be a specific, clear business outcome — so if you don’t have one yet it might not be the right time to deploy an OST.
Once you have an outcome — for example, “increase the percentage of users who sign up to our newsletter” — you start listing out opportunities. These are unmet user needs or desires, and ideally should be based on previous research and interviews rather than assumptions.
For each opportunity, you then list out a bunch of solutions you believe may solve the unmet needs. From practical quick-wins to blue-sky ideas, this is your chance to be creative.
At the end of the process, you will have a visual representation of the potential solutions for the intended outcome. From here you can decide which ones to explore further, test or put in the parking lot.
Hypothesis statement
A template which outlines what you’re hoping to achieve with a change you’re proposing.
It’s a useful way to ensure you’re still focused on the correct outcome, and a great thing to refer back to once your feature has been delivered, to see whether you need to iterate further.
The formula is simple:
[Change] will lead to [outcome] because of [reasoning].
For example:
[Adding a ‘how it works’ video to the selling page] will lead to [an increase in sell transactions] because [customers will understand the selling process better].
The solution space: Tools for UX design
Once we have a good understanding of the problem space, it’s time to dig in.
Pen and paper
Prototyping on paper is a valuable practice because it allows rapid exploration and ideation, free from the constraints of technology. It’s a quick, cost-effective way to brainstorm and visualise concepts, and you can do it anywhere, any time.
FigJam
A collaborative whiteboarding tool developed by Figma, FigJam is designed for brainstorming, planning, and collaborative sessions, allowing anyone to facilitate workshops and create mind maps in a shared virtual space. It’s particularly useful for remote teams and collaborative projects, but I often use it as a sketchbook for capturing early ideas and inspiration, as well as lo-fi wireframes and prototypes.
Figma
Figma is a design platform that lets designers create and collaborate on digital projects in real time. From wireframing and prototyping to pixel-perfect responsive designs, it’s the tool we use for our collaborative UI/UX design work and for building and maintaining our design system.
figma.com
FullStory
This digital experience analytics platform provides insights into how users interact with websites and applications. It offers session replay, heatmaps and advanced analytics to help teams understand user behaviour, identify issues and improve overall user experience. In the discovery and exploration phase, it’s one of my go-to tools for establishing a starting point, validating assumptions and spotting further opportunities. fullstory.com
Experimenting, testing and validating
A/B tests, user surveys and usability tests are essential steps to take before releasing new features or designs.
While UX research helps us understand our audience, testing lets us observe how users interact with our product. By finding and addressing issues early on we can refine designs, reduce rework and improve user satisfaction.
Kameleoon
This platform for A/B testing and personalisation allows us to create, test and implement personalised experiences for visitors to our platform. It integrates with FullStory, giving us full visibility of how each segment interacts with each variation. kameleoon.com
Maze
Maze is a user-testing platform designed to streamline the process of gathering user feedback on prototypes and products. It allows us to conduct remote usability testing, surveys and other user research without the need for in-person sessions. maze.co
Usability testing
For bigger features we also conduct moderated usability tests. This is a great method of evaluating a product or service by observing users as they complete specific tasks. It helps identify usability issues and gather feedback to improve the user experience.
Post-launch: Tracking impact
For me this is perhaps one of the most interesting parts of the design process. You’ve gone through the full discovery process, you’ve prototyped and interviewed and tested, and you’ve had a hypothesis of what impact this new feature will have. So how do you validate that?
My top tip here is to refer back to all the things you’ve done before:
- What was the outcome you were trying to achieve?
- What was your hypothesis statement?
- What was ‘good’ meant to look like?
Now use the tools you have available. Hopefully you will have access to something like FullStory, HotJar, Google Analytics or Tableau, where you can check whether things changed the way you expected.
Remember:
- Let enough time pass to rule out a special occasion, or spikes that happen on certain days of the week
- Check whether there’s any other activity in your business that could have affected the behaviour you were monitoring — paid marketing campaigns, a big price drop, an event, etc.
- Double check that the dates, segments and conversions you’re tracking are set up correctly. Then, check again.
Some impact won’t be measured on the platforms I mentioned above. It may be more qualitative, reflected in things like ratings, reviews and overall customer satisfaction. Check these things, too, if you can, to obtain a wider view of your change’s impact.
If you’ve done well, don’t forget to celebrate this win and share it with the wider team!
If not, don’t worry — this is part of the cycle. Return to your Assumptions Map, your hypothesis statement and your OST. Armed with new knowledge, you are guaranteed to tackle the issue a little bit differently this time.
Gili Dailes is a Senior UX Designer at MPB, the largest global platform to buy, sell and trade used photo and video gear.
