I am excited to start this module as the travel app we did with Paul was extremely fun and educational. However, IXD301 has shown me a lot of vital information for creating an app through UX. Through this past year of experience, I feel like I am certainly ready to take on this new and upcoming project. As designers, we must be the center focal point of the challenges, people and processes it takes to create well-defined products. We must captivate the problem in order to progress for our users.
My definition of User Experience
For me UX is a fundamental part of sculpting a user-centric product, it’s a gradual and sometimes unconventional process that helps enhance and shape a product or service to a specific group of users. Additionally, meeting directional ease of the company.
Although I wasn’t in so I couldn’t present mine, I think mine aligned with Paul’s explanation – maximum efficiency, maximum happiness and minimum stress.
“User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.“
Watching a short youtube clip about Don Norman’s view on the term UX has made me rethink what user experience actually means. User experience just doesn’t end at a certain stage, it is a relative system that encompasses all interactions with the user.
Paul has shown us an example of using banking apps with good UX and mediocre UX. In this case, it is Ulster Bank & Monzo. Ulster bank contains limited features, daunting architecture and an overall boring process to it. We then have Monzo which presents itself as a modern appeal to them. It uses a more defined architecture, presents a fun and educational onboarding process and even has additionally, features that present themselves in the most minimalistic yet efficient way possible such as your personal banking card that communicates to the user through relative visual experiences and uses minimalistic icons to make it as easy as possible to use. Onboarding is an extremely efficient way to introduce an audience to your app. Perhaps with Monzo, it could be an adult who isn’t used to the tech world. This gives the user foresight and allows them to directionally navigate and accomplish goals with ease. Additionally, Monzo communicates with the user as a company and creates a related connection through the openness of upcoming features and TOV. This ultimately creates two very different user experiences between each app.
Jakob’s Law
Jakob’s law instigates that through repetition and comfortability of another site/product experiences; users would prefer your site to work and feel the same way other sites that they know work and feel. This can mean systematically and sensually sculpting our products to the same degree as other products. We see this all the time in the big popular social media brands such as the blue tik button, react emojis, interfaces, etc.
However, this just doesn’t mean blatantly copying the decision process from one another, for example when a distinctive change is made it should still retain that sense of familiarity for a limited time in order to gradually onboard the user to the new change. This is extremely important for the user’s mental model of how a process or interaction will work despite it may not being factually correct.
Nasa
An example of the Nasa using users to test and refine their work was evident in the Apollo space program. They used design thinking to improve and redefine a problem for their technological instruments by spectating human interaction with said technology. The design thinking process used by Nasa is shown below:
Empathize
With any problem, the first step is to gain an understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. In Apollo 13, Gary Sinise is placed inside a 1:1 scaled model of the Apollo 13 spacecraft in the cold, limited sleep while only using a microphone to communicate with ‘ground members. The issues that they monitored persisted to the actual launch.
Define
This is the stage where information is accumulated and gathered from the previous stage to focus on solving the problem for the end-user. Gene Krantz (NASA flight director) ensured real-world solutions were being correct and a problem statement and directive was given to the team. This means defining a problem for real-world people shows that the empathize stage is extremely important. This was then eventually used to stop the astronauts from dying from high levels of CO2.
Ideate
During the ideation stage, team members begin generating ideas. This combined with the previous stages creates an understanding of user needs. This was used for Nasa engineers and scientists to share and collaborate on different ideas by using methods such as brainstorming.
Prototype
The Apollo 13 ground-based crew had mapped everything that the astronauts had. The prototype was based on real objects such as socks and the cover sheet of the flight manual. A working prototype was tested internally and the procedure for making the prototype was repeated to the crew inside for tests.
Test
The testing stage is rigorously determined to conclude a product using the best possible solutions that are defined during the previous stage. The testing stage is a way to constantly redefine the solution. Similarly, Nasa completed some internal tests on the air scrubber prototype, however, time was limited. The flight operations team was given a procedure list and prototype as the astronauts were near blacking out. However, if this testing was not completed the Apollo 13 outcome might’ve been very different. This shows how important these steps are to ensure the product helps the user and in this case, it meant life or death.
What is the take-away from group sessions?
- Ux is a problem-solving discipline
- Collaboration produces more variety efficiently thus better outcomes
- Higher quality results – more emphasis to think
Design Models
The Double Diamond
What is it?
The double diamond was designed by Design Concil to help designers and non-designers tackle some of the most complex social, economic and environmental problems. It includes key principles and design methods that designers and non-designers need to take.
The Process
Discover: This helps people understand, rather than simply assume what the problem is. This means speaking to and spending time with people who are directly affected by related issues.
Define: Insight gathered from the discovery phase can help you define the challenge in a diverse range of ways.
Develop: The second diamond encourages people to give different answers to the continuous problem, thus seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people.
Deliver: Delivery involves testing out different solutions at a small scale rejecting those that will not work and improving the ones that do.
However, this process isn’t always linear which the arrows on the diagram make it look like. Instead, many businesses are constantly learning something more that sends them into an indefinite loop to the beginning. Making and testing early-stage ideas can be part of the discovery.
The Design Principles
There are four core principles for this process:
- People first: understand the people using a service such as their needs and strengths and aspirations.
- Communicate visually and inclusively: Help people gain a shared understanding of the problem and ideas.
- Collaborate and co-create: work together and take inspiration from others.
- Repeated Interate: Spot errors early on to avoid risk and build strength in my ideas.
Human-Centered Design
Human-centered design is a methodology for creating efficient design solutions that focus on end-users from the very start of the product in its creation stage which in return creates a product that satisfies user needs through direct qualitative research and understanding of the needs, insights and emotions of customers.
HCD hosts four phases of work which are: discover, design, delivery and measurement – this is then processed in a cycle once the work is measured for effectiveness against initial and intended aims and then it is continually tweaked ultimately refinding the solution over time.
Stanford d.school
D.school uses a five-stage design thinking process that as follows:
Empathize
This is work to understand the people, within the context of my design challenge. Observing the interactions within an environment can allow me to see how they may think or feel.
Define
This stage is about bringing clarity and focus to the design space. This is to mold a meaningful and directional problem statement (POV). This is to create sense of the problem and to turn my findings into insights.
The final POV has to combine three elements: User, need and insight – as an actionable problem statement that will drive the rest of my design work.
A good POV:
- Ensures focus and captivates the problem
- Inspires the team forward
- Informs criteria for evaluating competing ideas
- Empowers team to differentiate in their actions and decision making.
- Create connections with the hearts and minds of interviewees
Ideate
Involving idea generation – this helps us identify problems to create solutions for the user. This means trying a variety of techniques such as brainstorming, affinity diagrams, etc and not settling on the first possible outcome.
Prototype
This includes creating quick and low-res prototypes which can ultimately give vital feedback back from users and colleagues.
Additionally, a prototype can be anything a user can interact with such as a wall of post notes, a makeshift instrument and even a storyboard.
The point of this stage is to gain feedback and answer a particular question.
Test
The test stage is about receiving monumental feedback about the created prototypes. Ensure the user is listened to and acknowledges any questions they may have.
Conclusion
It is extremely important to have a well-defined structural framework for decision-making and progress. Learning a variety of methods that I can implement will definitely help me to create a user-centric product. However, the process isn’t always linear and steps may be repeated. I will now begin a collaborative session with this framework in mind.