Tools That Will Turn You Into A User Experience Expert
If you are a UX Designer, whether through formal or non-formal training, the correct thing to to do is to say you are a UX Designer. Full stop. Stop writing your job description as UX/UI.
Further Reading:
If you are a UX Designer, whether through formal or non-formal training, the correct thing to to do is to say you are a UX Designer. Full stop. Stop writing your job description as UX/UI.
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It is unnecessary and it is confusing. If you are a User Interface designer, then write UI and do not include UX. You are not yet it. Not yet anyway. Until you can add a minimum of around 5 new skills that form the battle itinerary of a UX professional, then you are still a UI designer. Full stop. Since you want so desperately to be called a UX Design professional, here are a set of tools that will help you fine tune your skills and become a full-fledged professional.
Sketching on Paper
A White board & duster
Yes, all you have to do, is walk into your utility store and pick up a white board, a couple of non-permanent markers and a wipe. The you will use it to write your ideas and sketch out your thoughts very rapidly. You probably think that it is a waste of your precious time, but trust me, when you have spent 24 hours designing one high fidelity render on your favorite Photoshop instead of the 2 hours that I normally spend, you should know that need to start your UX Journey on a white board. If you don’t want to use a white board, it is perfectly alright, you can continue being inefficient.
Outline and Tapsize
A freebie for all members of Smashing Magazine – outline is a set of 28 printable sketching and wire-framing papers (in PDF) for seven mobile platforms. With Tapsize, you can determine the optimal tap area without having an actual device. Just print the screen you need.
For Ideation
MindNode
According to their site – MindNode makes mind mapping easy. I prefer to say that Mind maps are a visual representation of my ideas, starting with a central thought and growing from there. I use it aggressively and it allows me to brainstorm & organize my thoughts in an intuitive way, so I can focus on the idea behind it. It has also been featured by Apple as an “App Store Best”, MindNode has helped students, artists and project managers to be more creative with less effort. If you want to work like a UX ninja, you need Mindnode in your itinerary of design tools.
XMind
Rumor has it that millions of people use XMind to clarify thinking, manage complex information, run brainstorming and get work organize for their UX projects. What I discovered was that XMind is not only an open source project, but it is also free to download and free to use forever and ever, Amen. XMind shines as a mind mapping tool that doesn’t get in the way as the ideas come flooding out of your head. The mind maps and other charts it produces are attractive and simple to create.
Usability Testing
Silver-back App
Usability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This magical UX tool that is developed by the team at ClearLeft, Silverback is a user-testing tool that enables you to run cheap and simple usability test studies with only a Mac computer, but of course, every designer in the world uses a Mac. Some claim that its downside is that Silverback is a Mac-only application, but I beg to differ. If you are designer and you are on a Mac – you need to seriously start thinking about your future and make the right decisions. You need a Mac. Full stop.
UXArmy
True to what the makers claim, UXArmy platform is a complete and comprehensive UX testing solution that enables you to elicit feedback from real end users over the Internet objectively, quickly and at low cost. This awesome platform even goes as far as tracking and capturing sampling users’ interactions on your websites, as well as the time they spent on the site, the number of clicks they made on each page, users’ navigation paths on the site, their preferences over different designs, and their mouse cursor movements in order to give you a little big data from where to build your UX Case study. If you thought that you could get away from building real UX Case studies in your budding career, think again – its is part of the job.
User Testing
I was very skeptical about this software and its methods of collecting usability data – but after a couple of projects, I was very pleasantly ejected from my misgivings and it has become one of my favorite tools. You just specify the tasks that you want users to perform.They recruit my target audience from a panel of a million odd users. And I feel like a boss as I watch videos of users on my site or app explaining where they get stuck.
A/B Testing
No UX expert should be called one if they do not know or have never used A/B testing. It is very simple: You create two variations (A and B) of a page and then determine which one produces better results measured in terms of purchases, newsletter sign-ups, or other factors you value, which reflect a better user experience and help you decide which areas need more work and which ones are spot on. There no equal to Optimizely to act as your on-demand technical team, with technology that turns my creative changes into instantly generated and deployed code, I cannot survive without it.
Wire-framing
UXPin
Wireframing focuses on what a screen does, not what it looks like. They can be pencil drawings or sketches on a whiteboard, or they can be produced by means of a broad array of free or commercial software applications. Wireframes are generally created by business analysts, user experience designers, developers, visual designers and other roles with expertise in interaction design, information architecture and user research.
As I have discovered, the highly collaborative approach to UXPin as a tool puts everything I need at my reach. It makes the tasks of designing and editing as a team an exercise in the unbelievably awesome, with its built-from-the-ground-up collaborative methodology and the many follow-on features that support this, like real-time collaborative editing, chat, and dozens of other useful tid-bits that save me hours every day! Trust me, Interface Designer, you need to use this tool to graduate and become that UX guy that you have always dreamed of becoming!
Wireframe CC
For that bustling UXD that has a lot on his plate, you got to love this absolutely minimal and extremely versatile UX wire-framing tool. In short, it is a must for every UX designer in the world worth his salt.
Prototyping
Invision App
Do you want to rapidly communicate and share your ideas? Then InVision will quickly become indispensable. It quickly transform your designs into beautiful, fully interactive prototypes complete with gestures, transitions & animations for web, iOS & Android. It is not only 100% Agile-friendly, but it will simplify the feedback process by having clients & stakeholders leave comments on the design on the fly.
Notism
Notism is a collaborative tool that lets you share designs and obtain efficient feedback on visual projects from co-workers and customers, create interactive prototypes, add notes to discuss the projects with editors and reviewers and is a great Task management tool.
Proto.io
With proto.io you can create high-fidelity prototypes that work exactly like your real app would. Select devices and add components to create your interface. Proto.io was specifically created for mobile, so it can emulate screen transitions, orientation changes or touch gestures. You can now preview your prototype on an iOS or Android device natively, without obstructions and irrespective of the device it was designed for! Download the free app. Turn your wireframes and mobile mockups into amazing interactive prototypes. Filled with rich media, animations and touch events.
Axure
Axure RP gives you the wireframing, prototyping and documentation tools needed to make informed design choices, persuade any skeptics, and document your design… and maybe win a few fans along the way. Choose the Standard edition for prototyping or go Pro to add documentation and collaboration features.
Graphic Design Tools
Sketch
I first stumbled on this awesome tool from a designer called Meng To. Thank you, bro. It easily creates complex shapes with state-of-the-art vector boolean operations and it take advantage of extensive layer styles. It is vector-based graphic design and wire-framing on jet fuel. Fast, accurate, high fidelity and simply awesome.
Adobe Creative Suite
The tools I use on a daily basis are Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Photoshop is awesome for on the fly editing of graphics and Illustrator can be used for creating rapid vector graphics. InDesign is unparalleled for creating magazine layouts or building high-fidelity renders of web apps and applications User Interfaces.
Color Palettes
Kuler is the best online tool for creating the color combinations to use for designs – in fact it is simply priceless. You can even capture an image, upload it to Kuler and it will extract the colors for you.
In Conclusion
Wikipedia defines UX Design as the process of enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty by improving the usability, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the customer and the product. User experience design encompasses traditional human-computer interaction (HCI) design, and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users. User experience is any aspect of a person’s interaction with a given IT system, including the interface, graphics, industrial design, physical interaction, and the manual.
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The tools outlined in our lengthy article will transform you as you use more frequently and as you read up more articles like this one you will find your methodology changing and perhaps you will change from being just a user interface designer to a fully developed User Experience professional. Yes, you have to learn most of these.
