One of the best things about being a part of the design community is that most designers love to exchange ideas, spread knowledge, and share their experiences regardless of their seniority level. You can be a starting designer or an established thought leader, and it’s almost a given that you find a design conference that may teach you something new.

What’s also great about UX conferences is that not all of them target the UX/UI community, but the people who work with them on a daily basis. Product managers, developers and other professionals who work closely with design can find an event for themselves.

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January 2024 Conferences

 QRCA 2024 Annual Conference

QRCA stands for Qualitative Research Consultants Association. The conference covers research methods, tools, and lessons that will prepare designers for the next era of qualitative research.

• Date: Jan 22-25, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual & Denver
• Audience: UX researchers, marketing researchers
• Common topics: qualitative research, research methods, research tools

UX360 Research Summit 2024

We will welcome the third edition of a conference dedicated entirely to research. The line up includes UX researchers from top companies: Google, Meta, Dropbox, Delivery Hero, and more.

• Date: Jan 30-31, 2023
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual
• Audience: UX researchers, UI designers, UX designers
• Common topics: research, design strategy, human-centered design

Design Matters Mexico

Join Design Matters and listen to Mexican designers telling you about local design and the intersection between technology and humanity.

• Date: Jan 31-Feb 1, 2023
• Free: No
• Where: Mexico City
• Audience: UX researchers, UI designers, UX designers
• Common topics: inclusivity, design future, technology

February 2024 Conferences

What about the second month of the year? We’ve found a couple of conferences that may catch your eye. Let’s see them.

AXE CON 2024

Sign up to attend a virtual accessibility conference focused on building, testing, and maintaining accessible digital experiences.

• Date: Feb 20-22, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual
• Audience: designers
• Common topics: accessibility, UX

Product World [Hybrid]

Product conference that concerns itself with sharing the product success stories from tech product professionals at Silicon Valley’s top tech companies.

• Date: Feb 21-29, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual and San Francisco Bay Area
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: collaboration, leadership, growth

ConveyUX 2024 [Hybrid]

Learn about what is going on in the world of user experience in this AI-driven era. 

• Date: Feb 27-29, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual and Seattle, US
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: design process, design future, AI

HUCCAP 2024

At the same time as ConveyUX, there’s a Human-Computer Interaction Conference hosted in Rome, Italy. Join to discuss HCI matters in an interdisciplinary environment.

• Date: Feb 27-29, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual and Seattle, US
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: human-computer interaction.

March 2024 Conferences

DDX Dubai

A great meeting place for people interested in discussing the impact technology has on our daily lives and UX meaning.

• Date: March 2, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Dubai
• Audience: UX designers and product managers
• Common topics: artificial innovation, innovation, design process

Leading Design New York

One of the design conferences by Clearleft will be hosted in New York.

• Date: Mar 20-21, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: New York, US
• Audience: UX designers
• Common topics: career, leadership, future of design

UX Copenhagen [Hybrid]

It’s the 10th edition of annual “Human Experience” conference. This year it will examine overconsumption and tackle de-growth.

• Date: Mar 20-21, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual & Copenhagen, Denmark
• Audience: UX designers, UX researchers
• Common topics: UX design, leadership, future

ACM IUI 2024

Interested in AI for design? If so, you can’t miss out on this conference! It focuses on the advances at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

• Date: Mar 18-21, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Sydney, Australia 
• Audience: product designers, researchers
• Common topics: information architecture, artificial intelligence

April 2024 Conferences

AI in Web Design Conference’24

Join other professionals who design websites and web apps and learn about weaving artificial intelligence into the process beyond using ChatGPT in UI design.

• Date: Apr 2-3, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual 
• Audience: product designers, researchers, product managers
• Common topics: design process, artificial intelligence

Web Con

Who said university conferences are for students only? Join an online 2-day event organized by University of Illinois.

• Date: Apr 4-5, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual 
• Audience: UX designers, UI designers, product managers
• Common topics: design process, artificial intelligence

Information Architecture Conference

It’s one of the leading conferences for information architects, designers, and others who create and manage UI and information environments. This year theme is to examine the impact of AI on information architecture.

• Date: Apr 9-13, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual 
• Audience: product designers, researchers, product managers
• Common topics: information architecture, artificial intelligence

UX Research Festival [Hybrid]

Being a brainchild of UXInsights, the largest UX research communities in Europe, UX Research Festival invites you to Breda (in the Netherlands) to hear out amazing talks about UX research.

• Date: Apr 15-17, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual and Breda, Netherlands
• Audience: researchers, designers
• Common topics: UX research, artificial intelligence

Prompt UX

April is full of AI conferences and Prompt UX is one of it! Travel to Berlin and discuss the impact of artifical intelligence yet again this month.

• Date: Apr 17-18, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Berlin, Germany
• Audience: UX designers
• Common topics: design process, artificial intelligence

May 2024 Conferences

DDX Conference Munich

If you’re interested in subjects such as sustainability, future-oriented design, ethical design, this conference will be your cup of tea. Discuss innovative ideas and solutions during 1-day stay in Munich.

• Date: May 11, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Munich
• Audience: UX designers and product managers
• Common topics: artificial innovation, innovation, design process

CHI 2024 [Hybrid]

This year’s annual ACM Computer Human Interaction conference is hosted in beautiful Hawaii. It embraces the theme of Surfing the World – which means reflecting the focus on pushing forth the wave of cutting-edge technology and riding the tide of new developments in human-computer interaction. 

• Date: May 11-16, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual & Honolulu, Hawaii
• Audience: researchers
• Common topics: research tools, research methods

UXDX Community USA [Hybrid]

UXDX is a popular conference for UX designers, developers and product people around the world, sharing with them collaboration ideas.

• Date: May 15-17, 2024
• Free: Yes
• Where: Virtual and on site
• Audience: UX designers, UX researchers, developers and product managers
• Common topics: leadership, collaboration, design system

UXLx

Join fellow designers in sunny Lisbon. Soak up UX knowledge, network with like-minded individual, and hone your design skills.

• Date: May 21-24, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Lisbon, Portugal
• Audience: designers
• Common topics: UX, design process

UXistanbul

Organized by UXServices, this conference is a place for gathering Web3 enthusiasts and designers interested in the field. Come and join them online on Discord.

• Date: May 21-23, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual 
• Audience: product designers, researchers, product managers
• Common topics: NFT, metaverse

From Business to Buttons 2024

Spend one day in Stockholm to discuss user experience and customer expaerience. Great conference for business-savvy designers.

• Date: May 24, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Stockholm, Sweden
• Audience: designers, product managers
• Common topics: design process, design impact, leadership

WebExpo

Travel to Prague, an extraordinary European city, to join fellow web designers, developers, marketers, and more discussing innovations in web design and development.

• Date: May 29-31, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Prague, Czechia
• Audience: designers, developers, product managers
• Common topics: web design, front-end design, UX

June 2024 Conferences

UX Sofia

Travel to sunny Bulgaria to discuss topics connected to strategy, career growth and more.

• Date: Jun 5-7, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Sofia, Bulgaria
• Audience: product designers, researchers
• Common topics: strategy, UX design, UX research

ACE!

This Polish conference has two tracks: Agile Software Development and Product Design & Management. Yet, there will be a lot of content for product designers, too.

• Date: Jun 13-14, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Kraków, Poland
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: leadership, product strategy, product growth

Pixel Pioneers

It may be just a day-long, but the Pixel Pioneers is fully-packed with inspirational presentations from leading UX/UI designers and front-end developers.

• Date: Jun 14, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Bristol, UK
• Audience: product designers, developers, researchers
• Common topics: human-centered design, inclusive design, future of design

DRS 2024 BOSTON

Hosted by Design Research Society, this conference is about 4 Rs: resistance, recovery, reflection, and reimagination, which we’re sure are relevant to the state of design in 2024.

• Date: Jun 24-28, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Boston, US
• Audience: design research
• Common topics: research, leadership, future of design

UXPA 2024

At the same time, visit sunny San Diego and join the UXPA conference may be your cup of tea. It is a design conference in the USA.

• Date: Jun 24-27, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: San Diego, US
• Audience: product designers, researchers
• Common topics: human-centered design, leadership, research

HCI INTERNATIONAL 2024

That international conference on human-computer interaction that is usually held in Gothenburg, Sweden, but this year it will be hosted in the USA. We highly recommend to attend. It’s a great treat for the interaction designers.

• Date: Jun 29-July 4, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Washington, DC, USA
• Audience: product designers, researchers
• Common topics: human-centered design, research, leadership

August 2024 Conferences

UXDX APAC 2024

It’s yet another UXDX event, but this one is an Audio-Pacific version. It’s dedicated to Product, UX, Design and Development teams that want to find a way of working together.

• Date: Aug 13-15, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: San Diego, USA
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: product direction, scaling design, validation, product growth

UX Nordic [Hybrid]

Sharpen your skills and nurture your growth as a UX researcher, designer or writer. Meet other design professionals and explore your interests.

• Date: Aug 28-29, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual & Aarhus, Norway
• Audience: UX researchers, UX designers, UX writers
• Common topics: design process, leadership

UX Australia [Hybrid]

It’s the 16th edition of UX Australia. The conference focuses on UX, product and service design, and the surrounding disciplines of research, content, operations, management, and more.

• Date: Aug 27-30, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual & Melbourne, Australia
• Audience: UX researchers, product managers, product designers
• Common topics: research operations, leadership, research methods, research tools

September 2024 Conferences

SmashingConf Freiburg 2024

Are you a UX Architect, UI Developer, or a Product Designer that needs to work a lot with engineers? You can’t miss this UX design conference that oh-so-smoothly merges development and design.

• Date: Sep 9-11, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Freiburg, Germany
• Audience: product designers, developers
• Common topics: accessibility, web development, design process

October 2024 Conferences

World Usability Conference

Let’s meet in Austria and discuss usability with other UX professionals and participate in talks and masterclasses where handpicked speakers share meaningful hands-on insights.

• Date: Oct 15-17, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Graz, Austria
• Audience: product designers, UX researchers
• Common topics: design process, usability, sustainability

Design Matters Copenhagen [Hybrid]

This well-known design conference advertises itself as, “Made for designers, by designers.” And it truly is so! We highly recommend you attend it.

• Date: Oct 23-25, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Copenhagen, Denmark
• Audience: product designers, UX researchers
• Common topics: tutorials, design process, leadership

November 2024 Conferences

Leading Design London

Let’s meet in London to discuss design.

• Date: Nov 6-7, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: London, UK
• Audience: UX designers
• Common topics: career, leadership, future of design

Push UX 2024

From Lisbon travel to a lovely Munich to meet like-minded UX professionals that will discuss design research, presentation, and other aspects of daily UX designer’s activities.

• Date: Nov 7-8, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Munich, Germany
• Audience: product designers, UX researchers
• Common topics: design process, design leadership, product growth

Web Summit Lisbon

Come to a sunny Lisbon to participate in lively discussions on web design and development.

• Date: Nov 11-14, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Lisbon, Portugal
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: web design, web development

Wey Wey Web

Creating UI for the web? Then, you must show up at this conference. Located in a beatiful Spanish city of Malaga, the conference blends the topics of accessibility, UI, UX, and front-end development.

• Date: Nov 27-29, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Malaga, Spain
• Audience: developers, product designers
• Common topics: web design, web development

December 2024 Conferences

TBD

Which Design Conferences Are You Attending in 2024?

It seems as if 2024 is going to be full of inspiring and educational content coming from the best speakers in design and product management. Have you found a conference for you? We will definitely keep you posted if any new event comes our way.

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A UX Architect is a person responsible for the structure of the product and user flow. She or he works on the verge of UX design and engineering. This role has emerged as the UX space is continually growing and evolving, with new UX roles and departments popping up from time to time.

We’ll explore what a UX architect does, and the roles and responsibilities for UX designers and UX architects differ and overlap. At the end of this article, we provide a brief overview of how UXPin can help UX teams collaborate effectively.

Key takeaways:

• UX architect is a hybrid role that sits in between design and engineering.
• UX architects build information architecture, create wireframes, and take care of technical feasibility of the project.
• They differ from UX designer in that they have engineering skills and they prioritize clear information architecture.

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Who is a UX Architect?

A user experience architect is essentially a UX specialist with a high-level view of a product or design. UX architects are concerned with the structure and flow based on in-depth user and market research.

To achieve this, UX architects will often work closely with research teams or even conduct research themselves. This research guides UX architects to make informed decisions about how a user will use the product and organize the information architecture accordingly.

What Does a UX Architect Do?

Here’s a brief outline of a UX architect’s responsibilities:

• Ensure the product fulfills the user’s needs
• Makes sure information is organized and easily accessible
• Fixes usability and accessibility problems

Organizing Content

Rather than creating content and assets, a UX architect organizes and arranges content to best serve the user. This organization falls into three categories:

• Content inventory—a list of all the product’s digital content.
• Content grouping—a logical structure for organizing the product’s content, defining the relationships between different pieces of information and how they all connect.
• Content audit—a regular review of the product’s content to determine what needs updating and if new content is required.

UX architects must organize the content on each page and determine where to add titles, subheadings, links, and navigation to help users find what they’re looking for.

Hierarchy, Sitemaps, and Navigation

Information architecture arranges a product or website’s hierarchy, sitemaps, and navigation. These crucial elements determine how easy and accessible an app or website is to use.

• Sitemap – all of the app or website pages.
• Hierarchy – how to arrange a page’s content in order of importance.
• Navigation – how a user moves through an app or website.

Internal Wireframing & Low-Fidelity Prototyping

UX architects create wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes for internal UX teams to use as an architectural reference for designing a product or website. 

UX teams will only use these mockups for design purposes and usually won’t use them for usability studies or sharing amongst stakeholders.

Who is a UX Designer?

A UX designer is a broad term encompassing design and research roles. But in the context of a UX designer vs. a UX architect, the designer is responsible for designing user interfaces. Ultimately, a UX designer makes a product usable.

A UX designer will take a UX architect’s wireframes, prototypes, and architectural instructions and turn them into a high-fidelity prototype that resembles the end-product the most out of every design deliverable. UX designers also work with UX researchers as well as content designers to determine which fonts, colors, buttons, and other design elements to use.

Persona Development

UX designers are responsible for early research and creating user personas. Larger organizations might have a dedicated UX researcher or team, but they still fulfill a UX design role.

User personas tell UX designers about the user’s demographic information, motivations, desires, potential responses, and more to design user interfaces that accommodate these user needs.

Wireframes, Mockups, and Prototypes

UX designers create wireframes and mockups for the product’s pages and flows with initial user research and the UX architect’s information architecture.

UX designers also look at the UX architect’s sitemap to link the pages and navigation to make working low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes.

Research teams will use these high-fidelity prototypes for usability studies to learn how users interact with the final product.

User Testing

Where companies don’t have a dedicated research team, UX designers conduct the necessary usability studies. This crucial part of UX design provides UX designers with valuable feedback on how users will interact with the final product.

With the results from usability studies, UX designers tweak their designs to improve the user experience.

The Main Differences of UX Architect and UX Designer

The most significant difference between a UX architect and a UX designer is that the UX architect looks at the bigger picture while the UX designer focuses on the details.

The UX architect focuses on navigation and user flows while the UX designer creates the user interfaces and interactions for each screen or page.

While both UX architects and UX designers review research, the UX architect considers what features and content the user needs. In contrast, the UX designer wants to know how the user will interact with these elements.

We can summarize the roles of a UX architect vs. a UX designer as follows:

• UX architect – who are the users, and what do they need?
• UX designer – who are the users, and how do we meet their needs?

How UX Architects & UX Designers Work Together

It’s important to note that a UX designer performs the UX architect’s responsibilities in many companies, especially small businesses. 

Where these roles are split, the UX designer is often referred to as a UI designer (user interface designer) because they focus on the interfaces and interactions. 

A UX architect is a UX specialist in information architecture rather than focusing on design.

UX architects and UX designers work closely on content. The UX designer focuses on the content’s details while the UX architect decides how to structure the content. To get this right, designers and architects must work closely together.

A Typical UX Architect & UX Designer Workflow

The following workflow is a broad overview to show the separation of responsibilities between a UX architect and a UX designer. 

1. A project will start with a UX architect analyzing market and user research to determine what the project needs and how to structure the content—similar to an architect designing a physical structure.
2. The UX architect puts together a blueprint (wireframes & prototypes) for the UX designer to start the build process.
3. The UX designer analyzes user research and the UX architect’s blueprints to start designing each user interface.
4. The UX designer will create wireframes, mockups, and high-fidelity prototypes for stakeholders and usability studies.
5. During usability tests – the UX architect wants to know how the user accesses content and navigates through the product. The UX designer wants to see how the user interacts with the elements and content on each screen.
6. Once a product is live – the UX architect’s job is to ensure accurate and up-to-date content. They will also look at accessibility issues and recommend updates accordingly. The UX designer will take the UX architect’s recommendations and analyze interaction data to optimize each screen to best serve the user.

Does Your Company Need a UX Architect & a UX Designer?

With each team focusing on different design aspects, separating the UX/UI designer and UX architect roles can improve the quality and efficiency of a product or website.

There might not be enough work for a dedicated UX architect for smaller projects and cash-strapped startups. It’s important to note that UX designers are capable of fulfilling a UX architect’s role.

As projects scale, information architecture becomes complex and time-consuming to manage. In situations like this, a UX architect is critical to a project’s success.

While agencies generally work in small teams, they often work on multiple apps and websites for clients. Having a UX architect can help to streamline productivity by handing UX designers all the information they need to start building immediately—effectively creating a tech production line.

Businesses should ask a series of questions to determine if they need a UX architect:

• How much time do UX designers spend on building layouts and information architecture?
• Do these tasks create production delays?
• Do users often struggle with navigation issues in usability studies?
• What is the cost of a dedicated UX architect in relation to the benefits from an increase in quality and efficiency?
• Does your product frequently struggle with usability and accessibility issues?
• Is someone monitoring your product’s content? Do you regularly find out-of-date content or unused product features?

UXPin Increases Productivity for UX Teams

UXPin is a powerful design tool for UX teams to build better products collaboratively. UX architects can use UXPin to create layouts, wireframes, and lo-fi prototypes, with comments for guidance and context.

UX designers can use this information to design beautiful screens and interfaces with mockups to present to stakeholders and use for usability studies.

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The post UX Architect vs. UX Designer – What’s the Difference? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

In-app feedback is a user review or rating of their experience with an app that’s collected while the user performs a task in the app. Designers or product managers place a widget or a pop-up in the app to learn what a user thinks and feels about the app. It helps to streamline app UX and prevent user churn.

In this article, we will discuss best practices, tools, and techniques for collecting in-app feedback. Let’s start.

Key takeaways:

• In-app feedback refers to user feedback collected from real users in the exacvt moment they’re using an app.
• It helps designers stay close with users, get immediate feedback on a working app, and improve its experience.
• In-app feedback techniques include surveys, questionnaires, widgets, screenshot and annotations tools, bug reports, and user reviews.
• To collect user feedback, remember to keep it non-invasive, quick, and compelling.

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What is an In-App Feedback?

In-app feedback is a user opinion collected within an application that sheds light on user experiences, preferences, and potential pain points. Unlike external surveys, social media, or app ratings, this feedback captures real-time reactions and user insights, giving product teams a contextual understanding of how people interact with specific app features. 

Organizations leverage in-app feedback to find opportunities for improving UX, ensuring their solutions align seamlessly with user expectations and enhance the overall customer experience.

Why Does In-App Feedback Matter?

Prioritizing in-app feedback means valuing genuine user experiences over assumptions and ensuring product managers implement changes based on user needs. These user-centric improvements increase customer satisfaction leading to increased retention while reducing churn.

Reason 1: Staying in touch with users

In-app feedback provides an unfiltered channel into the user’s thoughts and feelings. This first-party data is invaluable as it allows product teams to capture app users’ sentiments directly where interactions occur, fostering a clearer understanding of user satisfaction and areas of friction.

