The UX Process

2.2 The UX process

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My UX process is a 4 step process. I start with understanding business and the user, to researching about the business and the user, designing different processes and flows, and testing out the processes and flows. First step at understanding I try and understand the needs, goals of the business and try to align it with the right customer. This is very important because if you don’t really understand the needs and the goals of that particular business,  you will never be able to see all the features a business particularly provides and if you don’t know all the features you will not be able to determine right customer for those features.

In the second step in research I try and understand the business and the users a little more deeply, when it comes to business I would do a lot of SWAT analysis, I would try and see all the competitors that are there in the market of that particular business, when I look at competitors I look at both direct and indirect competitors, when it comes to the user I will try and actually speak to some of the users, I would try and see who are the users? Where are they from? What do they do? Why would they fit this particular role prominently?

Once you have this particular understanding you start designing the different processes of that particular platform, this is where you start designing the navigational flows, you start looking at the information hierarchy and you start understanding all the different processes, this is one particular stage in the process where not just macro interaction but also micro interactions are taken into account.

The last step in the process is testing, I would take these processes and designs, take it to the right user that we have determined from our research from step two and see if this is working with them, I would try and incorporate their feedback into the process and make sure that everybody’s voice is heard, UX is never about an individual process, UX takes into account the user at large so it’s not just about your voice and your opinion you have to take into account the opinion of others around you.

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So what do you think is good UX? There is no one answer to this, but here are my four points on what makes UX good, the first quality of good UX is it helps users, it understands who the users are? Makes the users comfortable, when they are interacting with the machine or the platform, in this particular case.

The second most important aspect of a good UX is it helps the business it is facing, it allows the business to grow financially and in numbers, it understands all the needs of the business and allows the business to align properly with the user.

The third most important point of UX are sustainable interactions, now what do you mean by sustainable interactions? Right.. ..The primary goal of UX is of course to bring in new customers but a good UX would also bring in old customers back, old customers would want to come back to that same site that they already engaged with and a good UX would make old customers find something new every time they visit the platform for second time or third time or hundredth time.

The fourth most important aspect of a good UX is identifying the needs, identifying the needs of both the business and the customer and making sure that those needs are aligned with each other and that is why a good UX does proper research on both the business and the user making sure that the right user is being associated with the right business.

So a good UX starts with art goes into science and in the entire process uses psychology to enrich the entire journey. The first step is to imagine the possible outcomes, this is where you start imagining that for these particular platforms these outcomes should be incorporated.

Next in step two try and understands the needs of that particular business or platforms, is it an e-commerce business? Is it a service led business? What is it actually trying to say? How human facing is the business all about and that is again incorporated into… the journey.

The third step is about understanding the user, here you understand the needs of the users, where are the users from? Who are the users? And try and see who would be the right for that particular need of business.

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The fourth step is about researching on all possible outcomes, so when you are actually doing an UX for a particular business or a company or a brand.. there cannot be one single outcome, there are different users every user look at your platform in different directions and take your platform ad use different features of that platform, not all features are going to be used by the same user always so it is important to research on all possible outcomes.. done by the user for a particular platform.

Then next step which is step 5 is drawing up a plan, this is where you start looking into information hierarchy, you start looking into the navigational flows, you also look at… customer journey mappings and see how customer is actually moving from point A to point B on a platform or how customer is likely to move from point A to point B on a platform. This plan is very important, in a lot of cases the initial plan may not be successful but that’s alright that is the whole purpose of UX.

Step 6 is to test various processes until the goal is achieved, this is where the science comes in play, a designer here creates a lots of different types of interactions and interactions can be as simple as the position of a button in an app, you then take that particular interaction to the customer.. to the users, the user that is fitting to your business’s profile. You see how the user is reacting you take that feedbacks and reactions into account, you either stick to the design or change the design in the process.

These six steps are extremely needed in the entire process. so in order to conclude we design, test that design.. and incorporate the feedbacks we get from that test into the design until and unless the design is perfect and every outcome of the test is success that is when art becomes science.

Who, what, where and when? Are the four most important keywords of user experience design.

these four words forms the main pillars of UX. First word is who, who looks at the user, looks at the demography and the psychography of the user, who tries to understand who the user is? Where is the user from? What does the user do? And everything about the user.

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Next step is what.. what thinks about the business, what tries to understand what the business is all about, what understand the business goals, the targets, business needs, who the customer is for that particular business.

The next one is where, now this is a very very important keyword.. where can change who the customer is? Who the user is? What are the business needs? Because where looks at the positioning of the business, positioning not in just terms of geography, which is of course there but positioning in terms of the positioning of business in society, it is very important to understand where is the business going to setup and where the business is already set up. It also look at the services that the business has to offer because from one place to another, one society to another, one region to another the impact of a particular service completely changes.

The last point is when, when would you be launching the business and when would you be relaunching the business, which time of the year are we talking about? How many months from now are you actually relaunching or launching a business, why because at any given point in time the trends change, the trends are like a tide you know it continuously comes and goes, with every changing trend an UX designer would have to make sure that, that particular platform the digital platform or that particular platform is apt to that trend at that given point in time.

A trend during let’s say 2022 summer would be very different to the trends that are going to be set in 2023 summer, so trends do direct the customer and the user to take certain decisions and you need to understand where the UX is going? Where trends are going? And accordingly plan the UX.

Finally we come to the discussion time, click on the discussion button below and connect to fellow learners. I am really curious to hear your take on UX design and research. It is also important for you to learn and understand what others have to say about UX research and design.

(video duration- 12 minutes 23 seconds)