UX Building Blocks to Skyscrapers
This time last semester I was assuming shortsighted marketing personas in attempts to capture the person worth selling to. This time, right now, I’m redesigning Headspace for Deaf & Hard of Hearing accessibility in a detailed step-for-step research process so to have every means of product validation. Personas now seem obvious in being a referable asset only usable as tool subsequent to synthesizing interview findings and evaluating mental models. The persona is packed with validated insight from qualitative and quantitative data — the antithesis of the product’s “why”, carrying each necessary usage case as a means to justify a product’s design and existence.
UX jargon has become one of my favorite things as the need for an expansive vocabulary set to communicate rises with the complexity of a project. What I’ve evidently come to realize across heated, multi-person, pacing debates regarding minimum variable product (MVP) though is the impossibility of such arguments without having took the time to learn in pieces. The trial, failure, and iteration of understanding the guts of a useful persona seems mundane in original practice. But in time, the stacking of other practices in the UX process requires a reflex-like understanding of a personas use, which would be unattainable without training wheels.
What I’ve now realized about the UX process is that an insight informs the forward motion or retreat in line of tools to use to validate a design. With this, there is no loss in progress — but rather opportunity by trial for better validation, and ultimately a better usable product. Each research tool exists as means to validate insight and inform the best solution — so to go back is not to recede, but means for more success in supplying the most desirable user experience. To use these tools in full effect though, it is incredibly important to scrub the seemingly mundane process of each piece. This, in turn, will lead to well shaped building blocks to use in favor throughout the duration of the UX process.