Reason 2: Fast insights

Real-time in-app feedback offers immediacy other collection methods can’t. Users can instantly communicate issues, delights, or confusion, allowing product teams to address concerns without delay, ensuring an agile response to user needs.

Reason 3: Real-time understanding of users

Contextual feedback is highly valuable for UX research and understanding the user experience “in the moment.” We humans tend to forget. So interviewing someone a few days or weeks after their experience may differ from when it’s actually happening.

In-product feedback gives teams a contextual perspective on how users navigate, interact, and react to specific features, shedding light on potential improvements and innovations.

In-App Feedback Tools and Techniques

In-app surveys and questionnaires

• Best time to use: After major interactions or task completions.
• Tools: Typeform.

In-app surveys and questionnaires let you pose targeted questions to users as they navigate, extracting specific insights. For example, after a user completes a new feature or flow, a quick survey can assess their experience.

Pros:

• Direct insights about specific app features or processes
• Structured data that are easy to quantify and analyze

Cons:

• Risk of interrupting user experience if not timed correctly
• Overusing feedback surveys can lead to fatigue

Feedback widgets and buttons

• Best time to use: After micro-interactions or content consumption.
• Tools: Wootric.

These embedded tools within your app interface offer users a quick way to provide feedback, including net promoter score (NPS) and customer satisfaction score (CSAT). For example, post-onboarding, a thumbs up/down button can gauge whether users feel confident about using the product.

Pros:

• Simplifies the feedback process for users
• Can lead to higher response rates

Cons:

• Limited depth of insights due to simplicity
• Can clutter the interface if not integrated seamlessly

Screenshot and annotation tools

• Best time to use: When reporting visual or layout-related issues.
• Tools: FullStory.

These tools allow users to capture specific app screens and highlight issues or areas of interest, offering visual context. For example, a user encountering a display glitch can screenshot the error and instantly report it.

Pros:

• Provides visual context for more accurate issue identification
• Empowers users to pinpoint exact problems

Cons:

• Might have compatibility or stability issues
• Needs user proficiency for effective utilization

Session recordings

• Best time to use: Continuous monitoring, especially during new releases.
• Tools: FullStory.

Recording user sessions captures real-time interactions, providing a step-by-step view of a customer journey. This data is valuable when diagnosing unexpected user drop-offs.

Pros:

• Offers a holistic view of user interactions
• Helps identify unintuitive app flows

Cons:

• Privacy concerns if not handled with transparency
• Can demand significant storage and analysis time

Heatmaps

• Best time to use: When analyzing user interaction patterns with UI elements.
• Tools: HotJar, Microsoft Clarity

Heatmaps visualize where users tap, swipe, or linger on your app screens, indicating areas of interest or confusion. For example, a hotspot might reveal an unintentional focal point.

Pros:

• Offers a visual representation of user activity
• Highlights design elements that draw attention

Cons:

• May not provide the ‘why’ behind observed patterns
• Needs sufficient data points for accuracy

Chatbots and AI-driven feedback collection

• Best time to use: Post interactions or during help/support queries.
• Tools: Built-in in your chatbot app like Intercom or LiveChat.

Product teams can leverage AI chatbots to gather feedback by conversationally interacting with users. 

For example, post-interaction, a chatbot might ask, “Was this solution helpful?”

In time, these AI chatbots will get more advanced and notice patterns where users struggle. For example, “I noticed you spent a long time completing the form; was everything ok?”

Pros:

• Enables real-time, interactive feedback collection
• AI can adapt to user responses for deeper insights

Cons:

• Can feel impersonal or robotic
• Requires sophisticated setup and maintenance

Bug reports

• Best time to use: Continuous monitoring, especially during new releases.
• Tools: Instabug.

In-app bug reporting tools allow users to immediately report issues they encounter, streamlining the feedback-to-fix journey. If an app crashes, a prompt might appear asking for feedback.

Pros:

• Facilitates quick identification of technical problems
• Direct channel from problem discovery to report

Cons:

• Relies on the user’s willingness to provide feedback post-disruption
• Can lead to redundant reports if many users face the same issue

Customer support emails

• Best Time to Use: Immediately after technical issues or crashes.
• Tools: Intercom or Helpscout.

Channels like feedback forms, in-app messaging, and customer support allow product teams to learn about users and their pain points. Beyond troubleshooting, these mobile app feedback channels enable users to voice concerns, provide suggestions, or seek clarity on app functionalities.

Pros:

• Real-time feedback allows users can share their thoughts or report issues instantly
• Direct interaction assures users that there’s a team ready to assist and value their input, building trust
• Detailed conversations dive deeper into user challenges and perspectives

Cons:

• Users want immediate feedback. Delays in support responses can lead to user dissatisfaction
• Maintaining a responsive customer support system demands a dedicated team and other valuable resources
• Customer support representatives must manage expectations. Unresolved issues can lead to unfavorable user reviews or public complaints

How to Encourage Users to Give In-App Feedback

React quickly

Position feedback prompts where they’re most relevant, ensuring they resonate with users’ in-app experiences. Avoid disrupting users during crucial tasks to increase the likelihood of participation.

For example, after completing a checkout process, a brief survey asking about the experience feels timely and relevant, maximizing the chance of user engagement. Conversely, asking the shopper while entering their payment details is poor timing, adversely impacts the user experience, and may increase abandoned carts.

Offer incentives or rewards

Users are more inclined to provide feedback if they see a tangible benefit. Product teams can offer rewards or incentives to acknowledge the value of the user’s time and insights. 

For example, offering in-game currency or power-ups in exchange for feedback on a game’s new level or feature. This incentive entices players and ensures more comprehensive feedback.

Craft compelling Call-to-Action

A well-crafted call-to-action (CTA) motivates users without overwhelming them. Keep CTAs clear, concise, and direct, emphasizing the ease and benefit of providing feedback.

For example, instead of a generic “Give Feedback” button, use “Help Us Improve in 30 Seconds!” This CTA offers a clear timeframe, making users more likely to engage. Content designers can help you find the best CTA for your case.

Best Practices for In-App Feedback Collection

Respect users’ time

When collecting feedback, value the user’s time. Ensure that prompts, questions, and surveys are clear, concise, and easy to navigate. A user who encounters a straightforward and brief survey is more likely to complete it, ensuring you get the insights you need without frustrating them.

Be transparent with users

Clearly communicate the purpose of collecting feedback and how the organization uses this data. Users are more inclined to share insights when they know their data is secure and won’t be misused.

For example, a simple statement, “We value your privacy. We use your feedback to make app improvements and never share this information with third parties,” builds trust.

Test your approach often

Feedback tools aren’t a set-and-forget; they require ongoing refinement. Regularly test these tools to ensure they function correctly and resonate with users. A continuous iteration of analyzing, modifying, and retesting ensures your feedback mechanisms remain effective and user-friendly.

Prioritize gathering feedback

Evaluate user responses based on relevance, frequency, and potential impact on user experience. Designers must also consider the product roadmap and objectives when prioritizing what to tackle first.

Addressing the most pressing issues first ensures you tackle users’ most significant pain points and enhance the overall user experience. 

Tools and techniques to understand feedback

• Feedback aggregation platforms make it easier to sift through and identify trends.
• Sentiment analysis tools gauge the general mood or sentiment behind customer feedback, helping prioritize areas for improvement.
• Data visualization tools offer a clear visual representation of feedback trends and patterns, making analysis more intuitive.

Closing the feedback loop: informing users of changes

After acting on feedback, inform respondents about the changes made. This follow-up shows appreciation for their input and reinforces trust in your commitment to improvement–they know your messaging about improving the app is sincere, and they’re more likely to give feedback again.

For example, when releasing an app update, highlight “Improvements made based on your feedback!” in the release notes. This simple acknowledgment fosters a stronger relationship between users and product teams.

Design Solutions to In-App Feedback Easier With UXPin

UXPin’s advanced features allow product teams to build prototypes that accurately replicate the final product experience. They can use customer feedback to simulate problems or usability issues and develop effective solutions. Designers can preview prototypes in the browser or via UXPin Mirror (available for iOS and Android) for mobile app testing. 

Some of UXPin’s advanced features you won’t find in traditional image-based design tools:

• States: design complex interactive components like dropdown menus, tab menus, navigational drawers, and more.
• Variables: capture data from user inputs and create personalized, dynamic user experiences–like their name and profile image in the app bar.
• Expressions: create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
• Conditional Interactions: create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to design dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to accurately replicate the final product experience.

UXPin’s IFTTT integration allows design teams to connect APIs and simulate real-world product experiences, workflows, and use cases–like sending a notification email or adding an event to a user’s calendar.

Use these and many other features to build your first fully interactive prototype with UXPin. Sign up for a free trial.

The post 8 Fullproof Methods of Collecting In-App Feedback [+Tools] appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

User feedback is collecting opinions of real users about their experience of using the product that designers want to create or already created.

After people use the product, they share what they like about it or what was confusing. Such information helps designers understand the user’s perception of the product and make it more enjoyable and useful for the people who use it.

Get accurate user feedback using advanced prototypes during the design process to iterate and improve before the product development phase. Create your first interactive prototype with UXPin. Sign up for a free trial.

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What is User Feedback?

User feedback in UX design is direct user input about a product’s design, functionality, and overall experience. This feedback informs product managers about what works, what doesn’t, and potential improvements.

Rather than relying on assumptions or theoretical models, UX or product designers use this feedback as a foundation to refine and enhance designs, ensuring they align with user needs and expectations.

Why is User Feedback Important?

User feedback guides the design process, ensuring the team’s solutions align with user needs and expectations. Here are several reasons why feedback is essential:

1. Informed Decisions: Instead of relying on guesswork, designers use real insights from users to make design decisions, keeping the process rooted in reality.
2. Enhanced Usability: User feedback highlights areas where users struggle, allowing designers to promptly address and rectify usability issues.
3. Elevated Customer Experience: When designers understand users’ likes, dislikes, and preferences, they can craft delightful experiences that resonate with the target audience reducing churn while increasing retention.
4. Promotion of Inclusive Design: Diverse feedback ensures that design solutions cater to a wider audience, making products more accessible and inclusive.

When to Ask for User Feedback

User feedback is not a one-time event; it’s a continuous process that guides and influences the design process from the initial concept to the final product. Here are some typical scenarios at various stages of the UX design process:

1. Ideation Stage: Initially, designers seek feedback on general concepts or ideas to identify potential user needs and pain points. It’s about understanding users and framing the correct problems to solve.
2. Prototyping Stage: When rough drafts or prototypes exist, designers gather user responses to validate or challenge their design assumptions. This stage aims to minimize usability issues early, saving resources and time.
3. Testing Stage: Designers implement user feedback to refine prototypes, improving usability and functionality. The goal is to catch any remaining issues before a broader rollout.
4. Post-launch Stage: Collecting user feedback is crucial even after the product launch. Combined with a UX audit, this feedback reveals real-world usage patterns and issues that may not have surfaced during testing. Insights gathered here drive future iterations and enhancements.

How to Collect User Feedback

These are the common types of user feedback methods designers use throughout the design process.

User interviews

When: During the ideation and prototyping stages.

User interviews dive deep into users’ needs, behaviors, and experiences. Designers engage in one-on-one discussions to gain insights beyond surface-level responses, uncovering nuanced details that quantitative methods might miss.

Surveys and questionnaires

When: During the ideation and post-launch stages.

Surveys and questionnaires offer a way to efficiently gather feedback from larger user groups. Designers pose targeted questions to pinpoint specific areas of interest or concern, making it easier to chart refinements.

Usability testing

When: During the prototyping and testing stages.

Usability testing allows designers to observe users interacting with a product or prototype. This method offers a clear view into where users struggle, succeed, or get confused, giving designers actionable feedback to enhance functionality and flow.

Feedback buttons and forms

When: Utilized post-launch.

In-app feedback buttons–Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), etc.–and feedback forms embedded within a product offer users an easy avenue to share their thoughts in real-time. This continuous feedback loop helps designers address pain points and make iterative improvements.

Analyzing user behavior

When: Across all stages, especially post-launch.

Understanding user behavior through in-product tracking and analytics tools (Hotjar, Google Analytics, etc.) becomes vital. By observing how users navigate, what features they use most, and where they drop off, designers gain a holistic view of user patterns, informing design choices and revealing areas for improvement.

How to Analyze and Incorporate User Feedback

Step 1. Prioritizing user feedback:

Prioritizing user research requires a systematic approach to figure out what to tackle first:

• Weigh feedback against your product roadmap and objectives. Not all feedback aligns with the project’s intended direction or vision.
• Consider the volume and frequency. If multiple users highlight the same issue, it demands immediate attention.
• Evaluate the impact. Assess if addressing the feedback will significantly enhance the user experience or if it’s a minor tweak.

Step 2. Identifying patterns and trends:

Spotting patterns in user feedback is essential for refining UX design effectively:

• Group similar feedback. Clustering product feedback into categories can help understand broader user sentiment and needs.
• Use analytics tools. User behavior metrics can reinforce or challenge identified patterns along with direct feedback.
• Engage with the team. Regular feedback sessions with the design and development teams can help connect the dots and unveil deeper trends.

Step 3. Iterating Based on User Feedback

Once you’ve prioritized feedback and identified patterns, it’s time to incorporate feedback:

• Make changes rooted in user requirements. Ensure that your iterations address the genuine concerns and needs of your users.
• Test your changes. Before fully implementing adjustments, test them using a prototyping tool with a subset of users to validate their effectiveness.
• Continuously collect feedback from customer support, interviews, social media, feature requests, and user reviews. The feedback loop doesn’t end with one round of changes. Keep the channels open for users to share their thoughts on the new iterations.

Tips for Asking the Right Questions

Open-ended vs. closed-ended questions

Open-ended questions allow users to express their feelings, perceptions, and experiences in their own words. These questions delve deeper, extracting qualitative feedback that helps designers grasp the ‘why’ behind user behaviors.

For example, instead of asking, “Did you find the navigation easy?” (a closed-ended question), you could ask, “How did you feel about the navigation experience?” This framing allows users to elaborate, share nuances, and provide richer feedback.

Avoiding leading questions

Leading questions nudge users towards a particular response, contaminating genuine feedback. They often introduce bias, making it challenging for designers to capture unbiased opinions. It’s vital to phrase questions neutrally to ensure the feedback remains unbiased by any presuppositions.

For example, instead of asking, “Do you think our new homepage looks better?” a neutral question would be, “How do you feel about the changes to our homepage?”

Encouraging honest feedback

Creating an environment where users feel comfortable sharing both positive and negative feedback is crucial. Assure users that their opinions, whether good or bad, are valuable and will improve the product. It’s beneficial to emphasize that constructive criticism is welcome.

For example, instead of asking, “How was your experience with our platform?” you could frame it as, “We’re looking for ways to improve. Could you share what you liked and where we can improve?”

Being specific in queries

Precise questions can lead to more actionable insights. Vague questions might leave users confused or unsure about how to answer. You can extract detailed feedback that directly informs your design decisions by targeting specific aspects or functionalities of your design.

For example, rather than asking, “Do you like our website?” a more specific query might be, “What are your thoughts on the checkout process on our website?” This framing narrows the focus and prompts users to think about that feature.

Example of User Feedback in UX Design

A music streaming app was facing consistent drop-offs on its sign-up page. User conversion remained suboptimal despite an intuitive interface and a compelling value proposition. The UX team initiated user interviews and usability testing sessions to get to the root of the issue.

During these sessions, a recurring theme emerged: users felt overwhelmed by the many data fields they had to fill in on the registration page. Additionally, they were uncertain about how the company would use or share their data, leading to trust concerns.

The product team took several steps to incorporate this feedback:

1. Simplified the Sign-up Process: The team reduced the number of mandatory fields during onboarding, asking only for essential information. They moved secondary user details to the profile completion stage post-sign-up.
2. Added Tooltips and Information: Designers added tooltips to input fields explaining why the company needed specific data and assured users of its confidentiality.
3. Implemented Progressive Disclosure: Instead of presenting all information at once, designers used progressive disclosure techniques. The interface shows users just enough content to complete the immediate task, offering more details when requested–i.e., accordions, dropdowns, popups, etc.

Post-implementation, the app saw a significant rise in successful sign-ups, with a 30% increase in conversions from the registration page. Feedback loops with real users highlighted the pain points, and the swift incorporation of this feedback led to tangible improvements in user experience and conversion rates.

Incorporating Feedback With UXPin

UXPin’s advanced design features enable design teams to create prototype experiences that look and feel like the final product. These immersive prototypes elicit high-quality, actionable feedback for designers to make accurate adjustments and fixes during the design process.

With UXPin’s Comments, designers can share feedback from users and stakeholders and assign them to specific team members for action. As designers make changes, they can resolve comments for further testing and iterating.

Collect accurate feedback with UXPin’s advanced prototypes to enhance your product’s user experience faster than traditional design tools. Sign up for a free trial to build your first interactive prototype with UXPin.

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Assumptions mapping is important because it creates awareness of team members’ assumptions and potential associated risks. By making assumptions explicit and visible, teams can critically evaluate their validity and test them through research and validation methods. This approach fosters a more user-centered, data-driven design process, improving outcomes and user experiences.

Test your user assumptions and get meaningful results with interactive prototypes from UXPin, an end-to-end design tool for creating advanced prototypes and handing them off to development. Sign up for a free trial.

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What is Assumptions Mapping?

Assumptions mapping is a technique used in product design to identify, analyze, and validate the assumptions made during the design process.

It involves systematically uncovering the underlying beliefs and hypotheses that influence design decisions and mapping them for better visibility. This technique removes guesswork from the design process and replaces it with evidence-based insights to develop better product experiences.

Common types of assumptions

• User Behavior Assumptions: Assumptions about how users interact with the product, their preferences, motivations, and needs.
• Technology Assumptions: Assumptions about the capabilities and limitations of the underlying technology, such as platform compatibility or data processing speed.
• Business Assumptions: Assumptions about the market, target audience, competitors, and business goals, including assumptions about user demand and willingness to pay.
• Design Assumptions: Assumptions about the effectiveness of specific design choices, such as the placement of elements, color schemes, or visual hierarchy.
• Context Assumptions: Assumptions about the broader context in which the product will be used, including the user’s environment, cultural factors, or regulatory constraints.

The Consequences of Unaddressed Assumptions

How unaddressed assumptions can lead to design failures

Unaddressed assumptions can lead to design failures by introducing risks and uncertainties into the design process. Designers may base their product decisions on inaccurate or incomplete information when assumptions go unchallenged and unvalidated, leading to ineffective or irrelevant solutions. 

Unaddressed assumptions can result in misaligned designs that fail to meet user needs, resulting in poor user experiences and low user satisfaction. By ignoring assumptions, designers risk investing time and resources in designs that don’t address the real problems or resonate with the target audience, ultimately leading to design failures.

Negative impact on user experience and product adoption

Unaddressed assumptions can harm user experience and product adoption. When assumptions about user behavior, preferences, or needs are left unverified, designers risk creating experiences that don’t meet user expectations. This misalignment can lead to frustration, confusion, and a lack of engagement with the product.

Unaddressed assumptions can also hinder product adoption, as users may find it difficult to understand or navigate the product due to unvalidated assumptions.

The Benefits of Assumptions Mapping

• Improved design decision-making: Assumptions mapping enables informed and data-driven design decisions by challenging and validating underlying assumptions.
• Enhanced user understanding and empathy: By challenging user assumptions, designers gain a deeper understanding of their needs, preferences, and behaviors, leading to more empathetic design solutions.
• Mitigating risks and reducing design iterations: Assumptions mapping helps identify potential risks and uncertainties early, minimizing the need for extensive design iterations and reducing the likelihood of design failures.
• Fostering collaboration and shared understanding within teams: Assumptions mapping promotes collaboration, shared understanding, and effective communication among team members and stakeholders, leading to a more harmonious and cohesive design process.

