User Experience Design Process

01 September 2021

What is User Experience Design?

UX Design is the process to improve user satisfaction with the product by improving the usability, accessibility, interaction with the product.

Why User Experience Matters?

Design is not only just look & feel. Design is how to resolve user problems through your design. Good user experience becomes a key part of building and growing customer confidence.

Best Approach to User Experience Design

Great user experience design is part of the product development process. You interact with your end-users to build the structure, content, and user experience that will accomplish the goals in efficient ways.

This approach allows you to create designs clean, simple, intuitive, flexible, and engaging. It provides a smooth experience to your end-users.

User Experience Design Process

The user experience design process is a method that helps you continuously improve your designs. In the process, you go through different stages and evaluate your designs at each stage. Each stage involves relevant stakeholders that take part in the process to make your products highly efficient, sustainable, and usable.

1. Understand:

• Design solves a problem. You need to understand the problem statement of the end-user.
• The designer needs to analyze requirements, follow the current industry standard. The user-research method including contextual and individual interviews while observing the users in a real environment.
• Conduct brainstorming sessions with team members, clients and show them your existing products (Design) and evaluate the design from them to get their feedback.
• In this phase, the stakeholders are the design Team, business manager, product manager.
• There are some activities in this stage (Meet, talk, observe and understand users in their environment)
• Define user personas and use-cases
• The outcome from this stage (User Personas, User Stories, Use Case)

2. Research:

• Design team needs to research and know about how the outer world is working on such features.
  • Understand the market competition.
  • Get inspiration and ideas from your competitors.
• Keep eye on the latest market trends, design principles, and your existing user experience guidelines.
• While doing research, start making possible layouts and options to provide the desired experience.
• Stakeholders (Design Team)
• Activities
  • Study of competitors approaches
  • Analysis of latest UI/UX trends, design principles and rules
  • Keep an eye on your own product UX guidelines
• Outcomes (many ideas and material on which you can build your actual design work)

3. Sketch:

• This stage needs to finalize UI definition for upcoming product features and flows. The design team will draw sketches based on the last two stages of the process. Draw sketches on paper, whiteboard. Make wireframes and share your ideas with stakeholders.
• Stakeholders are design team members, product managers, technical experts
• Activities
  • Generate new ideas and make basic sketches.
  • Conduct brainstorming sessions with the product stakeholders to get their feedback.
  • Re-draw sketches and retest with the stakeholders.
• Outcomes
  • Sketches.
  • Wireframes, Mockups.
  • User flows.

4. Design:

• Now you have finalized the layout, visual design (colors, theme, styles, UI guidelines
• Make visual design and share design specifications (like principles, guidelines, colors, typography, iconography) with the development team. The development team is also involved in this stage.
• Stakeholders (Design Team, Product Managers, Business Manager, Technical Experts)
• Activities
  • Design UI images.
  • Define final UI, specs, and guidelines for implementation of visual design
  • Design icons to display on screens
• Conduct sessions with business stakeholders and technical stakeholder to get their feedback
• Outcomes
  • Design images.
  • Design specification like colors, theme, styles, guidelines.
  • Icons

5. Implement:

• Development team builds back end and front end functionality. The design team is also involved in this stage to help the technical team to build the actual product. In this stage might changes are required.
• Stakeholders (Development team, Design Team)
• Stakeholders (Design Team, Product Managers, Business Manager, Technical Experts)
• Activities (Implement back-end functionality and front interface)
• Outcomes (Developed UI with complete functionality and experience following the designed theme and style

6. Evaluate:

• When product features/ flows are implemented, the end product is evaluated based on below factors:
  • Whether the system is usable?
  • Is it easy to use for the end user?
  • Is it flexible and easy to change?
  • Does it provide the proper solution to user’s problems?