Design process and research methods

The process of creating a design may vary greatly between different teams and even different projects. Learning the different processes used in UX design can give you an advantage when working with different teams and products.

In addition to how to create the actual design, the design process also includes how to complete user research and testing. These are all important parts of creating products with pleasant user experience.

The design sprint was originally developed by Jake Knapp. They can help designers to put forward ideas and solve problems quickly. Generally speaking, they include five stages, each lasting one day. These stages include drawing, sketching, decision-making, prototype design and testing. The idea behind them is that when you work so fast, you will fail faster and learn faster. Test ideas quickly to find the perfect solution faster.

Design thinking, like design sprint, is based on five stages of problem solving: empathy, definition, conception, prototype and testing. Designers first study users' needs and generate ideas, and then test them with low-fidelity or high-fidelity prototypes. Design thinking is not necessarily a continuous process, it allows designers to cycle back to the previous stage to modify the solution until they create the best design. ?

Design thinking should be integrated into the project as early as possible to avoid having to start from scratch. Ideally, you should use design thinking from the moment you start the project.

Introduce design thinking in the early design stage to avoid starting from scratch in the future.

Double diamond technology divides the design process into four stages: discovery, definition, development and delivery. The first two use divergent thinking to explore users and their needs, while the latter two focus on convergent thinking by testing the insights gained in the discovery stage. ?

Designers can go back to the previous stage and explore them further until they find the perfect solution.

User research is very important for UX design. Designers and researchers use psychology, marketing, ethnology and other disciplines for reference to propose user experience research methods. When conducting user research, you should always consider the high-level goals of the product and the resources you can use.

User interview is a one-on-one conversation between the user and the interviewer. This is a useful way to deeply understand the attitude, needs and background of users. User interviews should be combined with usability testing, in which you can see how users interact with products. You can ask questions during the interview to better understand the user's behavior. ?

If you want to raise user interviews to a higher level, please consider conducting situational interviews, where you can observe users in their usual workspace. This helps to better understand how users interact with your product.

Try to interview users in the natural environment to understand their real behavior.

User testing is an indispensable part of user research. Depending on the stage of the design process, you can conduct various tests on users. Some are cheaper and can be completed at an early stage, such as guerrilla tests using paper models. Others, such as usability testing, need equipment, high-fidelity prototypes, arranged focus groups, and even user research laboratories.

No matter what kind of user testing, the ultimate goal is the same: collect feedback as early as possible in the design process and find any potential problems.

One of the most common types of user testing is A/B testing. This type of test provides a comparison of the effectiveness and usability of two product versions to see which one is better. This is usually achieved by randomly showing users one of the two versions of the product without showing them the other version. It is important to test only one design element at a time to get the most accurate and useful results. ?

Although A/B testing provides objective statistical quantitative data, it cannot explain user behavior related to design. Therefore, it is most suitable for the later stage of the design process, such as improving the color palette or comparing how two images affect the user's behavior.

Put all user research and user test data (and other elements that affect the user experience) in a usable document, which appears in the form of UX audit. Audit is a detailed report, which can include various components, including business analysis, role description, technical audit, A/B test results, investigation, interview, wireframe and prototype. ?

The main goal of UX audit is to identify any problems and provide suggested solutions to bridge the UX gap. It may be a good idea to hire external UX professionals to provide objective and critical opinions on products.