About Me

UX Design Process

The UX/UI course I studied has been invaluable in providing both theoretical knowledge and a wealth practical experience in every stage of the design process. It has been an intense learning process and I know I still have a lot to learn about this field. In reflecting on some of the work my classmates and I have done during the course, I realised how important it is to never rush to come up with a solution without doing due diligence to the research phase. We have to keep an open mind and keep asking questions to uncover the real issues, otherwise the solutions we come up with may not really help people. In a redesign project, this could result in the best/most functional parts of the original product being lost and the real problems potentially remaining unsolved.

Here are some practices I hope to follow in future design projects:

• For redesign projects, begin by truly understanding the original product and underlying structure. If it’s a website, read every page (or at least at the top few levels of hierarchy if it is a big one). Learn from the stakeholders what is working and not working, interview real users about what they like and dislike about the product. Conduct market research thoughtfully.
• For new design projects, conduct usability testing and user interviews with users of competing or related products, and conduct thorough research in all possible avenues to fully understand the problem space.
• For redesign projects, carefully analyse the product against usability and accessibility heuristics and conduct user testing to confirm the findings of heuristic evaluations and potentially uncover other issues. Ideally do usability testing with people who have disabilities to combine usability and accessibility.
• Include all of the research when weighing the options of what needs to change (not just what one part of the research indicates). Research possible solutions by staying on top of how others are solving similar problems and what standards are emerging.
• Use UX tools like personas, journey-maps, user flows etc. to the extent that they are helpful for answering the questions we have about a problem. Perhaps we even need to imagine new UX tools for the specifics of a project.
• Conduct the same (or appropriately similar) usability and accessibility testing on the new design as was done on the original design (or competitors in the case of a new design) so that we can be sure it’s really solving the problems identified, ideally with real users of the product.
• At the end of a redesign process, apply the same standard of rigor in analysing the proposed redesign as was used when critiqueing the original design. Does the new design meet accessibility and usability guidelines? Is it meeting the identified needs of users? Often, time constraints and scope don’t allow for all the issues to be addressed, but at least the major ones should be prioritized. Some issues may have been deprioritized because they do not affect many users, but if that issue is still a big issue for a subset of users, there should at least be a plan for how that issue can be eventually addressed. Otherwise, products risk never being truly inclusive.