Building the User Experience

Building the User Experience
<br />Maybe you've just come into a company and they want to do some "usability" work. You might be a UI designer, business analyst, or front-end developer, a product manager, or a manager or VP in charge of the user experience department. You see, if you better understand the people who use your product/software/website, you can probably build a better product/software/website. No matter what, no matter who you are or where you are, user experience is now your responsibility.
So, you might want to build a process for user experience (UX), and while such a process can be a payoff or a disaster, there are many opportunities to improve the product development process and, of course, the products themselves.
Where do you start when establishing such a process? What methods can be used? What problems need to be avoided? How can you stay motivated, stay passionate, stay professional and not get discouraged?
Why establish a user experience process? The UX process helps develop products that people expect and that meet their needs. The UX process saves time and money. Remember, both of these are strongly tied to something that many people in a company value: money . Whether it’s through revenue gained from sales or reduced expenses through savings, it’s practical to explain the value of UX activities in terms of financial impact.
Start Small <br />Starting small can prevent you from accidentally biting off more than you can chew and can help you get started building a process with your feet firmly planted on the ground. An incremental approach is more effective than making radical changes to all aspects of the process from the outset.
Remember to record your UX activities and artifacts and track their progress, as they will be useful when explaining your UX process in the future.
Find the business drivers and track them <br />In short, let the numbers speak for themselves. Find out the company’s goals and align the goals of the UX process with them. For example, if your company’s main goal is to save money by reducing the number of technical support calls, then one of your main UX goals could be to improve usability and increase the self-service rate of your product, and record and analyze the number of technical support calls before and after the process.
Plan UX activities in advance <br />Another benefit of starting with a smaller project is that you are more likely to have some influence on the project schedule. Being involved in project planning at an early stage gives you the opportunity to prepare the project team to incorporate UX into development.
Go deep, don’t spread out <br />Avoid spreading yourself across too many projects. If you’re the only person in your company doing UI design and usability research, project managers may expect you to help them with every project. You need to avoid doing this at all costs. Because the more projects you serve, the more likely your service quality will be compromised. And you’ll quickly become exhausted and unable to make substantive changes. What to do when resources are limited but demand is great? A middle ground is to grow your UX team while trying not to spread it too thin in the beginning.
Be realistic, but also flexible <br /> Make a realistic assessment of the company’s support for UX and adjust your expectations accordingly. If most people in your company don’t know the concepts of UCD and usability testing, you probably shouldn’t be running a months-long ethnography study or spending a fortune on field usability testing.
Be flexible and state your opinions and suggestions while showing that you are able to take all sides into account and make compromises when necessary.
Remember: there is plenty of fruit to be picked, don't worry too much about how to pick it, just make sure you pick it.
Be aware of the troublemakers, but don't avoid them .<br />No one wants to hear that using their methods will result in a bad product or will cost the company money. No one wants to hear that you are right and they are wrong.
The key is to show them, not tell them; to convince, not tell them, by using screen/video capture tools such as Morae; and to convince developers that you will make their job easier and take less time by conceptualizing and prototyping them. Show product managers that you can help them better define business requirements.
Be patient and set clear expectations <br />The hardest thing about establishing a new user experience is being patient. A good UX process doesn’t happen overnight.
Be creative <br />Because your resources are almost always limited, you must be creative to show your team that UX activities don’t have to be expensive or time-consuming: In-house representative users can serve as user resources. Not enough staff to conduct remote interviews and usability activities when the budget is insufficient? Teach your developers some UI design best practices. Don’t have the budget to buy expensive soft and research tools? Pen and paper can be used for more than you think. Email UX talk excerpts to spread UX messages on a large scale. Create posters showing common UX mistakes and classic solutions.
Document your results and don’t hesitate to publish them <br />Perhaps this is the most important thing to promote UX in your company. You've done so much, now it's time to put it all together. As long as you have achieved results, no matter how small, don't hesitate to announce them in the company. Also, don't forget to thank the whole team. Of course, be prepared, more work will fall on your shoulders.
For the full article, see : Pioneering a User Experience (UX) Process

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