The 10 key UX ideas

Do you want to be a UX Designer? Do you want to implement UX in your company? These concepts are well known but it is always nice to remind and organize them.

1-User experience:

The user experience can be defined from two different perspectives. First of all we can say that the user experience is the perception left in the user’s mind when interacting with a product. It is the full satisfaction of your needs without problems or inconvenience. And secondly, we can refer to the user experience as the discipline that makes it possible. To achieve a high-quality user experience, there must be a seamless fusion of services from multiple disciplines, including research, engineering, marketing, design, and architecture.

2-User Interface:

The user interface is the set of elements on the screen that allow the user to interact with the product. It is the sum of the information architecture plus the visual elements plus the interaction patterns. And most importantly the UI is just one more part of the UX process.

3-User:

Don’t forget. You are creating for other people. End users are the human users of a software product. The term is used to abstract and distinguish those who only use software from system developers, who enhance software intended for end users.

This abstraction is primarily useful in user interface design and refers to a relevant subset of features that most expected users would have in common.

In user-centered design, people are created to represent the types of users. Sometimes it is specified for each person what type of user interfaces they are comfortable with (due to previous experience or inherent simplicity of the interface), and what technical experience and degree of knowledge they have in specific fields or disciplines. When few restrictions are imposed on the end-user category, especially when designing programs for use by the general public, it is common practice to expect a minimum of prior technical experience or training in such users.

4 -User persona:

User persona are archetypes that fictitiously represent the different types of users that can interact with your service or product. Unlike the classic target or target group segmentations that generally focus on demographic data, user persona allows you to have a broader context and know the motivations, interests and behaviors of each type of user.

5 -Buyer persona:

Unlike the user persona, the buyer persona has to represent the end user. It only represents the person who will make the decision to adopt or purchase our product. For himself (in this case he would also be a user) or for third parties.

6 -Empathy:

Empathy is a way to explain our ability to experience the phenomenon of feeling as if we are embodying or understanding another person’s experience.

Empathy can be the result of a deliberate process that requires conscious effort. The awareness, attention and capacity that goes with it pay off by helping us create products that feel more meaningful and creative.

Design unlike art is about solving problems, whether graphic, communication or usability, and in order to solve these problems we must know what the real problem is and who has it. This is where empathy comes in, because just by connecting with the person for whom we are going to design a solution, we can create better experiences that positively impact your life.

7-Research:

UX research is the systematic research of users and their requirements, in order to add context and information about the user experience design process. UX research employs a variety of techniques, tools, and methodologies to reach conclusions, determine facts, and discover problems, thus revealing valuable information that can be brought into the design process.

UX research aims to collect information from users through a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, including interviews, contextual queries, daily studies, characters, card sorting, and usability testing. The focus is on the systematic approach to collect and interpret the collected data. Because of this, UX research requires the structured and methodical selection and application of the most appropriate tools for information gathering. Activities can take place in the generative (ideation) and evaluative (validation) stages of a development process. UX research helps a design team inform product and service design, validate their assumptions, and ultimately reduce the cost of delivering a successful product.

8- Divergence

Divergent Thought is not restricted to a single plane, but moves on multiple and simultaneous planes. It is characterized by looking from different perspectives and finding more than one solution to a challenge or problem. It works by removing assumptions, disarticulating schemes, making positions more flexible, and producing new connections.

It is a thought without limits that explores and opens paths, frequently towards the unusual and original. In this way and in a similar sense, De Bono speaks of lateral thinking oriented to the destruction of schemas and to a set of processes to generate new ideas through an insightful structuring of the concepts available in the mind. Divergence is a fundamental aspect of the creative process, however, the definition of creativity itself requires convergence to achieve a result.

9- Convergence:

Convergent Thinking is used to solve well-defined problems whose characteristic is to have a unique solution, it moves in one direction, on one plane. In these cases, a closed universe is faced, with defined limits, with elements and properties known from the beginning, which do not vary as the search process for a solution progresses. A characteristic convergent type problem is the multiple-choice question, which is entirely closed. In this case, an answer is not constructed, but the correct one is identified. Thought moves in a planned sequence, it is led along a path already drawn. The exaggerated emphasis in situations of this type can become extremely limiting, because except for mathematical, logical or other similar situations, it is usual for many problems to admit numerous answers, and it is not expected that they will be defined somewhere.

10- Iteration:

In the context of an agile project, it is a timebox during which development takes place.

A key feature of agile approaches is the underlying assumption that a project consists, on an excusive basis, of a sequence of iterations, possibly with the exception of a very brief “vision and planning” phase before development, and a phase of Similarly short “close” afterwards.

In general, iterations are aligned with calendar weeks, often starting on Mondays and ending on Fridays; This is more a matter of convenience than an explicit recommendation, and many teams adopt different conventions.