Challenges in Assumptions Mapping

• Identifying implicit assumptions: Teams may struggle to uncover deeply ingrained or implicit assumptions. Overcoming this challenge requires fostering a culture of open communication and critical thinking, encouraging team members to question and challenge underlying assumptions.
• Prioritizing assumptions: With limited time and resources, teams must prioritize which assumptions to focus on. To overcome this challenge, teams can use criteria such as impact on user experience, risk level, or alignment with project goals to determine which assumptions are most critical and require further validation.
• Validating assumptions: Validating assumptions can be challenging, especially concerning user research or testing. Teams can overcome this challenge by conducting thorough user research, using various validation methods such as interviews, surveys, or usability testing from diverse users.
• Addressing resistance to change: Some team members may resist challenging existing assumptions or adopting a new approach. To overcome this challenge, teams should foster a collaborative and inclusive environment, encouraging open discussions, providing evidence-based arguments, and showcasing the benefits of assumptions mapping in improving design outcomes.
• Iterative process: Assumptions mapping is an ongoing process that may require multiple iterations. Teams should embrace an iterative mindset, continuously reviewing and updating assumptions as new insights emerge and adapting the design accordingly. Regular team communication and feedback loops can help address challenges and ensure continuous improvement.

How to Get Started With Assumptions Mapping

Here is a foundational framework for creating an assumptions map.

Step 1: Identify and articulate assumptions

Begin by identifying the assumptions that underlie your design or product. These are your team’s beliefs or expectations about users, their behaviors, and the problem you’re solving. 

It’s a good idea to hold design thinking workshops or brainstorming sessions with diverse team members to gather assumptions from across the organization. Articulate these assumptions clearly to gain a shared understanding among team members.

Step 2: Prioritize assumptions for mapping

Once you have a list of assumptions, prioritize them based on their potential impact on the design and the level of uncertainty surrounding them. Focus on the assumptions that have the highest risk or those that are critical to the success of your design to allocate resources and attention effectively.

Step 3: Create an assumptions map

Visualize the assumptions using an assumptions map using a diagram, matrix, or other visual representation. This map helps you see your assumption relationships and how they interact. 

The assumptions map provides a holistic view of the landscape, aiding analysis and decision-making. 

For example, an assumptions map for the mobile banking app might show the interdependencies between assumptions about user security concerns, user familiarity with mobile banking, and user preferences for transaction speed.

Step 4: Validate assumptions through research and testing

Conduct research and testing to validate the assumptions identified in the previous steps. This process involves gathering data, user feedback, and insights to determine the accuracy and validity of the assumptions.

Designers use research methods, including user interviews, surveys, usability testing, or analytics, to gather evidence and challenge assumptions.

Tools and Techniques for Assumptions Mapping

Affinity mapping

Affinity mapping organizes and analyzes a large amount of information or assumptions. It involves grouping related assumptions into categories or themes to uncover patterns and insights.

For example, after conducting assumption mapping sessions, the team can use sticky notes or digital whiteboards to group similar assumptions, such as user preferences, technology limitations, or market trends. This visual representation facilitates discussions and prioritization of assumptions for further validation.

Desirability, feasibility, and viability framework

Mural outlines a framework for mapping assumptions using the desirability, feasibility, and viability design thinking methodology developed by former Precoil CEO David J Bland:

• Desirability assumptions: Do They? – is this what users want?
• Viability assumptions: Should We? – assess whether you should do this. i.e., why hasn’t it been done before?
• Feasibility assumptions: Can We? – does the organization have the resources?

This framework is also excellent for testing business ideas or developing unique value propositions. Teams map these assumptions to visualize them and identify trends, patterns, and areas of focus. 

Mural’s assumptions mapping webinar provides a high-level overview of this desirability, feasibility, and viability framework and why it’s important for developing new products.

User research and feedback

User research and feedback are essential tools for validating assumptions. Teams gather insights and data to challenge or support their assumptions by directly engaging with users through interviews, surveys, or usability testing. UX research methods like card sorting, diary studies, and service safaris can provide valuable insights into user behavior.

Data analysis and metrics

Data analysis and metrics play a crucial role in assumptions mapping. By analyzing quantitative data, such as website analytics or user engagement metrics, teams can identify patterns and trends that challenge or confirm their assumptions.

For example, tracking user behavior through heatmaps or clickstream data can reveal insights about how users interact with a product or website, shedding light on user flow or navigation assumptions. By using data to inform assumptions, teams can make more data-driven decisions and reduce reliance on guesswork.

Prototyping and usability testing

Prototyping and usability testing allow teams to gather feedback and validate assumptions through real user interactions. Teams use interactive prototypes to observe how users interact with the design and gather insights about potential assumptions. 

For example, usability testing can help identify assumptions about a user interface’s intuitiveness or the content’s clarity. By observing and gathering user feedback, teams can uncover hidden assumptions and iterate on the design to improve user experience.

Integrating Assumptions Mapping into Design Processes

Incorporating assumptions mapping in agile and iterative workflows

Teams can seamlessly integrate assumptions mapping into agile and iterative design processes, enabling teams to address them at different stages of development. 

For example, during the sprint planning phase in an agile workflow, the team can identify and prioritize assumptions that need validation and allocate time for research or testing activities. This iterative approach allows continuous learning and refinement throughout the design and development cycle.

Collaborative approaches to assumptions mapping within cross-functional teams

Assumptions mapping is most effective when done collaboratively within cross-functional teams. You can tap into diverse perspectives and expertise by involving stakeholders from different disciplines, such as designers, researchers, product managers, and developers. 

For example, conducting assumption mapping workshops where team members collectively identify and discuss assumptions fosters shared understanding and generates valuable insights. This collaborative approach ensures that assumptions are thoroughly examined and helps build a culture of shared ownership and accountability for the design’s success.

Testing Assumptions With UXPin’s Interactive Prototypes

Interactive prototypes are crucial for testing assumptions, allowing product teams to simulate user interactions and gather valuable feedback early in the design process. Teams can observe how users navigate user interfaces, interact with features, and uncover usability issues or gaps in their assumptions. With UXPin, design teams can create fully interactive prototypes that look and feel like the final product. 

Some of UXPin’s key prototyping features include:

• States: allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like dropdown menus, tab menus, navigational drawers, and more.
• Variables: capture data from user inputs and create personalized, dynamic user experiences–like their name and profile image in the app bar.
• Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
• Conditional Interactions: create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to replicate the final product experience accurately.

Increase prototype fidelity and functionality with the world’s most advanced UX design tool. Sign up for a free trial to build your first interactive prototype with UXPin.

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User needs are the specific requirements and expectations of users that a product or service should fulfill to provide value and enhance their experience. These needs represent users’ perspectives, goals, motivations, pain points, and other human factors.

By identifying and addressing user needs, UX designers can create relevant, usable, and possible solutions for the target audience. User needs help define the scope and direction of the product development process, influencing key decisions such as functionality, features, layout, and interaction design.

Understanding user needs also enables designers to prioritize design elements, allocate resources effectively, and make informed design decisions. Make better design decisions with UXPin’s interactive prototypes. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced features.

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Desk research

Desk research (secondary research) is valuable for gathering information and insights to understand user needs based on existing data from various internal and external sources. This data can come from published materials, academic papers, industry reports, social media, online resources, and other third-party data sources.

User interviews

Interviews are a widely used user research method that involves direct conversations with end users to gather insights, understand their perspectives, and uncover their needs. 

Researchers ask questions and prompt participants to share their experiences, opinions, and expectations about a product or service. Interviews provide rich qualitative data and allow researchers to delve deeper into users’ thoughts and emotions.

• Structured interviews: follow a predetermined set of questions and a fixed order, allowing for consistency and comparability in data collection. They help gather specific information from participants systematically.
• Semi-structured interviews: offer more flexibility, combining predefined questions with the freedom to explore additional topics and follow up on participants’ responses. This approach encourages participants to express themselves more freely, providing richer insights.
• User story interviews: focus on understanding users’ goals, motivations, and behaviors by having them narrate their experiences through storytelling. These interviews capture the user’s journey and provide valuable context for understanding their needs and expectations.

Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular user research methods that systematically collect data from many participants. Surveys typically consist of questions designed to gather quantitative or qualitative data about users’ preferences, opinions, behaviors, and demographics. 

They provide researchers with a structured approach to gathering insights from a broader audience, allowing for statistical analysis and identification of trends.

• Surveys: allow researchers to reach a wide audience and collect data efficiently, providing quantitative insights. Surveys are beneficial for gathering feedback on specific features, user satisfaction, or demographic information.
• Likert scale questionnaires: use a series of statements or items with response options, allowing participants to rate their level of agreement or disagreement. This method provides researchers with quantitative data to statistically analyze user preferences, perceptions, or attitudes.

Observation and field studies

Observation and field studies are user research methods that directly observe users in their natural environment to gain insights into their behaviors, needs, and experiences.

Researchers can gather rich qualitative data that helps uncover user needs and understand the context in which people use products or services.

• Contextual inquiry: combines observation and interviewing techniques to understand users’ workflows and the context in which they perform tasks. Researchers observe users in their work or living environment and engage in conversations to gain deeper insights into their needs, motivations, and challenges.
• Ethnographic research: involves immersing oneself in the users’ cultural or social context to better understand their behaviors, values, and norms. Researchers spend an extended period with the users, observing and participating in their daily activities, to uncover deep insights that influence design decisions.
• Diary studies: involve participants documenting their experiences, behaviors, or interactions over time. Participants record their thoughts, activities, and emotions in a diary or journal, providing researchers with detailed and longitudinal data. Diary studies offer insights into users’ daily lives, habits, and pain points, helping to identify patterns and uncover unmet needs.

Focus groups

Focus groups are small groups of participants engaging in a guided discussion about a specific topic or product. This method allows researchers to collect qualitative data by leveraging group dynamics and participant interactions. 

Participants can share their opinions, ideas, and experiences in a focus group, providing valuable insights into user needs and preferences.

1. Plan and conduct effective focus groups by defining clear objectives, selecting appropriate participants, creating a discussion guide, and facilitating the session effectively. Creating a comfortable and inclusive environment encourages participants to express their thoughts and opinions freely.
2. Analyze and synthesize focus group data to identify patterns, themes, and key insights. This analysis involves transcribing or reviewing the discussion, extracting meaningful data points, and organizing them into categories. Researchers can use affinity mapping or thematic analysis techniques to make sense of the data and draw meaningful conclusions.

Usability testing

Usability testing evaluates a product or interface’s usability and user experience. It involves observing users performing specific tasks and providing feedback on their interactions. Usability testing helps identify usability issues, understand user behavior, and gather insights for improving the design.

• Moderated usability testing: a researcher facilitates the session and guides participants through predefined tasks while observing their interactions and gathering feedback. The researcher can ask follow-up questions, clarify uncertainties, and delve deeper into participants’ thoughts and experiences.
• Remote usability testing: researchers use video conferencing or screen-sharing tools to observe their interactions and gather feedback.
• Thinking aloud: participants are encouraged to verbalize their thoughts, feelings, and decision-making processes as they navigate a digital product. This narration provides valuable insights into users’ cognitive processes and helps uncover usability issues.

Data Analysis and Synthesis

Data analysis and synthesis is a crucial step in user research that involves organizing, examining, and interpreting the collected data to derive meaningful insights.

Qualitative analysis

UX researchers use qualitative analysis methods to analyze and make sense of qualitative data, such as interview transcripts, observation notes, and open-ended survey responses.

• Thematic analysis involves identifying and categorizing recurring themes, patterns, and concepts within the qualitative data. Researchers review the data, generate codes or labels to represent key ideas, and then group similar codes into broader themes to identify meaningful patterns.
• Affinity diagrams organize qualitative data by grouping related ideas or concepts. Researchers write each finding on sticky notes and then arrange and rearrange them on a wall or board to discover connections and identify patterns or themes.
• Narrative analysis examines the structure, content, and meaning of individual stories participants share. Researchers analyze the storytelling elements, underlying themes, and narrative arcs to gain insights into users’ experiences, perspectives, and motivations.

Quantitative analysis

Quantitative analysis methods analyze numerical data and metrics collected through surveys, questionnaires, and quantitative research studies.

• Statistical analysis applies various statistical techniques to analyze and interpret quantitative data. Researchers use measures of central tendency, dispersion, correlation, and statistical tests to identify data relationships, trends, and patterns.
• Data visualization represents quantitative data using charts, graphs, and other visual representations. Visualizing data helps researchers and stakeholders easily understand patterns, trends, and relationships within the data.
• Pattern recognition helps identify recurring patterns, trends, or anomalies within quantitative data. Researchers look for clusters, outliers, or other patterns that can provide insights into user behavior, preferences, or trends.

Combining multiple methods

Combining multiple research methods enables researchers to validate ideas and identify user needs from various sources, providing more accurate and reliable data.

• Triangulation: Combining multiple user research methods, such as interviews, observations, and surveys, to cross-validate findings and increase the reliability and validity of the data.
• Mixed-methods approach: Integrating qualitative and quantitative research methods, such as combining interviews with surveys or usability testing with analytics, to comprehensively understand user needs and obtain richer insights.

Integrating User Needs into Design

Designers analyze and interpret user research findings to identify specific design requirements that address user needs. These requirements serve as guidelines for the design process, ensuring that the resulting solutions align with user expectations and user-centered design principles.

Designers create several documents and visualizations to guide the design process, including user need statements, personas, case studies, and other UX artifacts.

Design teams also meet with stakeholders to integrate business goals and user needs. They must consider user feedback, conduct usability testing, and incorporate iterative feedback loops to achieve the right balance. This iterative approach allows designers to continuously refine their solutions based on user needs, preferences, and feedback.

Advanced Prototyping and Testing With UXPin

UXPin’s advanced prototyping features enable design teams to build accurate replicas of the final product. These fully interactive prototypes allow designers to observe and analyze user behavior, preferences, and pain points, validating whether designs effectively address user needs.

Users and stakeholders can interact with user interfaces like they would the final product, giving designers meaningful, actionable insights to iterate and improve.

Whether you’re a startup looking to validate a new product idea or an enterprise team looking to scale your DesignOps, UXPin has a solution for your business. Sign up for a free trial to explore the world’s most advanced UX design tool.

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Desk research typically serves as a starting point for design projects, providing designers with the knowledge to guide their approach and help them make informed design choices.

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What is Desk Research?

Desk research (secondary research or literature review) refers to gathering and analyzing existing data from various sources to inform design decisions for UX projects. It’s usually the first step in a design project as it’s cost-effective and informs where teams may need to dig deeper.

This data can come from published materials, academic papers, industry reports, online resources, and other third-party data sources. UX designers or researchers use this information to supplement data, learn about certain markets/user groups, explore industry trends, understand specific topics, or navigate design challenges.

The importance of desk research in the design process

Desk research gives designers a comprehensive understanding of the context, users, and existing solutions. It allows designers to gather valuable insights without conducting primary research which can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.

Desk research helps designers better understand the problem space, explore best practices and industry trends, and identify potential design opportunities without reinventing the wheel while learning from others’ mistakes.

Primary Research vs. Secondary Research

• Primary research: new and original data from first-hand sources collected by the team, such as questionnaires, interviews, field research, or experiments, specifically for a particular research project.
• Secondary research: utilizing existing data sets and information that others have collected, including books, articles, reports, and databases.

Primary and secondary research complement each other in comprehensively understanding a topic or problem. While primary research provides new first-party data specifically for a project’s goals, secondary data leverages existing knowledge and resources to gain insights.

What is the Purpose of Desk Research?

Understanding the problem or design challenge

Desk research helps designers comprehensively understand the problem or design challenge. By reviewing existing knowledge and information, designers can grasp the context, identify pain points, and define the scope of their design project.

For example, when tasked with designing a new mobile banking app, desk research can provide insights into user preferences, common challenges in the banking industry, and emerging trends in mobile banking.

Gathering background information

Desk research allows designers to gather background information related to their design project. It helps them explore the domain, industry, target audience, and relevant factors that may influence their design decisions. 

For example, when designing a fitness-tracking app, desk research may involve collecting information about fitness activities, wearable technologies, and health guidelines.

Exploring existing solutions and best practices

Desk research enables designers to explore existing solutions and best practices. By studying successful designs, case studies, and industry standards, designers can learn from previous approaches and incorporate proven techniques.

For example, when creating a website’s navigation menu, desk research can involve analyzing navigation patterns used by popular websites to ensure an intuitive user experience.

Identifying trends and patterns

Desk research helps designers identify trends and patterns within the industry or user behavior. Designers examine market reports, user surveys, and industry publications to identify trends, emerging technologies, and user preferences.

For example, when designing a smart home app, desk research can involve analyzing market trends in connected devices and user expectations for seamless integration.

Informing decision-making and design choices

Desk research provides designers valuable insights that inform their decision-making and design choices. It helps designers make informed design decisions based on existing knowledge, data, and research findings.

For example, when selecting a color palette for a brand’s website, desk research can involve studying color psychology, cultural associations, and industry trends to ensure the chosen colors align with the brand’s values and resonate with the target audience.

Secondary Research Methods and Techniques

Researchers use these methods individually or in combination, depending on the specific design project and research objectives. They select and adapt these based on the nature of the problem, available resources, and desired outcomes.

• Literature review: gathers and analyzes relevant data from academic and research publications, government agencies, educational institutions, books, articles, and online resources (i.e., Google Scholar, social media, etc.). It helps designers gain a deeper understanding of existing knowledge, theories, and perspectives on the subject matter.
• Market research: studying and analyzing market reports, industry trends, consumer behavior, and demographic data. It provides valuable insights into the target market, user preferences, emerging trends, and potential opportunities for design solutions.
• Competitor analysis: examines and evaluates the products, services, and strategies of competitors in the market. By studying competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and unique selling points, designers can identify gaps, potential areas for improvement, and opportunities to differentiate their designs.
• User research analysis: User research analysis involves reviewing and analyzing data collected from various user research methods, such as surveys, interviews, and usability testing. It helps designers gain insights into user needs, preferences, pain points, and behaviors, which inform the design decisions and enhance the user-centeredness of the final product.
• Data analysis: processing and interpreting quantitative and qualitative data from various sources, such as surveys, analytics, and user feedback. It helps designers identify patterns, trends, and correlations in the data, which can guide decision-making and inform design choices.

How to Conduct Desk Research

Defining research objectives and questions

Start by defining the research objectives and formulating specific research questions. A clear goal will inform the type and method of secondary research.

For example, if you’re designing a mobile app for fitness tracking, your research objective might be to understand user preferences for workout-tracking features. Your research question could be: “What are the most commonly used workout tracking features in popular fitness apps?”

Identifying and selecting reliable sources

Identify relevant and reliable sources of information that align with your research objectives. These sources include academic journals, industry reports, reputable websites, and case studies.

For example, you might refer to academic journals and industry reports on fitness technology trends and user behavior to gather reliable insights for your research.

Collecting and analyzing relevant information

Collect information from the selected sources and carefully analyze it to extract key insights. 

For example, you could collect data on user preferences for workout-tracking features by reviewing user reviews of existing fitness apps, analyzing market research reports, and studying user surveys conducted by fitness-related organizations.

Organizing and synthesizing findings

Organize the research data and synthesize the findings to identify common themes, patterns, and trends.

For example, you might categorize the collected data based on different workout tracking features, identify the most frequently mentioned features, and analyze user feedback to understand the reasons behind their preferences.

Limitations and Considerations of Secondary Research

Considering these desk research limitations and considerations allows designers to approach it with a critical mindset, apply appropriate methodologies to address potential biases, and supplement it with other research methods when necessary.

• Potential bias in sources: Desk research heavily relies on existing information, which may come from biased or unreliable sources. It is essential to critically evaluate the credibility and objectivity of the sources used to minimize the risk of incorporating biased information into the research findings.
• Limited access to certain information: Desk research may have limitations in accessing certain types of information, such as proprietary data or sensitive industry insights. This limited access can restrict the depth of the research and may require designers to rely on alternative sources or approaches to fill the gaps.
• Lack of real-time data: Desk research uses existing data and information, which may not always reflect the most up-to-date or current trends. It is essential to consider the data’s publication date and recognize that certain aspects of the research may require complementary methods, such as user research or market surveys, to capture real-time insights.
• Necessary cross-referencing and triangulation: Given the potential limitations and biases in individual sources, it is crucial to cross-reference information from multiple sources and employ triangulation techniques. This due diligence helps validate the findings and ensures a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the subject matter.

