UI/UX Design Process
Today I want to share with you my entire UI/UX design process and all the stages which I go through when designing my every project.
In my example the water delivery company needs an app which must be responsive, very simple to navigate and helps for the fast water ordering to the office and home. The main goal that it should be a simple, fast and user-friendly application.
I have 4 main steps in User Experience design process:
For me user experience design is the process of enhancing user satisfaction with a product by improving the usability and pleasure provided in the interaction with the product.
I spent a lot of time within the research phase to understand who our users were and what they were looking for, how current process were working and how to improve it.
1. RESEARCH
User experience design begins with user research, to better understanding the needs of the people for whom the project is intended and the context they will use it. I always start from studying the problem space, interviews with stakeholders and potential users, studying competitors.
The key to success project is involving all the developers and product owner from the very beginning of the process. They must feel themselves being the part of the process and welcome to suggest their own ideas and solutions. And usually the team is the first one to test the design early in the process.
Stakeholders interview
Interview with stakeholders is a very powerful tool that will help you to understand the business goals and give you a lot of information about the domain you will be working on.
We need to answer these questions in order to build a successful product:
⁃ What do the users need?
⁃ What are the business requirements?
⁃ What can we technologically build?
For example, we understood that the main business requirements were sales and income increasing. What can we do?
Competitive analysis
Competitive analysis quickly deepens our understanding of a problem space and the range of design options.
Rosiana has numerous competitors which offer the same services, so creating the “right” platform is essential. And if we want to solve users’ problem it’s important to analyze thoroughly what others have done before. So we choose 3 companies, studied some of the key issues and only after that we could find a way to avoid them.
First stage
Together with a team of managers, we interviewed users in order to:
⁃ Reveal the demand
⁃ Identify hidden preferences
⁃ Develop market positioning of the product
⁃ Investigate where and how consumers buy the same product.
Second stage
It’s important not only to ask what customers want, but understand their hidden needs.
To achieve it isn’t impossible without making definite steps:
⁃ Identify the percentage of the purchases online or by phone
⁃ Investigate what customers like or dislike within purchasing online or by phone ordering
⁃ Analyze our competitors applications
⁃ Analyze what customers like when use the same app from our competitors
⁃ Are there any problems with the same app?
⁃ Is there customers’ demand for such app?
Third stage
We asked the stakeholders for a report of their customers to identify the
main groups of consumers:
⁃ Adherents of healthy lifestyle
⁃ People with middle level income
⁃ Citizen of the big cities
⁃ Offices, restaurants and hospitality business.
User Observation
It is important not just ask what customers want, but to understand the real hidden needs. And after that decide what the customers need and develop the product needed by your audience.
2. ANALYSIS
I went through the process of understanding our potential users (personas), drafted storyboards, translate our goals into our tasks and tasks to the functions. I conducted an ideation session together with the core stakeholders to brainstorm on the product concept. I understood that we needed to create the limited amount of features to enable the client to make a quick order and not to spend a lot of time on it.
3. DESIGN
I start with pen and paper. I draw different versions and when there’s enough exploration, the process moves on to wireframes, first mockups and test examples. If there is action the user needs to take, the wireframe often needs to be animated or the prototype needs to be clickable.
Information Architecture
Sitemaps show how the navigation should be structured and help show the relationship between different pages. They help identify where content will sit and what needs to be produced. They visualize what you have learned about how users will navigate the site, what sort of content they will need to support them in their goals and what sort of language they use to identify things.
Wireframes
The easiest way to think about a wireframe is to imagine how you build a house. Before you apply all the paint and furnishings the architect needs to draw the floor plan. The wireframes are the floor plan for your website or app, creating a vessel for which design and content can flow into. Based on the concepts and user scenarios I created these wireframes to go into detail about where elements should be placed on each screen.
Prototype
The wireframes were translated into interactive prototypes that allowed me to simulate the interactions with the design.
We got early user feedback and observe how users wanted to interact with our design. The prototype helps us to identify usability issues before going to code.
4. USER TESTING
After a solid prototype is built, we were able to test our product. We observed customer and product interactions, offered questionnaires and had interviews with customers to identify spots of difficulty or confusion. Our main purpose of the testing was to eliminate problems, so we did this as early as possible.
If we understand that we have to change something after user testing, we go back to the previous stages.
Here you can see the final app design.
I hope it was useful. And if you have your own experience or some useful thoughts on this topic, please share, it’s always good to learn something new. Thank you!
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