7 Tips on how to overcome UX design related challenges

Notes and key insights from Zomato’s Huddle

Hello everyone, I recently attended one of Zomato’s Huddles held in Gurgaon. It’s basically a series of meet-ups for folks in the product community in Delhi/NCR. The event is an informal setting for founders, product managers, and designers to get to know one another, talk about the challenges they work through, and exchange ideas and inspiration that will help us collectively build better products for all our users.

I would like to thank Zomato, the speakers and the attendees for such an insightful event. For all those who couldn’t be there, here are the key insights.

1. Designing around design work

While designing something if you are stuck on deciding what will work for you, deconstruction model is your friend. Deconstruct the journey of your competitor in a competitive analysis and understand what works for them, why does it work for them and check the success and failure rate of the strategies adopted by them.

The ability to effectively articulate your decisions is critical to the success of a project. You need to be able to communicate your idea and educate people about why design matters only then will they hear your idea.

2. ROI of UX and user research

Return on Investment is what matters to the company. There are two aspects of ROI: the mindset and the calculations. Pitch in your idea with the help of these two aspects.

It is advisable to take as much feedback as possible from the stakeholders and users. Their inputs are valuable. Build a relationship with your users to get feedbacks from them.

If you are having a hard time explaining your idea to the client, start with building a level of trust with them and talk in their language, they’ll understand your idea in a better way.

You don’t need permission to conduct research to support your idea, do the things that you feel are right. Talk to the stakeholders to understand what they want.

Turn your UX into KPI. If it can’t earn money, think of ways in which it can help save money and build customer lifetime value.

3. Motion Design

Motion design is a useful tool for educating the users in less time.

The users tend to skip through a lot of text due to various reasons which leads to a situation where a lot of the important information that is conveyed through the text gets lost. Motion design can be used to put focus on important information and new features.

4. Journey from a designer to an influencer

To influence your stakeholders you need to build credibility and gain their trust.

Make your team happy.

It is good to have a positive attitude towards each task that you are assigned. Refrain from declining things. Instead, come up with a solution that works for both the parties.

5. Managing Stakes

Ten out of ten times, it is a bad idea to go to a meeting unprepared.

Try to build a connection with the people around and present simple honest stories that are relatable.

6. Agile UX research

There is no excuse for not conducting research. Use Agile research methods if you have a project that is on a tight deadline.

Observe the user in their environment, notice where they get stuck and ask questions, collect feedback and provide quick visual ideas to them and see what they think about it. Maintain a periodic feedback loop, set up analytics tools.

7. Be hungry for knowledge

Learn to adapt and collect feedback from people around you.

Start with small things, they will help you to grow as a person.

Be active and do things even if you feel you are not ready for it. Everything teaches you something.

Don’t overthink, keep creating and learning.