My UX Process Pt.1 - Understanding the problem
How does UX Design look like in practice? Here's how I work with my clients.
As a freelance UX Designer, I have but one goal. By the time the project is completed, the clients’ should be better than it was before, or else I have failed (if you heard this before, it’s because Alan Weiss said it in The Consulting Bible). In order for my client to be successful, I have to work with my client and deliver the solutions they need.
Understanding the client's needs
My value is my ability to understand my client’s wants, and figuring out my client’s needs. The more I understand my client's problems, the better I can help them with their business. That means asking the right questions, and asking a lot. It can differ depending on the client and the project, but it will be along the lines of:
What made you decide to start your own business?
Who are your customers? How often do you talk to them?
What are some of the problems you have noticed regarding your product? What actions have you taken to try and solve them?
What do you hope to achieve with our freelance relationship? Better experience for your customers? Better leads? Higher sales?
You can add value to your client by also sharing the answers to these questions. Maybe the client already knows the answer, but don’t have it documented. Documentation is a lot of work and since I will be doing that anyways for the project, it’s a win-win.
Research and Analysis
After we have established your business needs, and your goals and expectations, it’s time to do some research. Being able to identify your customers, knowing their needs, and then delivering a targeted solution is the key to having a successful product.
So what do the results of the research look like? It can be things like:
User Journey Mapping. Detailing the users thoughts and reactions as they interact with the product.
User Personas. Simply put, it’s a profile of your ideal user. Age, financial standing, daily habits, and would include information critical to your product.
Believe it or not, a Business Model Canvas is also a pretty cool way of representing your research information. Look at it this way, not only can research data help you understand your users, but it also helps you refine your idea and make it more accessible to stakeholders. If you are trying to onboard new employees, the data can provide them with valuable insight into your business.
There is also competitor research. It’s a chance to learn what your competitors have done right, and find any opportunities for improvement. All I can say about my last project was that I was tasked with designing product cards for CPUs and GPUs. So I looked at all the usual places (websites that sell PC parts), and a few unusual ones.
My client had an idea of what he wanted the product card to look like so he recommended Sigma Millipore (the first image). You might have noticed that they don’t sell PC Parts, but chemical and pharmaceutical items. Their card designs, however, are pretty great to look at and it the final product reflected that. Inspiration can come from anywhere
Back to the topic at hand, we will need to align business goals and user goals to figure out what is most beneficial for you and your users. If it is a new product, the research will tell us what are the first set of features that will help drive sales and users. If it is an existing product, we can identify pitfalls and figure out how to deliver the right features to the users.
Thanks for reading my first post! This is something I am trying this year and I hope to post at least once a month. The second part of this is most likely coming next week.
Want to work with me? Check out my website https://www.mdnabilahsan.com/
Originally, a few of the content was on my website, but it was too much to read. I think it functions better as an article, and I can go into more detail. It’s not fair to make the client scroll so much.