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Designing decisively – A strategy for the UX Design process

By Jason

When assessing the overall impact of design, I can say it sits in two areas of the conceptual business world of Marketing/Advertising or research and innovation.
What does that mean? It means designers can either create things that solve problems for people with technology or facilitate and create a narrative. Human-centred design is about solving problems to create innovation. We use critical thinking to enable engineers to find a solution.

Arguably, you could say that finding the right solution is 80% of the process, which means understanding the collective group and sub-groups who will be using the system you’re going to create, as well as how the system will help them. Then we go about communicating the numerous outputs that range from conceptual, low fidelity to high fidelity and interactive.

I frequently come across companies whose mission isn’t about discovering new problems or creating novel solutions, but entertainment instead. Very rarely do business initiatives spring up which have already established that their customer has a clear-cut problem and a new product is needed to solve it. Instead, it’s almost always about breaking into a bloated market or joining an existing category of products.

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Another thing is that testing the system is done wrongly, which is even more detrimental to the collaborative process of design. This occurs when business executives test the meaning of the content in UX testing sessions, test design assets when they are out of the context of the interface, or test functionality when it is known that it always works, time and time again. Why? It’s because we are evaluating the solution we’ve created. It’s simply inefficient to tread over the same ground on functionality.

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With the research phase completed and requirements defined we move on to understanding what the user seeks to achieve. This is done by storyboarding out what those journeys will look like at a conceptual level, as well as asking what are the basics of how a goal can be achieved, and what sub-tasks need to be facilitated? This process is about exploring and iterating what we feel is achievable with a combined working knowledge of what we have.

The next process is about the conceptual definition of information architecture and drawing consensus, which means mapping the scope of the system in a rational way by taking into account what the users want to achieve. The level of detail and rigidness of this process depends on the culture of the business you are working with. In progressive companies, things are more collaborative and iterative with shared knowledge.

When you are in a high-stress environment working with complex requirements, the system should do the heavy lifting for the users regarding the output and the quality of the solution. To achieve what they want to achieve, they should have all the required information displayed in front of them at the right time, including the right type, depth and tone.

We know that a product will have a mental model, e.g. the core purpose of the existing tool, as well as numerous sub-goals and sub-tasks.

We can leverage universal conceptual models to help facilitate its usability, in terms of progressive disclosure and modality, and minimise the noise in an interface. This means only showing additional information when something has gone wrong or they need additional help.

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We can also leverage the power of design patterns. A real-life analogy of a design pattern is a car, which always has four wheels. This is comparable to a search on the iPhone, or adding a contact with input fields. We do this because we’re confident that these patterns have been tested, shipped and work. The phrase “don’t re-invent the wheel” applies. Getting to the point where you can do this effectively and decisively while avoiding making the work pedestrian relies on having sufficient substance and inspiration and then repeating it so that it’s different.

We then use familiar visual concepts consistently, such as icons, colours and the terminology used around calls to action. Subtle mistakes make users hesitant and these rookie mistakes ultimately have an impact on a company’s net income. Standardising the way that information is displayed helps the users to learn things faster, as when things are familiar, they become safe. This means the interface will be trusted and can help them to achieve their goals easily, be it making a bank transaction or checking out their shopping.

I’ll zoom out again to give you an example of customer experience patterns that work.

The email confirmation of purchase is an absolute classic. We know that once they’ve finished shopping, they will leave their customer experience. However, there is one driving principle of this closure that applies here and even in the macro of interface design. The system needs to provide closure by acknowledging something that the user has done, because without it, there can be anxiety and even concern.

Most customer support queries via the telephone could be reduced by 60% if more cues were provided that offer better closure to users, either in the interface or the customer experience.

By adhering to the few rules I have mentioned above, you can progress faster and be ultimately more confident in your work while also maintaining the uniqueness of your craft.

Thinking around defining unique aesthetics for brand strategy
Brand Design
Using Systems thinking to make sense of any subject matter
Information Architecture
Generative Research to find and frame problems
Research
Thoughts around the future of brand narrative
Brand Strategy
Designing decisively – A strategy for the UX Design process
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