Test Research Findings With UXPin’s Interactive Prototypes

Secondary research is the first step. Design teams must test and validate ideas with end-users using prototypes. With UXPin’s built-in design libraries, designers can build fully functioning prototypes using patterns and components from leading design systems, including Material Design, iOS, Bootstrap, and Foundation.

UXPin’s prototypes allow usability participants and stakeholders to interact with user interfaces and features like they would the final product, giving design teams high-quality insights to iterate and improve efficiency with better results.

These four key features set UXPin apart from traditional image-based design tools:

• States: create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like dropdown menus, tab menus, navigational drawers, and more.
• Variables: create personalized, dynamic prototype experiences by capturing data from user inputs and using it throughout the prototype–like a personalized welcome message or email confirmation.
• Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
• Conditional Interactions: create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to replicate the final product experience accurately.

Gain valuable insights with fully functioning prototypes to validate UX research hypotheses and make better design decisions. Sign up for a free trial to build your first interactive prototype with UXPin.

The post What is Desk Research? Definition & Useful Tools appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Well-designed microinteractions enhance the user experience by providing reinforcement and feedback. Without microinteractions, user interfaces would be dull and lifeless.

Like it or not, digital products play on human psychology. When you see the flashing “typing…” in chat or social media apps, you want to stick around to see what the person’s going to say.

These microinteractions keep users engaged, so they’re more likely to continue using the product, make a purchase, or share a positive brand experience.

Microinteractions can also distract or impede the user from completing user flows, resulting in a negative experience.

Finding the right balance comes down to UX teams testing high-fidelity prototypes with end-users through usability studies and feedback from stakeholders.

If you want to speed up the process of adding interactions, use UXPin Merge to have UX designers create high-fidelity prototypes using fully interactive components from a Git repository or Storybook. By using code-based prototypes, UX teams can test the exact microinteractions used in the final product. Get started with a free trial to experience advanced prototyping with UXPin today!

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What Are Microinteractions?

Microinteractions provide feedback based on triggers from the system (system-initiated triggers) or end-user (user-initiated triggers). This feedback helps users know when a task is completed or alerts them when action is required.

Microinteractions work in trigger-feedback pairs. First the trigger, then the feedback in acknowledgment:

• Trigger: user action or system state change
• Feedback: visual, audio, haptic changes to the user interface

An excellent example of a microinteraction we mindlessly use every day is swiping away preview notifications. If you receive a notification while using your mobile, you often swipe it, and the notification popup slides off the screen.

In the above example, we can define the microinteraction trigger-feedback as:

• Trigger: user swipes the notification popup
• Feedback: notification slides off the screen

The notification appearing in a popup is also a microinteraction.

• Trigger: system receives a notification
• Feedback: notification popup animation

The notification popup is a fantastic example of a microinteraction serving more than one purpose:

• Helpful: notifies the user of a new message
• Marketing: encourages the user to use the product that sent the notification

The Four Stages of Microinteractions

To the user, microinteractions happen as trigger-feedback. But as product design teams and engineers know, there’s more happening behind the scenes.

There are four stages or parts of a microinteraction:

• Trigger: user action or system state change
• Conditions: system rules that define what microinteraction is triggered
• Feedback: visual, audio, haptic changes to the user interface
• Loops & Modes: those are the meta-rules of the microinteraction and determine what happens once the microinteraction is complete—state or UI changes (modes) and how long it will last (loops)

UXPin provides UX designers with various user-initiated triggers, including click/tap, mouse actions, and gestures. You can also set “if-then” conditions for the prototype’s next actions (including microinteractions)—similar to running a Javascript function.

Try it for yourself. Sign up for a free UXPin trial to play with the world’s most advanced prototyping tool.

Why Are Microinteractions Important?

Microinteractions allow a brand to communicate with the user—providing clarity, validation, brand engagement, and more.

Provide Clarity & System Feedback

For example, when you pull down on your Instagram feed (or most apps), a loading animation appears at the top to indicate that the system is working to refresh the feed.

Without that microinteraction, the user wouldn’t know if the system had A, complied with their action, or B, completed the task.

Take Action

Microinteractions also help guide users to take action. The most common of which is a call to action, such as the “add to cart” microinteraction that we see in eCommerce.

When a shopper adds a product to their cart, the cart icon jiggles or changes color in the header. In some cases, the cart might slide in from the side of the screen—prompting the user to checkout.

Branding

Microinteractions also enhance the brand experience. Those small moments provide the user with positive reinforcement or they are a fun animation.

A great use case for this is DuckDuckGo’s app experience. If you’ve ever used DuckDuckGo’s app, when you click Clear All Tabs And Data, a flame appears to indicate that the browser has erased your browsing history.

This microinteraction affirms DuckDuckGo’s commitment to providing users with browsing privacy and blocking tracking cookies.

More Examples of the Importance of Microinteractions

• Improve navigation and user flows
• Provide prompts and direction—especially during the onboarding stage
• Indicate or prevent user errors—a red highlight around a required incomplete form field
• Encourage engagement and sharing

Types of Microinteractions

The possibilities are endless when it comes to microinteractions. UX designers often have fun showcasing their creativity while designing microinteractions.

These are some of the most common examples of microinteractions and how they enhance the user experience.

Mouse Hover Effects

Mouse hover effects are some of the most common microinteractions for desktop users. These microinteractions can provide clarity through tooltips or change the cursor to indicate a clickable element.

Hover microinteractions can also initiate or stop image carousels or preview a video, so the user can “browse” across the screen before deciding where they want to click.

Click/Tap Effects

Most interactions occur when a user clicks or taps an element on the screen. There are endless microinteractions and possibilities for click/tap interactions, but most of the time, they provide a way to navigate through a product or website.

Click/tap actions might trigger a microinteraction on the element, like a button press effect, triggering a page slide transition to show the user they’ve navigated to another screen—typical microinteractions for an eCommerce checkout flow.

Tap/Click and Hold Effects

Tap and hold microinteractions are fantastic alternatives to dropdown menus, especially for mobile devices with limited screen space. Users can tap and hold an element to get more options—usually activating a popup with some sort of microinteraction.

A perfect example is Facebook’s like button. On desktop, you can hover over the like button for more post reactions. You don’t have a mouse cursor on mobile, so you must tap and hold the thumbs up button to get the same functionality.

Haptic Feedback

Apart from visual feedback that we discussed, mobile apps and gaming controllers feature haptic feedback—vibrations that correspond to a user or system action.

Games often use haptic feedback for action sequences, like when you’re getting shot or punched. These vibrations create an immersive experience where the user hears, sees, and feels what’s happening on screen.

If you use thumbprint biometrics on your smartphone, you’ll feel a slight vibration under your thumb if the authentication fails. This haptic microinteraction lets you know that you must reposition your thumb and try again.

Data Input & Progress Microinteractions

Microinteractions are highly effective for data input and progress. Often when you create a new password, a progress bar will appear starting from “weak” and progressing to “strong” or “very strong” as you go.

The Signup or Confirm button might also remain shaded dark/unclickable and illuminate once you have created a strong enough password to proceed.

Progress bars at the top of a flow can tell users how far they still have to go to the confirmation page. The bar might animate or change a different shade as they progress to encourage completion.

Swipe/Slide Microinteractions

UX designers often use slide microinteractions, such as scroll bar, to indicate movement or navigation. These microinteractions are most effective on mobile but also work well on desktop screens for image carousels, sales funnels, and checkout flows.

On mobile devices, swiping can replace tapping for smoother, faster navigation. Slide microinteractions work well with swipes because they correspond to the action.

An excellent example of slide microinteractions is the swipe left or right on dating apps. As the user swipes, the potential match slides off-screen. If it’s a match, the app rewards the user with “It’s a Match” microinteraction and a button or link to start chatting.

System Feedback

Microinteractions play a crucial role in communicating system feedback to the user. Spinning loading icons are the most common system microinteractions. These microinteractions let the user know to wait while the app or website is loading.

Without the spinning icon, the user might think the app has crashed, or they might keep clicking or tapping, resulting in multiple server requests.

Message notifications are also great examples of system feedback. The app receives a new message (from another user) and alerts you to open the app.

Effective Microinteractions Enhance UX

We’ve demonstrated the importance of microinteractions and how to use them to enhance the user experience. Like anything, less is more. Don’t overuse microinteractions or create long, unnecessary animations that slow user progress or derail users’ attention.

UX designers must use feedback from usability studies to determine where users might need microinteractions to help with navigation or if they’re missing vital instructions—like creating a strong password.

Creating Microinteractions for Your UXPin Prototypes

UXPin provides UX designers with Triggers, Conditions, and Interactions to create immersive user experiences for their high-fidelity prototypes.

You can also create variables to personalize microinteractions. For example, capturing a user’s name from a signup form to personalize a welcome animation when the user signs in successfully.

You can also activate page transitions, show/hide elements, toggle, set state, create an API request, and much more. UXPin provides the tools and flexibility for UX teams to exercise their creativity by building fully functioning high-fidelity prototypes.

Get started designing your next prototype with UXPin. We offer a 14-day free trial to let you experience the power of prototyping with the world’s most advanced code-based design tool.

The post Powerful Microinteractions to Improve Your Prototypes appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Design teams commonly use Jakob Nielsen’s heuristics to evaluate human-computer interaction because they provide a comprehensive user experience audit.

A heuristic evaluation explores ten critical facets of a product’s user experience, allowing design teams to focus on specific usability problems within user interfaces and interactions.

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What is a Heuristic Evaluation (Heuristic Analysis)?

Heuristic refers to problem-solving and self-education, usually through trial and error. In UX design, heuristics describes the cognitive load or mental capacity required to make decisions and complete tasks. Designers use usability testing to evaluate heuristics and identify issues for fixing.

There are ten usability heuristics, and a heuristic evaluation assesses these to identify a product’s usability performance. These usability heuristics come from Jakob Nielsen’s (co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group) ten general principles for interaction design which he devised in the early 1990s.

10 Usability Heuristics

Jakob Nielsen created the ten usability heuristics based on research from two other UX and engineering experts, including:

• Gerhardt-Powals Cognitive Engineering Principles
• Ben Shneiderman’s Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design

Visibility of system status

Designers use system status indicators for a range of interactions and user tasks. For example, the battery icon on your mobile phone displays the battery life status. This battery life indicator is crucial because it informs users whether they have enough power and when to charge the device. Without it, the device would die intermittently without warning, causing frustration for end-users.

Visibility of system status is crucial for visual feedback–what happens when a user interacts with a component (click/tap, hover, swipe, etc.) or completes an action, like submitting a form? The system must provide feedback to inform the user that something is happening or that it has executed a task.

The following user interface design elements are great examples of visibility of system status:

• Progress trackers on forms
• Loading icons
• System messages (success, warning, error, etc.)
• Badges on shopping carts, text apps, etc.
• App notifications

Designers must be careful not to overwhelm users with system status updates and only provide feedback when it’s relevant and necessary.

Match between the system and the real world

There are two rules within match between the system and the real world:

• Speak the user’s language
• Follow real-world conventions

Firstly content designers must always use obvious words and language. Facebook’s “News Feed” and “Photo Tagging” are excellent examples of speaking the user’s language. In a podcast with Lex Friedman, early Facebook exec. Chamath Palihapitiya describes how the company chose the most obvious names for Facebook’s features to ensure people knew what they did.

Connected to language are real-world conventions–mimicking real-world experiences and interactions in a digital product. For example, an eBook experience is similar to a physical book, where users can turn pages, highlight text, and add bookmarks.

Matching the system to the real world makes user experiences obvious, reducing the cognitive load required to navigate products and complete tasks. This obviousness is especially important for people learning technology, the elderly, and users with cognitive disabilities.

User control and freedom

Designers must provide exits and offramps for users through edit, undo, redo, back, cancel, etc. The freedom for users to rectify a mistake or change their minds is crucial for a good user experience.

This freedom is especially important regarding financial decisions like purchases or changing a paid service. Giving users this freedom and control builds trust while minimizing fears of exploring a product and its features.

Consistency and standards

There are two facets of consistency and standards:

• Internal
• External

Internal consistency and standards apply to your UIs and components, usually defined by your product’s design system or design language. Designers must follow these internal standards consistently to ensure tasks and actions are always obvious to users.

External consistency and standards refer to globally recognized UX patterns. For example, the hamburger icon to open a navigational drawer or the cart/trolly icon for eCommerce websites. Breaking these conventions forces users to learn something new, thus increasing their cognitive load.

Following consistency and standards reduces the need to think about actions so that users can locate content and complete tasks with minimal mental effort.

Error prevention

Error prevention is one of the most critical heuristics. Errors can cause significant distress, especially for irreversible actions–for example, transferring money to the wrong bank account or accidentally deleting something.

Designers use a strategy called cognitive friction, which creates roadblocks to force users to stop and think before completing an action. For example, a dialog popup after a user clicks transfer confirming the amount, recipient’s name, bank account number, and branch code with the option to confirm or cancel the transaction.

Good user experience design creates these friction points to prevent errors and, in some cases, reverse them. For example, saving recently deleted items for 30 days.

Recognition rather than recall

Humans have limited short-term memory, which means we battle to retain information. Designers must make content visible or retrievable, so users don’t have to remember. For example, eCommerce platforms allow shoppers to save their delivery and billing details, so they don’t have to recall these at checkout.

This concept includes simplifying designs, so users don’t have to refer to the documentation or watch a tutorial to use a product. Designers use form labels, menu items, tooltips, placeholder text, and other reminders to help users complete tasks.

Flexibility and efficiency of use

Flexibility and efficiency of use allow users to complete tasks and actions fast while providing more than one way to execute them. The best example of this principle is copying and pasting. Users typically have three options, depending on the application:

• Using the app’s primary navigation, Edit>Copy and Edit>Paste
• Using the mouse’s right-click, right-click Copy, right-click Paste
• Using the keyboard shortcut, CMD/CTRL+C, CMD/CRTL+V

Another example for you Instagrammers is the double tap to like an image instead of tapping the heart/like icon. 

When users first start using a product, they generally use the most obvious default option, i.e., the app’s navigation or icon in Instagram’s case. But as they become more confident, they use shortcuts to maximize efficiency.

Aesthetic and simple design

User interfaces must be aesthetically pleasing and simple so users can focus on the most critical content and actions without distraction. For example, an eCommerce store wouldn’t run ads on its website because A) it would create a busy UI, and B) competitors’ ads would likely appear, taking the user to another offer.

In a bid to convert users by any means necessary, companies often have too many CTAs on their website or landing page–join our mailing list, purchase this product, follow us on Twitter, Like us on Facebook, book a sales call! Too many options overwhelm users resulting in the opposite effect–they leave!

Designers must prioritize content to support the user’s primary goal or task while eliminating irrelevant and distracting UI elements.

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Error messages must do more than alert users to a problem; they must offer an easy solution to fix the problem. This snackbar example from Google’s Material Design adds an “Undo” action in case the user archived an email accidentally.

Google’s Gmail does a similar recovery action after you send an email with a snackbar allowing users to “Undo” sending–”Oh no! I forgot to add the attachment–*Undo–Thank you, Gmail!”

Other examples where designers help user recover include:

• 404 errors with helpful links
• Error messages with a link to activate the solution
• Input field error messages with explicit instructions to fix the problem

Help and documentation

No one likes to leave what they’re doing to read documentation, but often it’s necessary to diagnose the problem and find a solution. Designers can help users by using walkthroughs, tooltips, popovers, and chat to find answers without leaving the page they’re working on. 

Google Docs provides users with a help popup where they can search the product’s documentation to find a solution. Additionally, there is a link to the Google Docs community and an option to report a problem directly to Google.

The documentation must be easy to search and navigate while providing users with helpful, actionable answers. UXPin’s documentation provides users with the most searched help categories and an option to search (with autocomplete). Each section offers images, GIFs, and written instructions to help users find what they need.

How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

With a clear understanding of each usability principle, it’s time to conduct your heuristic evaluation.

The process of carrying out a heuristic evaluation is the same regardless of the industry or nature of the design project.

• Phase one–Planning: the design team uses user research to map the heuristic evaluation. They also delegate tasks and define goals.
• Phase two–Execution: conducting the heuristic evaluation.
• Phase three–Review: synthesize and review the evaluation and design a plan of action.

Planning

First, teams define which heuristics they’ll use and the evaluation methods. These heuristics should be chosen carefully based on market research, previous user testing, and the principles of careful design.

Next, the team must select the evaluators–the usability experts responsible for the evaluation. Evaluators generally work in pairs to reduce bias and spot more usability issues. These small units must assess one heuristic at a time. Simultaneously evaluating multiple heuristics can result in errors.

Executing

1. The first step is briefing the evaluators so that they understand the heuristics they’ll use and how the system functions.
2. The evaluators interact with the system to understand how it works.
3. The evaluators evaluate the system based on pre-determined heuristics, noting any usability issues they encounter.

Reviewing

Evaluators present their findings with recommended actions to fix the problems. The team collates these into one master document where they create and prioritize tasks to fix the usability issues.

Identify more usability problems and fix errors before they make it to end-users with advanced interactive prototyping from UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s sophisticated design tool.

The post Heuristic Evaluation – The Most Informal Usability Inspection Method appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Workshops and design sprints are standard in most design processes. These collaborative exercises allow design teams to get valuable input from multiple departments and stakeholders.

Design facilitation provides the essential planning and framework to ensure these exercises deliver successful outcomes. Facilitators must guide team members through various tasks and activities to achieve the activity’s goals and define the next steps.

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What is Design Facilitation?

Design facilitation involves organizing collaborative activities like design sprints, UX workshops, ideation sessions, etc., to ensure the exercise meets its desired goals and objectives.

Rather than telling people what they must do, design facilitation provides the framework (tools, resources, methodology, parameters, and environment) for the activity to achieve successful outcomes.

These can be designer-only exercises or cross-functional activities where other departments and stakeholders come together to solve design or product problems.

Design Facilitation Skills

These are some of the skillsets of a design facilitator:

• Planning: design facilitators plan and execute events, often involving hiring venues, PA equipment, catering, and other service providers beyond the actual workshop or sprint activities.
• Public speaking: facilitators must be comfortable speaking to a group and, most importantly, capable of disseminating instructions.
• Problem-solving: no plan is perfect, and things often go wrong when planning events. Design facilitators must be problem solvers with contingency plans for any eventuality.
• Enthusiastic/charismatic: people often don’t want to take part in workshops–they do it because they have to. Great facilitators must have the energy and enthusiasm to draw people into the process and encourage participation. 
• Communication: facilitators must articulate information and instructions in multiple mediums (verbally, in writing, visually) so that people understand what to do.
• Active listening: as good communicators, design facilitators use active listening when engaging with participants to make people feel like their feedback is valued.
• Design thinking: a design facilitator must understand design thinking, as many workshop/sprint tools, processes, and frameworks use these foundational user experience principles to achieve desired outcomes.

What does a Design Facilitator do?

Design facilitators are responsible for planning, running, and synthesizing results for design exercises. Here is a basic outline of the design facilitation process from planning to completion.

Engages in early planning

A design facilitator’s first step is understanding the primary goal and deliverables. This information will help determine the format (workshop, design sprint, etc.), tools, environment, and people needed to achieve the desired outcome.

The facilitator meets with design leads and stakeholders to define the purpose and goals of the activity. They use this information to determine other elements, including:

• Outlining an agenda to meet goals and objectives
• Identifying facilitation tools, frameworks, and resources
• Choosing the appropriate workshop exercises (how might we, the 5 whys, storyboarding, collaborative prototyping, etc.)
• Listing the roles (i.e., UI designer, UX designer, product manager, front-end developer, business manager, etc.)

Next, the facilitator sets a date, selects the team, and books a location suitable for the exercise, keeping in mind that this might be a remote activity–for example, a remote design sprint or remote UX workshop.

