User Experience
In the 90s, the American psychologist and engineer Donald Norman, one of the most famous researchers, expresses the definition of User Experience.
For him, “User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-users interaction with the company, its services, and its products“.
The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next come simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use.
True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want or providing checklist features. In order to achieve a high-quality user experience in a company’s offerings, there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.
It’s important to distinguish the total user experience from the user interface (UI), even though the UI is obviously an extremely important part of the design. As an example, consider a website with movie reviews. Even if the UI for finding a film is perfect, the UX will be poor for a user who wants information about a small independent release if the underlying database only contains movies from the major studios.
Source: www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience/
But what is the user experience in other words?
I’ll explain it to you with a simple and practical example: Imagine that you are a tourist, have booked a table in a restaurant, and have received a warm welcome. Now imagine that you have tried to buy a dress online, and cannot find the possibility to choose the size.
These are two different real examples of User Experience, which lead to different reactions and emotions.
The UX is based on the person’s needs and interests, for this reason, we talk about Human-Centered Design.
The purpose of a UX designer is to analyze, develop, produce wireframes and prototypes, control, and refine a product, improving utility, efficiency, and usability. He designs the skeleton that describes the functioning of a product while the UI designer studies the graphics of a product.
During the UX process, is important to use an empathic approach, with the aim of designing solutions that can improve the pleasure of using a product (before, during, and after), satisfying the user’s need.
Design Thinking
Design Thinking is a non-linear iterative process that is divided into five phases:
- Empathize: understand users by identifying the target’s habits and needs.
- Define: define the problems to be solved.
- Ideate: create possible innovative solutions.
- Prototype: create simulations with prototypes.
- Test: test the created projects.
UX Process
Generally the UX process is divided into these phases:
Design brief
It is used to understand client’s business objectives.
Business analysis and user goal
A goal is acceptable if it is SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-based).
Competitor analysis
It is important to understand how problems related to similar products have been resolved. For this reason, it must be done the SWOT analysis (Strenghts, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).
Design Thinking
During this phase you need to find feasible solutions for real problems.
User research
It is used to define a target audience and to understand users behaviors, needs and motivations through the collection of qualitative and quantitative data (interviews and surveys).
User personas
To build identikit of ideal users, based on real information (with photos, biography, objectives and needs).
User stories and user flows
To view all the possible actions that users can do with the product.
Customer Journey
To analyze the user experience.
Business requirements document (BRD)
It is a summary of all the steps to follow before starting the project, with all the main information.
Information Architecture (IA)
It is used to design an app’s sitemap, that is the skeleton of the product, which contains all possible user actions. It is used to structure and organize information, supporting usability and availability.
Wireframing
Is an interface layout that meets users needs.
Prototyping and usability testing
This phase concerns the creation of an interactive prototype.
Iterations on prototypes
To create a usable or interactive version of the design after analyzing user tests.
User interface (UI) and mockup
Is the structure and execution of the interface.
Final test
It is the design of the final prototype to evaluate the complete and definitive version.