How I Started UX Design
Recently, I was to design the User Interface design for a particular project I was working on, moving on, I noticed that there was no work flow in my design. I went to my best teacher (Google) for help on how to design a full mobile app with a very fluent workflow, then I stumbled on User Experience (UX design).
User Experience is the overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use. When I found this, I knew I was on the right track on how to get the perfect workflow for my design. I kept on reading about it and trying to understand the key factors on how to create a good workflow for my design.
Here are 6 key factors that influence a User Experience design;
- Valuable: the workflow you are to design must be very valuable to your target market otherwise, your products’ return of investment would be zero.
- Accessible: the product you are to design should be easily accessible by your clients.
- Useful: this is a very important factor when designing your application. For example: imagine you design a banking application for your target market who are traders at a particular market. This application may be relevant to some traders and irrelevant to a large number of them as a lot of traders would not see the need to use your application because it would not increase the sale of their own products — I hope you understand!
- Desirable: create a product that your client will “always” want to use.
- Usable: create a design for your application that is simple and would make your application easy to use.
- Credible: credibility is key in having a great workflow.
After understanding the key factors, the next step I took was to research on the steps to be followed to create a good UX design. Below are a few steps:
- User Research: know and understand your users.
- Analysis: identify design opportunities you come in contact with.
- Design: now you explore on the design board and come up with a good design.
- Prototyping: implementation of idea.
- User Testing: putting your work out to a limited few to get feedback on your work.
After the studying process, I went back to my board and created a design that had a credible, usable and useful workflow for my application.
Trust me, becoming a UX designer sounds very easy but truth be told, it requires a lot of research because you always have to keep learning and be up-to-date with your target market, your thought process has to be aligned with that of your target market. You may design a product today that is beautiful to you as the designer, it may have taken you weeks of sleepless nights to build but your target market may not relate to it if you do not pay attention to details on what your target market really need.
This is my short story on how I started my UX design career. Please feel free to drop comments in the comments section. It is a beautiful day!!!