Selects the team

The size of the team will depend on the exercise. For example, most workshops vary between 7-15 people, while design sprints generally have no more than seven participants.

Design workshops and sprints typically include a cross-functional team with designers, business experts, product managers, engineers, and other stakeholders. The aim is to get diverse perspectives and ideas for the problem you’re trying to solve.

Plans location and logistics

Ideally, the facilitator wants to book a venue close to the participants. This venue might be in the company’s offices or event space nearby. Facilitator Sara Yahyaoui offers three vital tips for selecting a workshop venue:

1. Visit the location ahead of time to see if it’ll suit your workshop’s needs–at the very least, request images and video to explore the space remotely.
2. The venue must have walls, windows, and whiteboards for post-its, storyboarding, paper prototyping, etc.
3. Workshops and sprints require people to move around freely. Sara’s rule is 2-3 chairs for every participant. If you have 30-40 people, ensure the venue has a 100-seat capacity.

Invites team members

Team members usually get advanced notice about the workshop’s date, location, and purpose.

Expert facilitator Dee Scarano from AJ & Smart recommends waiting until a few days (maximum seven days) before introducing yourself, the tools, schedule, etc., so that the information is fresh in people’s minds when they arrive.

Dee’s welcome email includes:

• A brief introduction as the facilitator and her role in the upcoming workshop–i.e., Hi, I’m Dee. I will be the facilitator for the design workshop on July 10.
• A Loom video introduction saying hi to everyone (a personal touch we love).
• Outline the schedule, including the length of the session(s) and any pre-work/homework exercises.
• If it’s a remote workshop, Dee will notify people of the tools (digital whiteboard, video application, etc.) and even share YouTube tutorials showing people how they’ll use these.

Dee’s Pro Tip: If you’re using tools, create a warm up exercise to familiarize them with it. For example, Dee sends a link to a digital whiteboard with post-it notes for participants to fill in their names, roles, and fun a question (i.e., what you learned from your first job ever?).

Dee’s warm up exercise gets people using the tool so they’re familiar with the basics when they arrive for the workshop.

Facilitates the session – welcome and introduction

The design facilitator’s first important task is to start on time. If people are late, you can fill them in during the first break and see if they have any questions.

Tips for opening a workshop:

• Introduce yourself as the facilitator and your role during the proceedings
• Venue formalities–closest toilets, beverage station, break times, meal times & location, and other venue-specific instructions
• Workshop rules–i.e., how to ask questions, not speak over one another, be respectful of ideas, collaborating, etc.
• Introducing each team member (people can do this themselves by stating their name, department/organization, and workshop role)

Facilitates the session – explaining the exercises

With formalities out of the way, it’s time to introduce people to the schedule and exercises. Having run hundreds of workshops, Dee Scarano from AJ & Smart has a simple formula to ensure everyone understands the activity and objective:

• What you are going to do
• Why you are doing it
• How you should do it

For example:

• What: we’re about to do concept sketching
• Why: we’re all going to make individual concept sketches so that we can look at a diverse range of ideas and make a final choice
• How: use a sharpie marker and a piece of paper. Look at previous examples and inspiration and sketch your version of a concept idea clearly on the page

People absorb information differently, including verbal, written, and visual instructions, so offering multiple versions will ensure everyone understands the activity and objectives.

Dee’s Pro Tip: Only give one way to complete the exercise. Through hundreds of workshops, Dee has learned that people produce the best results with specific step-by-step instructions rather than allowing them to do what they feel is best.

For example, participants must “use one sheet of paper and a black marker” for concept sketching instead of “use as many pages as you like and any colors you prefer.”

Facilitates the session

Here is an outline of a design facilitator’s responsibilities once the session is underway:

• Keeping to schedule: an essential task for any facilitator is ensuring everything runs on time, including activities and breaks. The facilitator must always set time limits for exercises and tell participants an exact time–for example, “we have 30 minutes for sketching. You have until 14:30.” Using a centralized clock or timer will help keep everyone in sync.
• Encourage participation: the aim of inviting a diverse team is to get different ideas. Facilitators must encourage everyone to participate. One way is to ask a team member’s perspective based on their expertise–i.e., to an engineer: does this idea align with our product’s technical constraints?
• Discussions and debates: design facilitators must balance free-flowing conversation and ideas with closure to keep things moving toward the workshop’s goals. They must recognize when discussions are too long or irrelevant and push participants to a conclusion–for example, voting on the best solution.
• The decider: a common role for design sprints (but also useful for workshops) for final decision-making–often when there are two strong choices or disagreements. The decider is usually a product owner, CEO, or another high-level stakeholder familiar with the product/project.

Wrapps up and synthesizes the results

At the end of the workshop or sprint, the design facilitator must summarize and document the results with the group, so everyone agrees with the outcome and deliverables. The team might also discuss possible next steps.

Document the workshop by:

• Take pictures of everything and upload them to a shared drive. 
• If you use physical whiteboards, copy the final results to a digital whiteboard (Mural, Miro, Google Jamboard) for future reference.
• Writing a summary report about the workshop and its outcomes.
• Schedule a follow-up session for feedback and progress.

Improve Your Design Facilitation Skills

These resources offer facilitation techniques to improve your skills as a facilitator:

• Workshopper: a vast library of facilitation resources and templates for product design and UX from AJ & Smart
• Facilitation Lab: a weekly virtual meetup from Voltage Control
• International Association of Facilitators: a “global community of facilitators promoting excellence in the use of professional group process facilitation to create engagement and impact.”
• A list of 21 facilitation and workshop books

Use Workshop Insights to Prototype in UXPin

After most workshops and sprints, the next step is to produce a high-fidelity prototype or MVP to test and iterate. UXPin’s advanced end-to-end design tool enables design teams to build prototypes that look and feel like the final product.

With built-in design libraries, designers can go from concept to fully functioning prototype fast! They can use these immersive prototypes that produce meaningful, actionable results from user testing and stakeholders–allowing product teams to iterate faster than traditional image-based design tools.

Turn your workshop ideas into fully-functioning prototypes with the world’s most advanced design tool. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s features today!

The post What is Design Facilitation and How to Host Your First Session? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

User pain points are the foundation for every design project. Solving these problems creates business value while enhancing a product’s usability and desirability.

The best way to identify customer pain points is through comprehensive prototyping and usability testing. Designers use test results, plus insights from other UX research, to iterate on solutions to solve these problems.

Use the user pain points you discover after reading this article and apply them during your prototyping process. Build highly interactive prototypes in UXPin Sign up for a free trial and build your first prototype today.

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What Are User Pain Points?

User pain points are the problems, friction, and bottlenecks users experience during their relationship with a product. These pain points can be directly or indirectly related to the product. For example:

• Direct pain point: the user can’t complete a task
• Indirect pain point: no network connection–can’t log in

While indirect pain points like network issues aren’t a result of product failure, designers must still find ways to minimize problems like this–for example, storing critical information on the user’s device for retrieval offline.

Types of User Pain Points

Sarah Gibbons from the NN Group describes the three levels of user pain points:

• Interaction-level: pain points relating to interactions with an organization’s products and team members.
• Journey-level: pain points pertaining to customer and user journeys.
• Relationship-level: pain points customer experience during their lifetime with a brand.

At each level are four types of pain points:

• Financial
• Product
• Process
• Support

Financial pain points

Financial pain points relate to paywalls and premium services that lock users out. While these financial pain points are frustrating, the company must make money to survive, making them necessary.

One way to alleviate these is to be transparent and avoid “tricking” or frustrating users. For example, many products allow users to start a paid task, but they must upgrade to complete it. This process wastes people’s time and amplifies the financial pain point.

Product pain points

Product pain points relate to quality, performance, and usability issues that cause users frustration while using a product–for example, when users struggle to complete tasks or when an app crashes.

Of the four types, product pain points significantly impact user experience, which ultimately affects other business metrics like conversion rates, retention, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and customer churn.

User research and testing are crucial for identifying and solving product pain points. Designers must also conduct regular UX audits for usability and performance issues.

Process pain points

Process pain points are linked to product pain points but focus on user journeys and navigation rather than individual user interfaces and usability.

The aim is to optimize these processes to ensure users can complete tasks with minimal effort. However, there are exceptions to this rule, like applying cognitive friction for critical tasks and journeys.

Customer journey maps and user testing are key to identifying process pain points and designing solutions.

Support pain points

Support pain points relate to how organizations answer user questions or attend to problems. If users can’t complete tasks due to product issues or comprehension, how do they find solutions?

Organizations use many support layers to help users find solutions:

• Frequently ask questions
• Product documentation
• Product messages (error, warning, success, etc.)
• Brand communities/forums
• Customer support channels

Design teams must ensure users can locate these services when needed and with explicit messaging and instructions to solve problems as soon as possible.

User Pain Points Research Methods

Design teams must use several research methods to find user pain points.

User personas

User personas are a critical first step to understanding whose problems you’re solving. Personas provide design teams with a user overview, including:

• Their backgrounds
• Goals
• Motivations
• Frustrations (pain points)
• Demographics

Product data

Product analytics, heatmaps, and other data help design teams identify problems and bottlenecks. This data is important for understanding how, when, and where pain points occur.

User interviews

User interviews help fill in the blanks and understand why users experience a specific problem. Designers ask open-ended questions to avoid biasing users’ answers resulting in accurate feedback.

These interviews also help product teams empathize with people because they can hear their frustrations, and these impact their lives.

Qualitative market research

Qualitative market research looks at user behavior within a specific market to look for problems (pain points) and opportunities. UX researchers use several methods, including:

• Focus groups
• Surveys/questionnaires
• User interviews
• Market-related community forums
• Social media
• Data analysis

Service safari

A service safari is an immersive research method where UX designers become customers to understand product experiences from a user’s perspective. UX teams conduct service safaris on their own products or competitors to identify pain points and opportunities.

Field studies

Often the best way to solve a problem is to experience it from a user’s perspective in their environment. UX researchers go to places where people use products to observe their behavior and environmental challenges.

User journey mapping

User journey mapping enables design teams to visualize processes and pinpoint problems. Journey maps are crucial for ideation, where design teams create paper prototypes to iterate on solutions.

Customer support tickets

Customer support tickets are often a great place to find product pain points. UX designers can also use these tickets to determine whether a product release fixes the problem–i.e., customer support tickets for that specific issue stop or decline.

Product reviews

Product reviews are another excellent resource for identifying pain points. Designers can analyze reviews of their products to solve problems or research competitors’ products to identify opportunities.

Tips to Solve User Pain Points

Use multiple data points

UX teams must always rely on more than one data point for identifying problems. UX researchers must use several of the above research methods to identify, prioritize, and understand pain points.

For example, interviews are great for understanding issues from a user’s perspective but are unreliable for identifying and prioritizing pain points–the sample size is too small. A user might express an issue during an interview, but this problem isn’t reflected in the broader customer base.

Actively seek user feedback

User feedback is crucial for understanding user problems. UX designers have many tools for collecting this feedback, including chat, contact forms, interviews, surveys, etc.

Tools like Feature Upvote enable product teams to collect feedback and allow users to vote for the features or fixes that matter most. This feedback helps to prioritize pain points according to user needs.

Be transparent

Customer-facing changelogs or product roadmaps tell users you’re aware of specific issues and when to expect a solution. This transparency helps manage expectations while building brand trust.

Test, and then test again!

Designers use prototypes to test user interfaces and flows at every stage of the design process. During early testing, designers use prototypes to identify pain points and opportunities. Later in the design process, designers use high-fidelity prototypes to test and iterate on solutions.

Improve Prototyping to Solve Pain Points Accurately With UXPin

The problem with traditional design tools is they lack the fidelity and functionality to A) diagnose pain points accurately and B) determine if design solutions fix the problem. The disconnect between the prototyping tool and the final product means designers don’t get accurate results and insights.

Poor prototypes also impact stakeholder feedback, crucial for buy-in and determining if designs meet business requirements.

Unlike image-based tools, UXPin allows designers to build interactive prototypes. These immersive prototypes provide accurate testing because the user experience is indistinguishable from the final product–increasing the prototyping scope while delivering meaningful feedback from usability participants and stakeholders.

Advanced prototyping features

These four key features are what set UXPin apart from other popular design tools so designers can build advanced, high-quality prototypes:

• States: create simple component states (e.g., default, active, hover, disabled, etc.) or build complex UI patterns, including fully functioning accordions, multilevel dropdown navigation, and carousels.
• Interactions: design fully interactive components with triggers, animations, and actions comparable to code.
• Variables: capture user inputs from UXPin’s fully functioning forms, including text fields, checkboxes, selectors, and radios and use this data to trigger dynamic interactions or use elsewhere in your prototype–like a personalized welcome message with the user’s name.
• Expressions: create Javascript-like functions to validate forms, build computational components, check password/email input criteria, and more!

Increase prototyping scope with APIs

UXPin’s IFTTT integration enables designers to take prototyping beyond the design tool to connect other platforms and APIs. For example, pulling real data from your product’s database or sending a verification email using a user’s email address captured from a UXPin prototype.

Connecting APIs extends prototyping scope so designers get an accurate picture of the user experience and the problems they must solve.

Accurate prototypes don’t only help solve more problems–they also create better workflows and engineering collaboration. Engineers need less documentation and fewer back and forth communication, resulting in smoother, frictionless design handoffs.

Improve your product’s user experience and solve more pain points during the design process with UXPin’s advanced prototyping features. Sign up for a free trial and build a better design process with UXPin.

The post What Are User Pain Points? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

A task analysis is a vital user research method for understanding how users complete tasks, including what triggers them to start, their actions, and how they know when it’s complete.

Mapping these tasks allows designers to empathize with users by analyzing their actions, struggles, and environmental influences while pinpointing opportunities within user flows to improve a product’s user experience.

Optimize your user experience with UXPin–the world’s most advanced UX design tool. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s design and prototyping features. 

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What is Task Analysis?

Task analysis is a research framework for analyzing users’ steps and behaviors to complete a task. While this is a standard UX research methodology, people use task analysis in many industries, including physical products, industrial design, health and safety, and education, to name a few.

Designers must consider multiple human characteristics, including mindset, emotional state, environment, and limitations (cognitive and physical). They also look at the frequency, complexity, time on task, and other related factors for a holistic map of the task and surrounding influences.

What is the purpose of a task analysis?

A task analysis aims to understand tasks and processes from a user’s perspective and the problems the digital product must solve. If a design doesn’t solve these problems or prioritize features correctly, it won’t adequately meet user needs and possibly fail.

For example, an onboarding sequence requires users to upload a profile picture, but during a task analysis, designers realize some people don’t have a profile picture or want to take a fresh pic for the app. Adding a feature to take a selfie using the user’s smartphone camera within the app solves this problem while streamlining the onboarding process.

A task analysis also tells designers what they must not build–features that users won’t need or use. Understanding what a product doesn’t need is just as important because it simplifies the user experience and reduces costs.

Types of Task Analysis

There are two types of task analysis in UX design:

• Hierarchical Task Analysis
• Cognitive Task Analysis

Hierarchical Task Analysis

A hierarchical task analysis breaks an entire process into individual steps and identifies and prioritizes the subtasks within each phase from starting point to completion.

For example, the first step in a user flow is to sign into the app. This first step has three subtasks:

• Enter username
• Enter password
• Click/tap “Log In” button

Prioritization is key during a hierarchical analysis because it identifies what users need and when.

A hierarchical analysis will also tell designers if there are too many subtasks within a step, which may overwhelm users making the task difficult to complete.

Cognitive Task Analysis

Where a hierarchical task analysis identifies the steps and subtasks, a cognitive task analysis seeks to observe the user’s actions, emotions, and behavior throughout the process.

Designers focus on the mental effort that’s required to complete each step and subtask (smaller steps) to understand the product’s intuitiveness and identify any pain points.

Flowcharts allow designers to map tasks from start to finish, noting each critical decision point. At these decision-making moments, designers note the user’s emotion and behavior, usually with keywords–i.e., angry, frustrated, happy, confused, disengaged, etc.

Often these queues come from how users react, like someone scrunching their face in confusion when trying to complete a task or action. Designers can use these opportunities to ask questions and pinpoint what is wrong.

When to Conduct a Task Analysis

Design teams conduct task analysis throughout a product’s lifecycle. It’s an essential tool in the early stages of the design process when researchers are trying to frame the problem correctly.

Researchers use task analysis results to create customer journeys, and user flows that guide ideation and prototyping.

How to Conduct a Task Analysis

Below is a typical task analysis process and the outcomes design teams seek to achieve.

Phase 1: Research

The research phase involves gathering data to define the specific task and users. Typical UX research methods for a task analysis include:

• Field studies: Going to locations where users use a product to understand the environment and external factors–for example, going to an airport to observe travelers using a check-in and boarding app.
• Diary studies: Users document using your product over a period. This research method is a good alternative to field studies when users don’t typically use a product in one location.
• User interviews: UX researchers talk to end-users to understand how they complete tasks, including the user’s goal, what triggers them to start, each step, and pain points/frustrations.
• Usability testing: Designers build a prototype of the user flow (task) and test it with end users, noting each step, behavior/reactions, and how users complete the task (often, there is more than one way).
• Product analytics: Tools like Google Analytics allow design teams to conduct a User Flow Analysis to understand users’ steps to complete tasks. This analytics data is excellent for pinpointing dropoffs and bottlenecks to research further.

Researchers must aim to answer four key questions during the research phase to prepare for the task analysis:

• Trigger: what triggers users to start the task? This trigger could be internal (like an emotion) or external (like a time of day or event).
• Desired outcome (end goal): what does the user want to achieve? How do they know when the task is complete?
• Knowledge: what skill or knowledge must users have to start and complete the task? For example, if your product is only in English, they must know the language.
• Artifacts: what tools and information will users need to complete this task? i.e., credit card details, passport number, etc.

Phase 2: Break the task into subtasks

Designers break the task into steps and subtasks using a task analysis diagram (hierarchical task-analysis diagram) or flowchart. You can create these artifacts using a whiteboard and sticky notes, a digital tool like Miro, or UXPin’s User Flows built-in library.

UXPin’s User Flows library allows design teams to build task analysis flowcharts and diagrams, including components for:

• Flow lines: movement and direction through the task
• Blocks: various types and colors to represent steps, actions, and decision-making
• Icon blocks: system feedback, including errors, success, info, warning, etc.
• Labels: for flow lines and steps
• Devices: graphical representations for laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets, etc.
• Gestures: standard mobile gestures for taps, swipes, and scrolls

Creating task analysis flowcharts and diagrams in UXPin keeps all UX artifacts in one tool, making it easier to archive, share and collaborate. UXPin’s Comments allow design teams to collaborate internally or seek input from product managers, engineers, and other stakeholders.

Phase three: Analyze the task and subtasks

The last step is to analyze the task and subtasks and add supplementary data about the process and its impact on users. They may note these details on the flowchart or task analysis diagram or create a separate artifact telling a story–similar to a user journey map.

During this analysis, designers look at the following:

• The number of steps and subtasks–are there too many? Are there any redundant tasks? Are there opportunities to reduce and streamline?
• Time-on-task–how long does it take to complete the task and subtasks? What can designers do to reduce this time?
• Task frequency–how often do users complete this task ( hourly, daily, monthly, etc.)? Are there any repetitive actions designers can eliminate (adding a feature to save someone’s personal information)?
• Physical effort–what do users have to do physically to complete tasks? How does this physical effort impact accessibility and users with disabilities?
• Cognitive effort–the task and subtasks’ impact on cognition and the mental processes required (cognitive task analysis).

What’s next?

Once design teams complete the task analysis, they’ll have a visualization of the user flow, bottlenecks, and pain points. They can use this research artifact to continue the design process, usually moving into the ideation and low-fidelity prototyping phase.

Examples of Task Analysis

Here are several high-level task analysis examples you can use as experiments to test your knowledge. 

• Getting car insurance quotes
• Creating a social media post
• Ordering food through a food delivery app
• Finding a plumber to fix a broken pipe
• Purchasing an online course

Improve Task Analysis With UXPin

Prototyping is crucial for usability testing and observing user behavior. Without the right tools, designers can’t replicate real-world product experiences, limiting what they can learn through prototyping.

