FROM UX TO UI

With a fluid, lean approach to design, I practice Lean UX in an Agile development environment.

This naturally encourages rapid, interactive UX phases, which place a heavy focus on refinement, user input, and team collaboration. Project managers, designers, and developers work alongside me throughout the entire process to implement stakeholder, business and user goals. My process is quick, efficient, accurate, precise, and adaptive. It is custom-tailored to each project, allowing it to yield high quality UX in any circumstance.

Below I highlight some of the main processes I go through in a project development lifecycle.

RESEARCH

Stakeholder Interviews 

The first thing is to understand the business needs and technological parameters, and the best way to do this is to ask the sources. Both the questions asked and the notes taken on the answers will determine how close to the mark the final product hits.

User Interviews

User interviews prove invaluable for understanding the people the product is designed for, which is the cornerstone of the design process. Other options for collecting initial user data are field studies and diary studies.

User Surveys

While not as personal as user interviews, user surveys are easier to orchestrate and can cover more people –
plus they are natural documentation that are easily forwarded to teams. Surveys are great for taking a quantitative approach to qualitative data.

Competitive Audits

Examining strengths and weaknesses of competitors using an overlaid heuristics diagram. Evaluating
areas such as ease of form completion, clarity of navigation, accessibility, trust factors, etc.

ANALYSIS

User Personas

Once adequate data on users is collected, fictional user personas are built. These act as stand-ins for the actual user during the design process, focusing more on behaviours rather than demographics.

User Scenarios

These logic exercises take personas a step further – they outline how a persona would act in a specific
situation, including what pages they visit and why.

Journey Maps

The ultimate document for understanding users, journey maps pan out the personas and user scenarios at each step of the experience. User emotions, quality of experience, product weaknesses, and other factors can all be documented. Moreover, they cover customer touch points before, during, and after service so so you can gauge the lasting effect of the design.

Red Route Analysis

Red Route Analysis  identifies any obstacles users may face when trying to complete core tasks of a website or application. By identifying the core paths users will take on a website we can make sure that any obstacles a user may face on those paths are identified. 

DESIGN

Sketches

Classic sketches on paper are one of the quickest and easiest ways to get ideas down and share them with
others, especially if brainstorming. I believe ideation should always start paper first.

Site Maps

Outlines of  information architecture, showing how your pages are connected to one another are an essential stage in organising site structure.

Wireframes

These are the bare bone structures of your product; dedicating time to building one allows fleshing out
sitemap without more complex details that are distracting.

User Flows

Once enough user research is established, outlining how pages in the design correspond with user actions is developed. User flows are fast shorthand notes that help improve the efficiency of the design by evaluating the amount of friction at each step and minimise steps when possible. 

Interactive Wireframes

Adding interactivity into the wireframe allows for early product testing and earlier feedback, making it easier to implement. Just important clickable elements are used at first, with complex interactions saved for later hi-fi prototypes. 

TESTING

test plans

These outline your test goals and procedural details such as the location and time, or even the specific questions/tasks. These are especially useful for stakeholders to understand what’s being tested and why.

User tasks

Descriptions to users the exact tasks wished for them to perform. Specific, without jargon, and not providing too many details on the steps needed to accomplish the task.

test script

If moderating the test, a script is used to ensure consistency.

data reports

Once the results of the testing are received, the data is made comprehensive to members of various departments who may not have your specific knowledge. The presentation of the data is crucial to ensuring that everyone interprets it correctly.