What is it that everybody does in the UX industry, but does it differently? Probably one of correct answers is the UX design process. In our field, it is not a surprising thing if there are differences in the ways we build up our UX processes – everyone can have their own methods. However, it is good to have a great guide about a well-tried UX design process which you can rely on. In this post I will guide you through our design process. Here’s how we do it at UX studio.
Starting a design project can be tough. Some might have a loose plan in their minds that they consider to be a good one, but in the next moment they might realize that everything would have been much easier and probably less chaotic if they followed a clear path. Having an established UX design process can save you time, energy, money and can also save you from a bad headache.
The question now of course can come up: how we do it then? Well, at UX studio we have our methods, and they work well, so we decided to share it with you in this blogpost.
The visible part of our UX design process starts when we first get in touch with a new client. In this early stage we try to get as much information as we can. We are eager to find all hidden skeletons (desires, barriers, deadlines, preferences, etc.) that could cause any inconveniences in case they pop up later. It is important to look for these skeletons in the very beginning of the UX design process so we can find solutions for them, too. In order to be the best detectives we do these things:
Find out more about our experience and process of kick-off workshops.
Kick-off in progress with the HBO team
So after the kick-off we have many things in our minds to digest, but these few hours are just the beginning of the UX process. To have a deeper understanding of all the topics that comes up in the first step – and even more topics -, we have to learn everything about what we are facing. This is when step two comes in the picture.
As Ace Ventura says:
“If I’m not back in five minutes… just wait longer.”
So after we gather and organize the information we got… well, we dig deeper for some more. 🙂
In the UX design process it is the time when we collect as much information as we can, to get the knowledge that we could not get during the kick-off. We usually do a 7 day long preliminary research where we…
You can download some resources, such as our persona and user journey templates here.
It is our best interest to have these tasks in our UX design process, so we can continue our work with a very strong knowledge base. To give all the ideas we have a really visual and tangible form, now we start our fun part: the prototyping and usability testing phase!
Our UX process wouldn’t be the same without the good old teamwork of a designer and a researcher – usually the team consist of them, but some projects require more designers or maybe more researchers. First the designer creates the sketches and the prototype form it, which the researcher tests. We always show everything to the client the moment it’s ready, as it is the most important thing that they know about the UX design process steps. Here are the details about this phase:
We always start the third step of our UX design process with sketching
It is essential to have the product well-tested with many iterations. We like to have its user experience designed as perfectly as possible and start creating the detailed design for it only afterwards. This is the way in our UX design process we can make sure that the product will be pleasing for the brain and the eye, too.
So on one side we have our mood boards that we showed to the client who gave feedback and hopefully now we have an idea about what style the application should have. On the other side we have a cool prototype which gives us most of the screens including arrangement, functionality, etc. Now we can step into our UX process’s next phase when we create the nice looks! Here you can read how it works:
Detailed design for Taste’s iOS App
If you think that our UX design process ends here, I have to admit that we still have a step which is a nice-to-have, but we consider it necessary so to be sure that the product we worked on is developing well.
We like it when the product goes in the right direction. We want to be sure that the application is implemented the way we designed it for a great user experience. There are two possibilities:
Well, this is how we do it. This is our ideal UX process at this very moment, but we know that it won’t be the same when we try applying it to a real project. Of course, it gives us the ability to plan things by and large, but it constantly changes based on the project.
UX studio has successfully worked with over 250 companies worldwide.
Is there anything we can do for you at this moment? Get in touch with us and let’s discuss your current challenges.
Our experts would be happy to assist with the UX strategy, product and user research, UX/UI design.
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