UXPin’s advanced prototyping capability enables designers to build fully functioning replicas of the final product, including mimicking complex tasks like eCommerce checkouts, form validation, and API calls, to name a few.

Usability participants can interact with UXPin prototypes exactly how they would using the final product, resulting in accurate testing and meaningful feedback during the task analysis research phase.

These results allow designers to confidently identify task pain points and opportunities for improvement, thus improving design project outcomes.

Improve your task analysis with accurate prototyping and testing using UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced features.

The post Task Analysis – How to Find UX Flaws appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

A UX competitive analysis is a crucial part of UX research. It’s an opportunity for designers to leverage what works, avoid what doesn’t, and identify gaps to gain a competitive advantage. 

A UX competitor analysis can also help designers understand their users better. By looking at the competition through customers’ eyes, UX researchers can empathize better to discover what excites and frustrates them.

Get better results from user testing with UXPin’s advanced prototyping and testing tool. Design high-fidelity prototypes with code-like functionality that mimic your product’s user experience. Sign up for a free trial to explore all of UXPin’s advanced features.

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What is a UX Competitive Analysis?

A UX competitive analysis is a technique that UX researchers use to understand the competition, identify opportunities, and find an edge. This analysis provides UX design teams with valuable insights to develop a UX strategy and enhance a product’s user experience as well as business value.

A UX competitive analysis focuses primarily on design and interaction, but UX researchers also consider how business and other facets impact the overall user experience.

Why Should You Do a UX Competitive Analysis?

There are several reasons why you want to conduct a UX competitive analysis.

• Understand your market position and share
• Develop a UX strategy and prioritize the design process
• Discover how competitors solve similar usability issues
• Learn about failures and how to avoid them
• Determine competition strengths and weaknesses
• Learn about trends and innovation
• Support user and market research

What’s the Purpose of a UX Competitive Analysis?

A UX competitive analysis aims to complement other UX research to get a comprehensive picture of the market, competitors, products, and users. Here are several scenarios where designers conduct competitive analysis:

Building a new Product or Feature

UX competitor analysis is a crucial part of discovery-phase research. UX teams use this competitive analysis to understand the competitive landscape and find opportunities.

Identify Market Gaps

UX researchers can use competitive analysis to identify gaps and opportunities. These gaps could be product innovation or simply a better pricing structure.

Finding a gap in the market gives a company an edge over the competition, making their product more desirable.

Companies don’t always look for gaps; they often improve on (or steal) innovative competitor ideas. Facebook is renowned for copying the competition, while Twitter ended Clubhouse’s reign as the social audio platform with Spaces.

Support UX Research

Design teams also use a UX competitive analysis to confirm a hypothesis or support user research. 

When Should You Do a UX Competitive Audit?

UX teams conduct a UX competitive analysis at the start of a new project during the early stages of the design process. As the competitive landscape and market change regularly, designers keep informed by conducting periodic competitor research.

Types of Competitors to Audit for UX

Competition falls into two categories:

1. Direct competitors
2. Indirect competitors

Understanding direct competitors can help improve your product and pricing to make your brand more desirable, while indirect competition could expose new opportunities.

Who are Direct competitors?

Direct competitors offer the same goods and services to the same or overlapping target market. These competitors generally compete on price because their offerings are so similar.

Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat are direct competitors offering similar products to a similar target market.

Who are Indirect competitors?

Indirect competitors operate in the same market space but offer different products. While these are different products, they usually fulfill the same need, so the customer chooses one over another.

Instagram and LinkedIn are indirect competitors. While these platforms fulfill different needs, they both compete for user attention.

For example, many couples go out for dinner and a movie. A cinema with a restaurant in the foyer competes with other local cinemas (direct competitors) and restaurants (indirect competitors).

In tech, we often see indirect competitors with product overlaps. For example, Twitter and YouTube are indirect competitors, but the former offers video hosting for Tweets to keep users on the platform.

Before Twitter offered video hosting, users had to upload video content to their YouTube account and share the link in a Tweet. Nowadays, Twitter users don’t need a YouTube account to share video content, and you can embed Tweet videos in blog posts, resulting in less traffic for YouTube.

6 UX Competitive Analysis Research Methods

Here are six methods for analyzing the competition.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is an analysis technique companies can use internally or against the competition. Companies can conduct a SWOT analysis on an entire industry, market, competitor, product range, or a single product.

A SWOT assesses four key areas:

• Strengths: Where is a competitor strongest? Areas where the competition makes it most difficult to compete.
• Weaknesses: Where is your competition weakest? What don’t they offer or do poorly? Pro tip: You can usually find this answer in your competitor’s 1-star reviews.
• Opportunities: What opportunities are open to your competition that they’re currently not exploiting? This opportunity could be a simple feature like one-click checkouts for an eCommerce brand to increase conversions.
• Threats: What could potentially harm your competitor’s business? These threats are usually external, like competition, legislation, politics, technology, etc.

This article from Investopedia provides a step-by-step guide to conducting a SWOT analysis.

Using a Competitor’s Product

One of the easiest ways to “spy” on your competition and gather data is using their products. For example:

• Firstly, what are your competitor’s touchpoints? What happens when you land on their website, download the app, read a blog article, etc.? How does the competition turn traffic into users and then paying customers?
• How does your competitor present its products and pricing to customers?
• What happens when you sign up for a free trial?
• How easy is it to upgrade? And more importantly, do they make it easy to cancel–what’s that process like?
• Analyze the overall UI design, including layout, microinteractions, colors, typography, etc. 
• Use the product as a customer to complete tasks. Were there any pain points? What does your competitor do well and poorly?

Treat yourself as a usability participant by using an empathy map to record your feelings and emotions using your competitor’s product. Maybe you were confused and frustrated by an unclear pricing structure, or the intuitive UI and microinteractions made it fun to use the product.

Reading Competitors’ Reviews

Reviews from mobile app stores, social media (Facebook pages, Twitter mentions), marketplaces, and websites like TrustPilot are excellent resources for analyzing competitors (and also your product’s UX). These customer reviews allow you to find out what customers love and hate about your competition.

Spend time analyzing reviews to find positive and negative patterns, and compare these patterns with your other research. Customers often leave comments like, “I wish the product could…” These types of reviews allow designers to identify gaps that competitors aren’t filling.

Comparison Chart

Comparison charts are best for direct competitors that offer similar product features. For example, you might want to compare a paid plan to your competitors to determine which company offers customers the most value.

This article from EdrawMax provides a breakdown of the five kinds of comparison charts and how to conduct one.

User Journey Comparison

User journeys map how customers complete tasks from start to end. Optimizing this end-to-end process can enhance the user experience and increase conversions.

Comparing your user journeys to successful competitors could uncover the keys to their secret to their success. For example, you might discover your competitors use fewer steps or strategic CTA placement to convert more customers.

Usability Test on a Competitor’s Prototype

One way to compare the competition is by building a prototype replica of their product or flow to see how users interact and engage with it. Designers can use these insights to revise their designs and make improvements.

The aim isn’t to copy your competition. Instead, you’re studying participants’ reactions and asking questions about which prototype they find more intuitive, attractive, and engaging.

Prototyping and Testing in UXPin

UXPin’s code-based design tool allows designers to build intuitive and engaging prototypes with user interfaces that look and function like the final product. 

UXPin prototypes get actionable feedback from stakeholders and meaningful results from usability studies to improve the product and create the best user experience.

UXPin also enhances collaboration between design teams and engineers, resulting in less rework and smoother design handoffs. This enhanced workflow reduces time-to-market–an crucial metric in today’s competitive market.

Design systems are another way companies get an edge over the competition with better quality, consistency, and a faster time-to-market. UXPin allows startups and small businesses to build, manage, and scale a design system from scratch.

Designers can also use built-in design systems like Material Design, Bootstrap, iOS, and Foundation to prototype ideas fast! 

Enhance your end-to-end design process and get an edge over the competition with the world’s most advanced code-based design tool. Sign up for a free trial and start designing better user experiences for your customers with UXPin.

The post Competitive Analysis for UX – Top 6 Research Methods appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

A service safari allows design teams better to understand competitors, users, and their own product. This service experience offers valuable insights for very little investment, making it an essential tool during the early stages of the design thinking process.

This article looks at the pros and cons of a service safari, how to plan and run one, and what you can expect from the results.

Design, prototype, test, and iterate with the world’s most advanced code-based design tool. Sign up for a free trial to discover how UXPin can revolutionize your UX projects.

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What is a Service Safari?

A service safari is a real-world research method where designers experience a product as a user–like mystery shopping. You can conduct a service safari on your product, competitors’, or both. The process works for physical products, services, and digital products.

During a service safari, team members complete various tasks to gain insights into the product’s customer experience.

A service safari is a valuable UX design research method because it’s inexpensive (for most digital products), and teams can complete the process without users.

Who Does a Service Safari?

Usually, various team members from a design project participate in a service safari. Participating in a service safari gives team members valuable insights into the competition, but the process also provides an opportunity to empathize with users from a product-usage perspective.

When to do a Service Safari?

UX designers complete service safaris during the discovery phase of a design project when researching competitors or evaluating an existing product for a redesign. They use the results to identify opportunities and pain points that help guide the design process.

The Purpose of a Service Safari

Here are some common reasons design teams conduct service safaris:

• Understand the competition and their services
• Determine the quality of service (competitors and internally)
• Identify new business opportunities
• Identify user pain points and areas for improvement
• Gain a user’s perspective to empathize better

Pros and Cons of a Service Safari

• Pro: Great for improving empathy for customers
• Pro: Gain a first-hand understanding of the competition
• Pro: Helps validate or understand other research
• Con: Risk of bias from team members too familiar with the product
• Con: Getting into the customer’s mindset is difficult when you can anticipate what will happen next
• Con: Without clear objectives, results can be ambiguous

5 Steps for Conducting a Service Safari

The level of planning for a service safari will depend on the product or service you’re evaluating. For example, a travel booking app will require taking a flight, while a productivity app you can experience from the office.

Step 1. Meet With Team Members & Stakeholders

Meeting with stakeholders before a service safari is essential to agree on the approach, budget, business goals, timeline, and deliverables.

Next, you want to meet with the team taking part in the safari, create a plan, define the methods, outcomes, and assign tasks. Your team will also need to gather the necessary tools and materials like stationery, devices, tools, etc.

Step 2. Set Clear Objectives

Setting clear and actionable objectives is crucial in planning a service safari. These objectives will ensure team members understand each task and its outputs/deliverables.

Design Principal at ustwo in the UK, Hollie Lubbock, recommends pairing a research question with a goal to create a clear objective mission statement–objective = research question + goal.

For example:

• Question: “How do we open a new bank account using a competitor’s app? What are the current options, hacks, and issues with achieving this goal?”
• Goal: “Understand the highs, lows, and friction points in this experience.”

Step 3. Define the Documentation Process and Deliverables

How do you want team members to document their service safari experience? Some examples include:

• Notes (written, voice, etc.)
• Screenshots/screen recordings
• Photos and videos

Hollie Lubbock recommends you outline “key areas to document.”

• The experience over time: Pre/during/post
• What or who you encounter: People/processes/objects/ environments/places/communications

Hollie also gets team members to gather their general impression of the experience, like:

• How much time does it take to complete the task?
• Is it easy to complete?
• Are there clear instructions or options?
• Did you hit any dead ends? Or experience any errors?

Answering these questions provides valuable insights about the product and enables team members to empathize better when developing a solution later in the design process.

Step 4. Conduct the Service Safari

Depending on the product, a service safari could take a few hours or several weeks. Kate Greenstock’s service safari of Jelf Insurance Brokers’ UK offices took eight weeks to complete.

The most important part of running a service safari is documenting the process according to your objectives. We recommend taking lots of notes, screenshots, recordings, etc., so you don’t miss anything.

Hollie Lubbock created this free Google Doc for documenting your service safari. 

We also recommend checking out Preety Naveen’s Service Safari With Skycash–a Polish-based payment service. Preety created a three-step process for each step of her Skycash service safari:

• Actions: The actions she took in each step
• Problems: The problems resulting from each action
• Recommendations: Suggestings to improve each step

A service safari aims to experience every touchpoint from a user’s perspective. Sutherland Labs’ service safari gives an example of exploring touchpoints for a train booking service:

• Booking website/app
• Visiting the station, getting on the train, etc.
• What happens at the turnstiles?
• What’s the physical ticket office like?
• Physical artifacts (tickets, maps, etc.)

The team from Sutherland Labs also takes the opportunity to speak to people, including staff and customers, to get different perspectives. For example, if you’re designing a train booking app, how do people with disabilities experience the service? What are their pain points?

While a service safari is primarily about you experiencing the service, it’s ultimately about finding a solution for customers, so take the opportunity to speak to other users and ask questions. This inquisitive approach could provide valuable usability and accessibility insights.

Step 5. Synthesizing the Results

An affinity map works best when analyzing notes from a service safari. You’ll need a whiteboard (or digital alternative for remote collaboration) and sticky notes.

1. Create headings for each step in your service safari–i.e., open the app, create an account, etc. If you’re analyzing products from several competitors, these steps might differ.
2. Write your raw notes for each step onto sticky notes and paste them under the relevant heading.
3. As a group, identify patterns, key issues, and opportunities.
4. Create a journey map to visualize your results and guide your next decisions.

It’s important to note that you must never use a service safari as a standalone piece of research. Design teams must cross-reference the results with other data or use it to guide and validate further user research.

Using Service Safaris to Prototype in UXPin

Building prototypes is an excellent way to test recommendations and hypotheses after a service safari. UXPin’s built-in design libraries, like Google’s comprehensive Material Design UI, enable designers to build prototypes, test ideas, and iterate fast!

Instead of presenting just a customer journey map or report to stakeholders, designers can build a quick prototype in UXPin, and use it to get buy-in for their solution.

Enhanced Collaboration

Whether you’re working in the office or part of a remote team, UXPin’s Comments enhance collaboration between design teams. Multiple designers can simultaneously work on the same project to design wireframes, mockups, and prototypes.

Adding Stakeholders and Collaborators

Did you know you can share your UXPin projects with stakeholders, experts, consultants, and other collaborators who don’t have a UXPin account?

These stakeholders can view your designs and prototypes, leave comments, and approve from anywhere–perfect for today’s remote work environments. You can even include a message with your approval, so stakeholders know what they’re reviewing for approval. UXPin also integrates with Slack and Jira, allowing you to discuss projects in one place.

Streamlined Design Handoffs

Design handoffs are a stressful time for designers and engineers. Miscommunication, lack of documentation, and poor-quality prototypes cause friction between teams. 

Because UXPin is a code-based design tool, designers can replicate code-like functionality and fidelity, while Spec Mode gives engineers context and documentation to begin the development process, including:

• Inspecting Properties: Inspect the properties of any element or component, including its size, grid, colors, and typography.
• Distance Measurement: Measure distances between elements or the canvas edges.
• Style Guide: Details about the project’s styles, including colors, typography, and assets.

Designers can also create documentation with labels for each element to provide engineers with context and explanations–no more external PDFs or attachments!

If you’re still using outdated image-based design tools to design, prototype, and test, it’s time to switch to UXPin–the world’s leading code-based design solution. Sign up for a free trial and start designing better user experiences for your customers today!

The post How to Do a Service Safari in 5 Easy Steps appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

UX research is the bedrock for any design project. UX designers and researchers must gather insights about the market, competitors, and, most importantly, users.

This research continues throughout the design process as designers test ideas and gather feedback from participants and stakeholders. To be a good UX designer, you must be inquisitive and an active listener to truly understand your market and user needs.

In this UX research cheat sheet, we explore the research designers conduct at various stages of the design process and methods to gather and analyze data.

Get meaningful user testing and stakeholder feedback with code-based high-fidelity prototypes from UXPin. Sign up for a free trial and discover how UXPin can enhance your product’s user experience.

What can you Gain With UX Research?

Here are some of the primary benefits of UX research:

• Eliminates bias and assumptions to help teams develop objective product designs that meet user needs
• Allows you to create human-centered strategies and goals for your products
• Provides insight into your users’ behavioral and usage patterns
• Reduces the costs associated with inaccurate designs and strategies
• Helps develop a long-term vision for the product roadmap
• Provides data for stakeholders to support design decisions and secure resources

Research in the Design Process

UX teams conduct research and test through the design process. These research methods change with each phase:

• Discover: Empathize and define
• Explore: Ideate and prototype
• Test: Test
• Monitor: Post-implementation

Let’s look a look at each of these in greater detail.

Discover

Discovery research happens at the beginning of the design thinking process. This early research is called the empathize phase because UX designers must put themselves into the shoes of their users to see the world from their perspective. 

Typical research methods during the discovery phase include:

• Field research: Observing people in the environment where they use your product
• User interviews: One-on-one interviews to understand users’ problems
• Stakeholder interviews: Understand business needs and constraints
• Diary studies: Users document using your product over a period
• Internal research: Meetings with sales, marketing, support, etc. to gather insights from other teams
• Review analytics: User analytics and heatmaps (if you’re designing for an existing product)
• Usability heuristics: A set of ten principles from the Nielsen Norman Group used during a UX audit to evaluate a product’s usability

During discovery, UX designers must use this research to define user problems your product can solve. This research includes:

• Competitive analysis: Identify competitor strengths and weaknesses and determine what their customers like and dislike about the products
• User journey mapping: A visualization of how customers interact with your product
• Empathy map: Identifies what users see, hear, think, and feel as they complete tasks or a user journey
• User personas: A fictional character that represents a user demographic

Explore

Once UX designers have gathered and analyzed research, they ideate and prototype to solve users’ problems. Some explore research methods include:

• Brainstorming: Use research to develop design ideas and solutions–typically a collaborative effort using a whiteboard and sticky notes.
• Design: UX designers create sketches, wireframes, mockups, and other visuals to develop ideas for users’ problems.
• Card sorting: Participants sort cards into categories they find relevant. These categories help UX designers build information architecture and structure page layouts.
• Prototyping: Designers prototype throughout the design process, starting with low-fidelity paper prototypes to high-fidelity prototypes representing the final product.
• Stakeholder feedback: Presenting user research and prototypes to stakeholders for feedback.

Test

Testing is a vital research tool that enables designers to validate ideas developed during ideation. While testing appears to be a separate step, UX designers conduct tests throughout the design process, particularly while ideating and prototyping. Some of these methods include:

• Usability testing: Moderated and unmoderated tests with end-users on wireframes, mockups, information architecture, and prototypes.
• Accessibility testing: UX designers must test prototypes and UIs against accessibility guidelines and users with disabilities.
• Benchmark testing: Designers use benchmark tests to measure the success of product redesigns and upgrades.
• Surveys: A quick research method for testing large groups of users with questionnaires.

Monitor

After a release, researchers must monitor the product and users to identify bottlenecks and pain points. The monitoring phase adopts many of the same tests and techniques UX designers use during discovery. Research methods include:

• Product analytics: Researchers gather data to measure the releases’ impact on analytics like conversions, sales, funnel drop-offs, navigation, and more.
• Support data: Researchers can use customer support data to determine if a design solution reduces tickets for the issues they were trying to solve.
• User feedback:  Aside from support tickets, UX designers must make it easy for users to comment, report issues, and ask questions. User feedback is particularly important for enterprise products where users rely on these tools for work.
• A/B testing: A/B testing is a common research method to measure the difference between two design ideas. It’s also helpful for measuring subtle differences, like a red vs. blue CTA button.
• Heat maps and screen recordings: Give researchers insights into how users navigate web pages. This data is essential for determining page layouts and hierarchy.
• Beta testing: An early product release, often to a select group of users. Researchers often combine beta testing with dairy studies to get as much meaningful feedback as possible before the official release.
• Search log analysis: A product’s search log can reveal a lot about user behavior which can help UX designers restructure layouts so popular items are easier to locate.
• Business assessment: Aside from user research, UX designers must evaluate a product’s business value performance. This information is important for stakeholder feedback and securing funding for future projects.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative UX Research Methods

UX research involves a mix of qualitative and quantitative testing:

• Quantitative: Tangible metrics and data
• Qualitative: Behavioral observations, opinions, motivations, and emotions

Quantitative data is measurable, while qualitative data is subjective and open to interpretation. When combined, these two metrics can put research into perspective. 

For example, you notice a drop-off in conversions when you redesign an eCommerce checkout flow. The quantitative data tells you conversions fell from 5% to 4%. From user interviews, you learn that the new shipping methods are confusing. The qualitative data reveals what’s affecting conversions.

What Does the Research Process Look Like?

The research process will vary depending on the method, but there are several vital steps UX designers follow:

• Hypothesis: Many UX studies start with an idea researchers want to validate. For example, “we will make it easier for customers to find products and increase conversions if we put our best sellers on the home page.”
• Planning & preparation: A UX research plan defines objectives, determines the correct methodology, the research location, and the information researchers need to gather.
• Conducting research: Researchers conduct tests or research according to the plan.
• Compiling & analyzing results: Researchers must organize data to find patterns and opportunities. They might also have to present these findings to stakeholders for further analysis.
• Take action: Finally, UX researchers must use their results to determine the next course of action.

Improve Usability Testing With UXPin

UX designers rely on accurate user testing results. But most design tools lack the fidelity and functionality necessary to get meaningful feedback and test user experiences effectively.

UXPin is a code-based tool. So, designers can create code-like prototypes to provide usability participants and stakeholders with an accurate product experience.

Let’s explore a few of UXPin’s advanced prototyping features.

Variables

Most design tools display a graphical representation of an input field. In UXPin, input fields work just like they would in the final product. Variables allow you to capture user inputs and use that data elsewhere in the application–like a custom welcome message or populating a profile page.

States

You can create multiple States for any component in UXPin with different properties for each one. From standard button states to accordions and complex navigational menus.

Interactions

Interaction design is crucial for usability and product experience. UI designers can choose from an expansive list of triggers, actions, and animations to bring your prototypes to life.

UXPin takes things one step further than other design tools with Conditional Interactions, which allow you to create code-like “if-then” and “if-else” conditions which designers can use to validate an email or password. When combined with Variables, you can simulate a sign-up and login process–the possibilities are endless.

Expressions

Expressions give UXPin prototypes code-like functionality where designers can simulate form validation, build a functional shopping cart, validate credit cards, and more.

Accessibility

UX designers must always check user interfaces to ensure they pass accessibility standards. UXPin offers built-in accessibility tools to streamline testing with a Contrast Checker and Color Blindness Simulator.

Real Content & Data

How many times have you searched “lorem ipsum” for dummy copy or scanned Unsplash for the perfect image? UXPin’s built-in content generator allows you to populate UIs with relevant content like names, dates, numbers, addresses, and more. You can even match content by layer name where UXPin auto-populates data according to naming conventions.

UXPin also allows you to use your own data from Google Sheets, CSV, or JSON, to give users and stakeholders an authentic product experience.

Improve your UX research and testing with the world’s most advanced code-based design tool. Sign up for a free trial to experience the power and versatility of UXPin.

The post UX Research Cheat Sheet appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

One would think that the IT domain is all about numbers, schemes, and prototypes; that functionality means more than empathy when it comes to digital products. In the technological race, where beautiful designs and fancy interfaces rule the day, businesses forget that they create products and services primarily for people. But more and more modern companies are shifting the focus to their audience, trying to align humanity and the development process. That’s how many come to customer journey mapping. 

Yet, a seemingly intuitive methodology can be tricky when being put into use. So, if you are going to take this challenge or are curious to learn whether you do everything right, check out the common journey mapping mistakes I listed in this post.

You’re about to read a guest post by UXPressia’s Katerina Kondrenko about the common pitfalls of making a customer journey map.

Why Creating a Customer Journey Map?

Before proceeding to the mistakes part, let’s take a quick look at the customer journey mapping concept. If you are familiar with the concept, just skip this part.

Customer journey mapping is a visualization of how the audience interacts with your product or service. You might ask how this information can be helpful to your business. A customer journey map (CJM) can help you analyze your users’ or customers’ experience, identify flaws in it and opportunities for its improvement, do strategic planning, reshape content marketing, or consider using another template for your online form. And what’s best, these things are merely a fraction of what you can do with customer journey mapping. 

There’s another great perk: this methodology helps to engage your team and develop a cross-company understanding of who your customers are and how to approach them. Better cooperation within your team will lead to more efficient work. Nothing but benefits by any stretch. 

Common Customer Journey Mistakes

Customer journey mapping is like a medicine that you must use properly to achieve the desired effect. And for a project to succeed, it’s not enough to follow best mapping practices. It’s also worth considering the pitfalls that can turn your project into a customer journey mapping failure. Read on to learn the most common of them.

Mistake #1: No goals were set

What’s wrong: Inexperienced journey mappers are usually tempted to build a CJM just for the sake of building it or want to identify all the flaws in all their customers’ journeys with a single journey map. 

Why it’s bad: They say no pain, no gain. I say no clear goal, no result—a doomed initiative instead. Besides, to get approval for the journey mapping initiative, you need to sell this idea to the stakeholders and engage teammates. Without an explicit objective, you won’t be able to do so. And what strategies for CX/UX improvement can you develop, having no idea why you’re building a map?

How to fix it: Every customer journey map starts with research, but even before this part, be sure to answer the following questions:

• What and why do you want to analyze? 
• What processes do you aim to enhance?
• Who should own the initiative?
• What departments to involve?
• Are there any specific customer segments to look at?
• How will your company benefit from customer experience improvement?

As a result, you have to set a precise goal. Avoid “all” in the wording, since it means “nothing” and feels like getting on a plane that is going everywhere. 

The more explicit goal you set, the more successful your customer journey mapping initiative will be. 

Mistake #2: Weak or no research

What’s wrong: No CJM can be built in one fell swoop. But sometimes journey mappers decide to play a guessing game. They skip the research part or make it too short, reach out to only a few clients to learn their journey, forget to speak with customer-facing colleagues, use pure assumptions, or worse, read the tea leaves.

Why it’s bad: Almost non-existent research provides non-reliable data, which, in return, covers your customer’s trail and gives you wrong ideas about their journey and how to improve it. Eventually, you put the work in the journey mapping initiative, spend money on your product or service improvements, tire teammates and yourself for nothing.

At the same time, your clients struggle because you mistakenly made things worse at those points of the customer journey that were fine and missed the ones that required attention. And it’s the biggest crime you may commit against your audience because you actually do something but are tilting at windmills.

How to fix it: Take this stage of the CJM initiative very seriously. Unreliable data won’t do any good. After all, customer journey mapping isn’t fiction writing. You have to be hungry for statistics and the fullest feedback from your audience. So:

• Conduct interviews;
• Find and read industry-related researches and whitepapers;
• Collect customers’ reviews from different platforms and your NPS form; 
• Run polls and surveys;
• Pay attention to what your customers do;
• Try to reach out to those people whose journey ended too early. 

You don’t have to speak with every single customer; keep going until you’re sure that the data you gathered is solid. For instance, identifying behavior patterns that repeat among your clientele is a clear sign of it.

Mistake #3: Wrong perspective

What’s wrong: There are people who build a map, minding their own business. Literally. And stages of their CJM reflect what they think their customers go through. Why bother about customers, right? 

Why it’s bad: In short, by approaching customer journey mapping not from a customer’s angle, you try to improve only your own experience and sell your product or service to yourself. 

How to fix it: Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think like them. A CJM should be built around their journey, thoughts, expectations, goals, channels they use, and steps they take, among other things. You have to check how your service matches the customers’ needs and help them complete their tasks. 

Mistake #4: Poorly developed personas

What’s wrong: They say demographics are key to persona creation. But this is not necessarily the case. Also, some decide that previous experience of personas doesn’t matter. Or they focus only on pains and frustrations, forgetting about goals and motivations. 

Why it’s bad: Customer persona represents a particular segment of your clients and allows you to consider many people with similar features as one. Although a persona is an aggregated image of a whole segment of your clients, they need specific characteristics to feel real. Otherwise, you won’t be able to empathize with them. And they, in return, won’t let you try their shoes on. 

How to fix it: Take into account different sides of your persona and consider focusing on behavioral traits, as they provide better insight into your customer’s mindset and actions. To dig deeper:

• Consider your persona’s expectations;
• What they want to achieve by using your service or product;
• What attracts or scares them off;
• What they say about you and what is left unsaid. 

Remember that any persona needs personality and the customer profile you will have in the end must feel real, just like a real person.

Mistake #5: Late start, early stop

What’s wrong: Some journey mappers accept the challenge of building an end-to-end customer journey map. Yet, they ignore all the stages before a customer comes to them and end with the purchasing stage, although there are many further interactions.

Why it’s bad: You consider only the middle part of your customer’s journey, which can be flawless, and you won’t ever understand why your business doesn’t flourish by providing such a great customer experience. Meanwhile, your clients may experience problems when learning about your business or coming back to purchase something again. 

How to fix it: Think of all the moments in time when a customer interacts with your product or service. And remember to do it from the customer’s perspective. For you, a customer’s journey begins when they come to you to complete a task or achieve a goal. But their real journey begins earlier: e.g., when they see your online ads. The same goes for the clients who leave you after the purchase. You don’t interact with them directly anymore, but they use your product or share their feedback online and offline. All these interactions are better to be taken into account since each can contain valuable insights. 

Mistake #6: One journey for all personas

What’s wrong: You try to build a single map for all of your customers.

Why it’s bad: Segmentation matters and you create personas not to stir them again. When averaging out your customers’ journeys, you end up with improvement strategies and development plans for no one. 

How to fix it: If you have no resources to build separate maps for all personas of yours, choose only the most significant ones and design for them. You can still gather all personas in the same map, turning your CJM into a multipersona customer journey map. Having such a map is useful when you want to compare different personas’ journeys or to analyze interactions between them. 

Yet don’t forget to consider each persona individually, as every segment of your audience most likely faces different kinds of problems throughout their journeys, and thus requires a unique approach. 

Summing up

I explored the most common customer journey mistakes that can spoil your mapping initiative and leave you without actionable insights. To avoid them, you have to play by the customer journey mapping rules and remember why you decided to build a CJM in the first place and who you should always aim at during the process. And I think you would agree that the results are worth the effort, as a customer journey map done right helps enhance customer experience and develop any product or service in the best possible direction.

The post Customer Journey Mapping Mistakes and How to Avoid Them appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Key Takeaways:

• Inclusive design aims at taking perspectives of diverse user groups when designing a digital product.
• It considers temporary and situational factors that may play into user’s experience of a product.
• There are 8 principles of inclusive web design that designers may use when creating inclusive experiences.
• One of an exercise for designing inclusive web products is Microsoft’s inclusive design thinking.

A common misconception is that inclusive web design is an interchangeable term for accessible design. While there is a link, it’s important to recognize that accessibility is one component of inclusive design where we look at a feature or product from the perspective of multiple demographics.

Unfortunately, the word inclusivity is highly politicized, confusing designers about how to apply an inclusive midset. This article looks at inclusive web design, what it is, what it isn’t, and how design teams can build more inclusive user experiences.

Test product experiences on diverse user groups using code-based high-fidelity prototypes and get meaningful feedback with UXPin. Sign up for a free trial today!

What is Inclusive Design?

Inclusive design is a UX methodology where designers consider the environment and circumstances of diverse user groups and demographics to ensure products are accessible to everyone rather than a narrow set of users.

Following an inclusive design process encourages UX designers to think of permanent, temporary, and situational factors which prevent someone from using a digital product as intended.

Designers must avoid bias or assumptions when considering inclusive design like gender, age, race, and other generalized demographics. To view such broad demographics as limitations is biased (and potentially offensive) and could do more harm than good.

Inclusive Design vs. Accessible Design

Think of inclusive design as an umbrella term that encapsulates accessibility. Where accessibility focuses specifically on users with disabilities, inclusivity extends to other factors where users might feel excluded, such as language barriers, physical limitations, technical constraints, and even internet connectivity.

Accessibility addresses permanent limitations or disabilities, while an inclusive design approach looks at temporary and situational factors.

Permanent, Temporary, Situational Considerations of Inclusive Design

There are three categories UX designers use when considering inclusive web design:

• Permanent
• Temporary
• Situational

Within each of these categories are several disabilities, limitations, or constraints:

• Visual
• Dexterity
• Hearing
• Cognitive
• Speech

Design teams often make the mistake of only thinking about permanent disabilities when designing for accessibility/inclusivity, like someone with a permanent hearing impairment.

But what about those with temporary or situational hearing impairments?

• Permanent: Someone who is permanently deaf or hearing impaired.
• Temporary: Someone who has temporarily lost hearing ability due to injury.
• Situational: Someone who cannot hear because of the environment, like a busy commuter train with no headphones.

Often when you design for a permanent disability, temporary and situational users benefit too. But designers must look at each situation independently to ensure the experience is fully inclusive.

In this hearing impairment example, video subtitles would benefit all three categories. Still, designers might consider starting the video muted, so the busy commuter train user (situational) doesn’t disturb people around them.

The Importance of Inclusive Web Design

Inclusive web design is not only a good idea from a social perspective; it’s also critical for business value. Products that exclude certain human beings create missed revenue opportunities for companies.

Let’s say you’re designing an app for the US market and assume that everyone speaks English when in fact, 41 million native Spanish speakers live in the United States; it’s more than 10% of the population.

In another example, you assume that only people with a physical disability can’t use their hands. But what about someone who has injured their arm? Or the parent who’s holding a child and only has one hand available?

When you extrapolate disability, limitation, and constraint possibilities, you see the importance of an inclusive design approach and how it affects the business and its customers.

8 Principles of Inclusive Design

inclusivedesignprinciples.org lays out eight principles UX designers can use to create inclusive experiences for their users.

1. Provide comparable experience
2. Consider situational challenges
3. Consistency
4. Give users control
5. Offer choice
6. Prioritize content
7. Add value
8. Get diverse perspectives

Many designers might already apply these principles to designs, but understanding how they enhance inclusivity might encourage you to look deeper and find even more room for improvement.

1) Provide Comparable Experience

A user interface should enable all users to accomplish tasks with comparable value, quality, and efficiency. A great example is how we use alt text for icons, images, and other graphics so visually impaired users can digest visual content.

UX designers must also consider how technology might exclude users. Can someone complete the same tasks on desktop and mobile devices? Are there any differences between Android and iOS?

2) Consider Situational Challenges

How does someone’s environment impact their user experience? When designers empathize with users and test using digital products in various conditions, they can design solutions to meet situational challenges.

For example, designing a train ticketing app so that users with only one hand can buy a ticket also helps the busy able-bodied commuter purchase a ticket with only one free hand while walking to catch a train.

3) Consistency

Design consistency is vital for any digital product experience, but it’s even more critical when considering inclusivity. Users with cognitive issues often struggle to navigate user interfaces, so inconsistent designs or naming conventions could further confuse and frustrate people. 

Building a design system is one way organizations can maintain consistency and create the foundation for accessibility. With an accessible design system, UX teams can spend more time solving core usability issues rather than using style guides to build UI components from scratch for every project.

With UXPin, you don’t need plugins, addons, or extensions to build, host, and share a design system. Sync your organization’s design system to all users, set permissions, and even add documentation for each element and UI component. Sign up for a free trial and build your first design system with UXPin today.

4) Give Users Control

A good design gives people the features to control their user experience. You also want to avoid overriding browser and device settings, such as orientation, font size, zoom, and contrast.

Users with disabilities often require specific settings to use a digital product. Overriding these will impede their usage and exclude them from the user experience.

Designers should also consider how they apply UX patterns and animation. Infinite scroll is a challenge for users who only use a keyboard or screen readers. Adding a “load more” button gives users control while providing the same level of convenience.

5) Offer Choice

UX designers must balance convenience with choice. For example, swiping is quick and convenient but not always possible for everyone. Providing a button or link to achieve the same task makes the feature accessible to all users.

6) Prioritize Content

Prioritizing content and layouts can help users complete core tasks and find information effortlessly. Designers can also use UI components like accordions to hide content that users don’t need right away.

For example, using an accordion for an FAQ section helps screen readers quickly find the answer they need rather than going through every Q&A. Other users also benefit from this FAQ format because they can scan each question to find the one they want.

7) Add Value

UX designers must leverage device features to increase value for users. A device’s microphone, camera, vibration, and geolocation are helpful tools that benefit a wide range of people.

For example, optimizing your product for voice search and commands not only benefits screen readers but people using Alexa, Siri, or Bixby. 

There are many circumstances where UX designers can employ a device’s features to improve a digital product’s user experience and create more value for everyone.

8) Get Diverse Perspectives

UX designers must seek diverse perspectives from stakeholders and usability participants. Research and testing must include participants who might fall outside your user personas.

Maybe people with disabilities or limitations aren’t using your product because it excludes them. So, if you only conduct tests based on customer data and analytics, you might be unknowingly excluding people.

Applying Inclusive Design Thinking

Microsoft’s inclusive design toolkit outlines a design thinking methodology for UX designers:

• Get oriented: Start by educating yourself about user disabilities and limitations and how different people interact with technology.
• Frame: Look at your designs through the lens of human limitations.
• Ideate: Identify the mismatches between your designs and the limitations from step two. Recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all for product design.
• Iterate: Build and test concepts with prototypes.
• Optimize: Look at how inclusive design solutions impact the product experience, is it feasible, and how will it translate in real-world use?

Inclusive Web Design With UXPin

Prototyping and inclusivity testing during the design process is challenging. How do you test cognitive load or accessibility issues with image-based prototypes? How do you know whether the UI or prototype’s lack of fidelity and functionality is the cause of someone’s cognitive overload?

Designers must eliminate accessibility and inclusivity issues during prototyping and testing, or these end up in the final product, causing adverse effects for users. The problem is that image-based prototypes lack the fidelity and functionality for accurate testing. UX designers also struggle to get meaningful feedback from stakeholders.

UXPin is a code-based design and prototyping tool, giving UX designers the ability to create high-fidelity prototypes with final product functionality. Designers also get UXPin’s built-in accessibility tools to test color and contrast against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

UXPin’s high-fidelity, fully functioning prototypes allow UX designers to perform accurate tests during usability studies for meaningful results from diverse user groups, including those with impairments and disabilities. 

Design teams can also impress stakeholders with immersive prototype experiences that prove design concepts and get buy-in from decision-makers.

Four code-based prototyping features you won’t find in popular image-based design tools:

• States: Apply multiple states to a single element or component, each with different properties, interactions, and animations.
• Interactions: Create complex interactions with advanced animations and conditional formatting.
• Variables: Capture and store user inputs and use that information to take actions or personalize a user experience.
• Expressions: Create fully functioning forms, validate passwords, update shopping carts, and more with Javascript-like functions.

Sign up for a free trial and start designing more inclusive user experiences with UXPin’s advanced end-to-end design tool.

The post Quick Guide to Inclusive Web Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Usability testing is a crucial part of the design thinking process. It’s an opportunity for UX teams to present their solutions to those whose problems they’re trying to solve—a nerve-racking and exciting experience!

UXPin is the world’s most sophisticated prototyping and usability testing design tool. Using UXPin with Merge technology, designers can create high-fidelity prototypes with final product functionality using fully interactive and ready code components. With UXPin, you get accurate testing and meaningful participant feedback. Sign up for a 14-day free trial to experience advanced prototyping and testing with UXPin!

What is Usability Testing?

Usability testing (also called usability studies) tests user interfaces and flows with real users. A UX researcher (moderator or facilitator) will ask a participant to complete a series of tasks (usually on a digital product prototype) while observing their behavior and actions.

The moderator might ask the participant to verbalize their thoughts and actions so UX researchers can understand how the person thinks and feels as they use the prototype.

Why do UX Teams Conduct Usability Tests?

Usability testing provides UX teams with valuable feedback and user insights, including:

• Validating design concepts to solve users’ problems
• Exposing usability problems to fix
• Discovering opportunities for improvement
• Learn more about the users

Usability testing is an iterative process of testing, exposing issues/learning about the user, making adjustments, and retesting.

The ultimate goal of the usability testing process is to fix and improve prototypes as much as possible before the design handoff, where engineers start the development process.

Usability vs User Experience Testing

There is often confusion and debate over the difference between usability testing vs. user experience testing. It’s incorrect to use these terms interchangeably because they refer to different areas of testing.

• Usability testing – tests the product’s usability and performance—user interfaces, navigation, microinteractions, etc.
• User experience testing – tests the user’s enjoyment and satisfaction while using a digital product.

While we define these terms differently, UX researchers test usability and user experience at the same time. 

For example, one UX researcher might observe how the participant completes a task during a usability study (usability testing), while another researcher studies the user’s actions and behavior (user experience testing).

These are two important metrics to consider during product testing. If a user can complete a task, UX designers might see this as a job well done. But what if the user was frustrated during the process? They’ll likely switch to a competing product with a better user experience.

Types of Usability Testing

There are two primary usability testing methods:

• Moderated tests
• Unmoderated tests

UX teams can apply both of these methods to remote and usability lab (face-to-face) testing.

Moderated

During a moderated usability study, the facilitator interacts with the participant, asking them to complete tasks while observing and asking questions.

UX teams can conduct usability studies in a lab or remotely using Zoom, Skype, or purpose-built testing tools.

Advantages of moderated usability testing:

• Moderator ensures the participant understands and completes the tasks correctly
• Moderator can engage with the participant, asking questions about their actions, responses, and behavior
• The above points provide UX teams with accurate, meaningful feedback

Disadvantages of moderated usability testing:

• Requires lots of planning to find a venue, participants, align with team schedules, organize equipment, etc.
• Requires more resources, increasing testing costs
• Limited participants due to cost and time constraints

Unmoderated

During an unmoderated usability study, the facilitator is absent but provides the participant with instructions to complete a series of tasks.

The participant might complete these tasks in a lab environment, the field (where the users will typically use the product), or remotely.

Advantages of unmoderated usability testing:

• Researchers can test multiple participants at the same time
• Fewer resources make unmoderated testing significantly cheaper

Disadvantages of unmoderated usability testing:

• Relies on participants understanding tasks and instructions without guidance—might lead to uncompleted tasks or inconsistent test results

Usability Testing Methods

Card Sorting

Card sorting is an early-stage usability method for testing element hierarchy and establishing information architecture. 

The moderator presents a group of topics or categories for the participant to sort—usually by importance or group by relevance.

Paper Prototyping

Paper prototyping is another early-stage usability method where UX teams test user flows and information architecture.

UX teams rarely test paper prototypes with participants because usability tests are expensive, and paper prototyping doesn’t provide meaningful user feedback.

Still, paper prototypes can provide some insights into the user’s navigational expectations.

Digital Low-Fidelity Prototype Testing

Digital low-fidelity prototypes use a series of wireframes to test user flows and simple navigation. Like paper prototypes, low-fidelity prototyping provides limited feedback about the user experience.

High-Fidelity Prototype Testing

Testing high-fidelity prototypes allows UX teams to get accurate, meaningful feedback. Participants use a fully functioning replica of the final product to complete tasks.

UXPin Merge lets designers connect design elements with interactive components that also devs use to create high-fidelity prototypes with final product functionality. By designing with code components, participants can interact with a UXPin prototype better than any other design tool.

Why not try usability testing with UXPin’s 14-day free trial!

Click Tracking

Click tracking examines where users click or tap on a prototype. UX designers can use this information to see where participants most frequently click (or tap on mobile).

Click tracking can help validate link structure or whether participants can easily identify buttons and CTAs.

Eye Tracking

UX researchers use eye-tracking devices to learn how participants explore user interfaces or what elements catch the eye first. These insights can help UX designers decide how to prioritize screen layouts or where to place CTAs.

How to Conduct a Successful Usability Test in 6 Easy Steps

It’s crucial to have a plan and objectives for usability testing. Without a plan and goals, UX researchers won’t know what to test or the value of the test results.

We’ve broken usability testing into six easy steps:

1. Define Goals
2. Choose the Test
3. Create User Tasks
4. Write a Research Plan
5. Conduct the Test
6. Draft a Report

Step 1 – Define Goals

The first step is to define the usability study’s goals. These goals might ask broad or specific questions, for example:

• Broad: Which checkout method can user’s complete the fastest?
• Specific: Does animating a button increase clicks?

It’s important to prioritize goals and limit testing to a specific question you want to answer—like testing an eCommerce checkout flow or completing a new user sign-up process.

It’s tempting to make the most of usability test sessions and get as much feedback as possible, but this could lead to user fatigue and inaccurate results.

Step 2 – Choose the Correct Test

Once you know what you want to test, you can choose a suitable usability testing method.

In our free eBook, The Guide to Usability Testing, we outline 30 different usability testing methods, which to apply, and when.

We divide usability tests into four categories:

• Scripted — These tests analyze the user’s product interaction based on set instructions, with specific goals and individual elements. (tree testing, hallway usability tests, benchmark testing)
• Decontextualized — Ideal for preliminary user testing and user research (see the difference between user testing and usability testing). These tests don’t involve the product necessarily, but analyze generalized and theoretical topics, targeting idea generation and broad opinions. (user interviews, surveys, card sorting)
• Natural (or near-natural) — Researchers analyze users in the environment where they’ll use the product most often. These tests examine how users behave, pinpointing their feelings with accuracy, at the cost of control. (field and diary studies, A/B testing, first-click testing, beta testing)
• Hybrid — These experimental tests forego traditional methods to take a distinctive look at the user’s mentality. (participatory design, quick exposure memory testing, adjective cards)

Once you select the testing method(s), you can share them with the team, summarizing your goals and tactics in a usability planning document.

Step 3 – Create Your User Tasks

Everything you present to participants during usability testing, including questions and phrasing, impacts their response.

Usability tasks are either open or closed, and your tests should incorporate a healthy mix of both:

• Closed – A closed task offers little room for interpretation—the user is given a question with clearly defined success or failure (“Find a venue that can seat up to 12 people”). Closed tasks produce quantitative and accurate test results.
• Open – By contrast, participants can complete open tasks in several ways. These are “sandbox” style tasks: “Your friends are talking about Optimal Workshop, but you’ve never used it before. Find out how it works.” Open tasks produce qualitative and sometimes unexpected results.

Moderators must be mindful of how they phrase questions to avoid bias. 

For example, you want to know how a user will find a gift for their mother on an eCommerce store. If you phase the question as “can you search for a mother’s day gift in our store?” it might suggest that the participant use the search function instead of following their natural intuition. This question also sounds more like an instruction than a question.

A better way to phrase this question might be, “how would you find a mother’s day gift in our store?”

Step 4 – Write a Usability Research Plan Document

A usability research plan document should cover seven sections:

• Background — In a single paragraph, describe the reasons and events leading to the user research.
• Goals — In bullet points, summarize what the study hopes to accomplish. Phrase the goals objectively and concisely. Instead of “Test how users like our new checkout process,” write “Test how the new checkout process affects conversions for first-time users.”
• Questions — List out around 5-7 questions you’d like the study to answer
• Tactics — Where, when, and how UX researchers will conduct tests. Explain why you’ve chosen this particular test.
• Participants — Describe the type of user you are studying, including their behavioral characteristics. You could even attach personas for more context.
• Timeline — Recruitment start dates, test start and end dates/times, and when stakeholders can expect results.
• Test Script — Include a script if you have one prepared.

Encourage suggestions and feedback from stakeholders to ensure everyone is on board, and you haven’t missed anything.

Further reading – The Plan That Stakeholders Love: The One-Pager.

Step 5 – Conduct the Test

Here are some times for conducting usability testing:

• Make participants comfortable — Remind participants that you are testing the product, not their capabilities. Creating a script beforehand will ensure the moderator’s instructions, phasing, and tone are consistent.
• Don’t interfere — This avoids bias and may reveal user behavior insights you hadn’t predicted. Meaningful insights come from participants interacting with the product in ways you never expected. Observe natural human behavior and let them inspire feature improvements.
• Record the session — Teams may need to review usability studies at a later point. 
• Collaborate — A Rainbow Spreadsheet allows everyone to record their interpretations of each usability test. UX researchers can compare notes to see what they observed in common and any unique observations. Rainbow Spreadsheets worked well to summarize results for stakeholders during our team’s Yelp redesign exercise. (Source: Rainbow Spreadsheets by Tomer Sharon)

Step 6 – Draft a Report

A usability study report is an effective way to summarize results to share with stakeholders. 

Here are some tips for compiling a usability report:

• Don’t be vague – “Users couldn’t buy the right product” isn’t very helpful because it doesn’t explain why. Explain the specific issue from a UX perspective—“users couldn’t buy the right product because they couldn’t find the search bar.”
• Prioritize issues – Categorizing and prioritizing usability issues will help design teams know where to start. We recommend categorizing the report (e.g., Navigation Issues, Layout Issues, etc.) and using color codes for priorities (Low/Medium/High).
• Include recommendations – Lastly, you’ll want to include the team’s recommendations to fix usability issues, so stakeholders know there is a solution.

Other considerations for a usability report include:

• Formal usability report
• Supporting charts, graphs, and figures
• Previous testing documentation 
• Videos or audio tracks of the test

Usability Testing With UXPin

UXPin is a comprehensive design and prototyping tool. Unlike other design tools, UXPin doesn’t require plugins and apps to fulfill wireframing, mockups, prototyping, and testing requirements.

And UXPin does so much more! With states and interactions in your prototype you can enhance participant’s product interaction while providing you with meaningful feedback and results!

Try UXPin for 14-days and experience a whole new world of UX design, prototyping, and usability testing!

The post What is Usability Testing and How to Run It? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Even the best ideas can’t guarantee success. No matter how certain you are about a new concept, the only way to create a good product is by getting real feedback and building upon it.

That’s why building a prototype and going forward with testing it should be essential regardless of the scale of your project. It’s one of the foundation stones of the whole cycle.

It may seem intimidating at first, but as you dive into the process, you’ll soon discover how intuitive it is and that by being thorough you can save resources in the long run and make your launch as smooth as possible.

Here are our tips that will help you make the most out of your user testing.

1. Start testing early

If you’re waiting on your product to be complete, you’re missing out on valuable insights. Of course, you can’t exactly start user testing the day you land on a decent idea, but you shouldn’t hold back until you’re ready for launch.

Even though you can’t cover every detail, by gathering early insights you can start correcting issues and removing problems from the get-go. You should always have in mind that you’re not designing for yourself, so the users should help you discover issues before it gets too time-consuming to fix them.

As long as you’re aware of what your prototype can do in each phase, every failure will serve as a lesson to improve the next version. This also makes it cheaper, in the long run, saving you fixes that would come after the launch and take more time to solve. Usually, you can split your phases in a way that will help you set expectations:

• Wireframes and sketches – provide you with minimal insights, as they can be as simple as one-page setups. They won’t get you far with the overall picture, but they can form basic expectations from the users, how they understand the concept and what would be their next steps.
• Low to medium-fidelity prototype – with these you can already start gathering basic insights about UI interaction, the ways in which the users move forward if they understand the content, is there something distracting, etc. This step helps you form a strong foundation for later on.
• High fidelity prototype – while technically not a complete product, in this phase you can start grasping all of the users’ issues and the ways they interact with most of the elements. By now you should know if you’re ready to proceed to build the final product and if you managed to solve the issue you set out to respond to.

If you don’t have time to go through the whole process or building a high-fidelity prototype with all the interactions is just too time-consuming, you can build prototypes with fully interactive code components instead. Coming straight from your developers’ libraries, UI code components can help you speed the design process 10 times.

2. Map out your tasks

Every testing session should have a clear goal. Of course, you’re after all the insights you can get, but you should have an actionable plan in place to help you be efficient and solve as many issues as possible.

One of the most common mistakes when providing tasks for your test users is going too broad with a lot of vague questions, which can leave you with a lot of “It’s fine, I guess” answers.

Aim for getting an answer about specific experiences through actionable steps that are simple to track and gather insights from. Instead of pointless subjects such as „does everything work“ (spoiler alert: it doesn’t, it’s a prototype), go for something that will provide you with clear next steps.

First, limit each session based on the aspects of the product you want to get more information about and sort them by priority. Then you should explain to your testers what is expected of them, for example, “go through the interface and find the option to edit a video” or “navigate to the checkout page”.

All of these should also have goals to be achieved, either as a desired step-by-step process or the time needed, but users don’t need to have the information for the test to be successful.

It’s important to remember that usability is key when testing prototypes, so don’t overdo it with design and any additional data that may take away from the point and overwhelm the users in this phase. To make a test clear, simple, and reliable, try to go for maximum interactivity in a prototype, without too much hand-holding and explaining.

3. Pick the right users

When you’re starting the testing process, you don’t have to make the audience take a technical skills assessment before you show them the prototype, but you do need to make sure that you have a relevant pool of testers.

Representative users are those who you actually see as user personas that will (hopefully) use the product when you launch it. If you’re, for example, building a cooking app, it would be a good idea to have users that cook at home at least three or four times a week. Of course, not every person should be exactly the same – you should have a mix that will allow you to notice different issues.

It may be tough finding the right group to test your prototype and that’s one of the reasons some teams skip testing altogether, but it’s always worth it in the end. You should always go for quality over quantity, as it’s most important to have relevant users with a fresh perspective. You may actually learn a lot with just under ten people.

The need to have fresh eyes on the product is also why you should avoid your family and friends. Even though they want to help, it’s hard for them to have the same approach as real people who have no previous knowledge of the product. It would also be a good idea to use an NDA in this case, especially if you haven’t announced your product yet.

Another thing you should keep in mind is the nature of the product and where the users will interact with it. This means that if you’re working on an international product or service, you need testers from various markets, as they each have their own specifics. This also goes for devices – place the users in an environment that they would actually be in.

In the later phases of testing, you should also gather insights from internal stakeholders in order to have a clear overview of what’s possible and what needs to be changed before launch. This includes people such as distributors that should already have experience with similar processes.

4. Do multiple iterations

You should always be ready to adjust. The testing process isn’t always linear, so flexibility is key to achieve the best results.

For example, if you notice a feature is drawing focus away from the main functionalities of the product, you should be ready to change your direction as a response.

This feedback loop also applies to the tasks you give your test audience – if you see something isn’t working, you can improvise and switch up the questions to get the best insights.

Users will also have their suggestions on how you could improve even if the task itself doesn’t involve that. That’s why your whole team should be involved in the process, ready to implement a new solution you didn’t have in mind before.

It’s also important to avoid trying to solve every issue at once – your prototype should and will undergo multiple changes along the way so you should be patient and try fixing the biggest problems first. After that, do another test and see how the feedback changes. While you’re going through the phases, keeping a database backup will save you from having to roll back too far if something needs to be reverted to the starting position.

Each new feature added should be followed by a new test. It may look excessive and you’ll want to just bulk everything together, but going small will help you get more detailed insights, also saving the trouble of massive changes, which is especially important when it comes to design.

Putting everything together

You should aim to have eyes on your prototype as soon as possible. By introducing real people to the process, you will get a new perspective that will help you change and improve in unexpected directions.

Don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and redesign. Involve your whole team and remember that the testing won’t always go over smoothly, but through each step, you get to know your product better, which brings you that much closer to a seamless launch. Go through the prioritization process and invest additional effort through the testing, keep perfecting your prototype with a feedback loop, and, before you know it, you’ll have a product you can be proud of! But first things first – sign up for a free trial at UXPin to start building your prototypes.

The post 4 tips for User Testing Your Prototype appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

User research can give you insight into what aspects of your design do and don’t work. Learning how to perform customer research, however, takes some time and instruction.

The following six articles should help you find effective ways to conduct user research that leads to better designs and higher adoption rates for your digital products.

Explore the lessons you learn from these articles by experimenting with UXPin’s designing and prototyping tool. Sign up now for a UXPin free trial with no credit card required.

1.How to Conduct User Experience Research Like a Professional (Career Foundry)

Career Foundry writer Raven L. Veal provides an in-depth article that will show you several ways to collect information from users. She starts by breaking down the differences between good and bad UX research, an essential step that will lead to better results as your skills improve.

The bulk of Veal’s article provides introductions to user experience research methods, including:

• User groups
• Usability testing
• User interviews
• Online surveys
• User personas
• User research analysis

Set aside 20 to 30 minutes to read this entire primer. Practically everyone will learn something valuable from it.

Additional reading: The UX Designer’s Guide to Lean User Personas

2.The Ultimate Guide to Doing Kickass Customer Interviews (User Interviews)

As a UX designer, you might not have much experience conducting interviews intended to gather specific information. You might not have spent any time interviewing other people in a professional way. Carrie Boyd’s “Ultimate Guide to Doing Kickass Customer Interviews” does just what the title says: teach you how to interview users for actionable information.

Boyd provides specific tips for different types of interviews. She writes sections about developing customer interviews that will help you decide whether:

• Customers like your design.
• Users enjoy your product’s new features.
• Your target audience wants to buy your product.

After establishing the basics, she guides you through:

• Prep work to do before the interview.
• Conducting interviews.
• Sharing information learned from interviews.
• Taking action based on what you learned.

If you want to conduct interviews to connect with your users, go over Boyd’s guide to improve your process.

Sign up for a UXPin free trial to see how much your customer interviews influence your UX designs.

3. Usability Testing 101 (Nielsen Norman Group)

Nielsen Norman Group has decades of usability testing experience, so take your time learning as much as you can from this entry-level guide.

Although the article doesn’t get into the weeds of usability testing, it provides a surprising amount of information, including:

• What you can learn from usability testing.
• The core elements of usability testing.
• Types of usability tests.
• The cost of usability testing.

After the article, you will find a long list of helpful resources. Choose the ones that apply to your situation so you can pick up more tips about how to make the most of usability testing when improving your UX designs.

Additional reading: The Guide to Usability Testing

4.The different types of usability testing methods for your projects (hotjar)

Hotjar covers three types of usability testing and compares the pros and cons of how you can approach them. The usability testing options compared in the article include:

• Moderated vs. unmoderated.
• Remote vs. in-person.
• Explorative vs. comparative.

You will also learn about guerrilla testing, session recordings, and other strategies that could improve your user testing and customer interviews.

5. A/B Testing: Optimizing The UX (Usability Geek)

A/B testing can help you choose the better of two UX designs. That sounds great until the time comes to perform A/B, and you realize you don’t know how to conduct a rigorous study that optimizes your UX.

Nicholas Farmen lays out the basics of A/B testing in an easy-to-follow language in this Usability Geek post. He covers topics like:

• Writing a hypothesis.
• Making a controlled test (Test A).
• Making an altered test (Test B).
• Comparing results.

The article offers preliminary advice, but it also serves as a teaser for Usability Geek’s online course, Conducting Usability Testing.

6. Creating a user research plan (with examples) (UXPin Blog)

This article from UXPin is perfect for anyone struggling to take a strategic approach to conduct user research. The advice gives you step-by-step instructions that include examples of how you can create and implement each step.

UXPin will show you how to establish:

• A background that explains why you want to collect information from users.
• Plan objectives that line up with your metrics and KPIs.
• A UX research plan methodology that should get you the information you need.
• Participant profiles that help you determine which users you want to recruit.
• A research timeline that holds everyone involved accountable for meeting milestones.

If you have a general idea of what you want to get from your user research—but you don’t have a solid plan for how to get the right information from the correct users—you will learn important lessons from this article.

Try UXPin to build wonderful designs based on user research

UXPin gives you a collaborative workspace where you can create designs and generate prototypes. You can also make design systems that establish approved assets and guardrails for projects. If your user testing shows that you need to update your design system, you can do it easily from within the application. It will update everyone working on your project.

Experience UXPin’s features for free by signing up for a 14-day trial. It doesn’t cost anything, and you will get an opportunity to experience one of the world’s most robust cloud-based design platforms.

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