Summary: This infographic summarizes 7 classic mistakes in approaching user experience design and process. It also addresses how to repair them in order to accelerate your UX management. The text of the infographic is below the image, with the addition of more summary notes not found in the infographic. Look for “Comment” in the text version below for these exclusives.
[INFOGRAPHIC]: Accelerate your UX Management by repairing these 7 issues
Accelerate user Experience Management by addressing organizational dynamics: the right people in the right role/org chart, doing the right processes, and delivering business value through design.
Repair these 7 issues to accelerate your UX efforts:
1. Seeing UX as just ease of use
Comment: If you just think UX is about ease of use, you’re missing the party over in the Desirability department.
- UX has 2 sides.
- Usability- easy to use, learn, navigate.
- Desirability-needs, goals, tasks, motivation.
- You’re doing half UX if you focus just on usability.
“Ease of use is the easy part…determining desirability is what really counts” (Donald Norman, father of User Centered Design )
2. Designing for the wrong pain point
Comment: Pain points from a UX/UI standpoint mean confusions, workflow gaps, broken stuff, frustrating stuff, difficult stuff, and context-specific needs etc.
- Desirability gets you what users actually want and need.
- Minimal Viable Product should be dictated by user pain points.
- Don’t be fooled by building the wrong thing!
“It just won’t work to build a complete system and then, in the final stages of development, spread the interface over it like peanut butter”. -Clayton Lewis, Usability pioneer
3. Fixating on features while missing user tasks
Comment: Features must subordinate to the tasks users are trying to perform. “Task Is King”: Talk about tasks; focus on tasks; design for tasks; test tasks; and m,asure tasks.
- Focus on features creates UI problems and a loss of user involvement in UX.
- Feature creep can be tamed by converting features into tasks.
- Build (and market) task-oriented UI’s that are relevant, necessary and useful.
“When designing an interface, the last thing I think about is features. Goals, tasks and context take all priority”. -Frank Spillers, Sr. UX Designer
4. Missing context of use
Comment: UI’s must detect and cater to context of use (as much as ease of use). “Context is Queen”: Where they need the feature; when they need the feature; how they need the feature; and why they need the feature.
- User motivations are influenced by context (place, time, social and emotional factors).
- Watch for gaps between what your technology can do vs. what users really want to do.
“I have learned to depend more on what people do than what they say in response to a direct question, to pay close attention to that which cannot be consciously manipulated, and to look for patterns rather than content”. –Edward T. Hall, Anthropologist
5. Thinking from the Inside-Out
Comment: Apple has become the world’s most valuable brand. They did this, starting in 1983, by learning to naturally obsess about customer needs and making things elegant. Make UX a part of your company DNA.
- Your influences tend to overshadow that of your users.
- Internal politics or competing agendas cause decision making to focus on your needs, not your users.
- Validate your requirements with user expectations, concerns and perceptions.
“It’s not this thing where you get some special wings or superpowers when you enter Cupertino (Apple). It’s that you now have an organization where you can spend your time designing products, instead of having to fight for your seat at the table…” -Mark Kawano former UX evangelist at Apple
6. Managing products with self-knowledge or market research
Comment: Learning about customers comes best from watching what users want to accomplish and what obstacles they run into, not just in user testing. This also happens organically through observing tasks in the field (at home, in the car, office or work environment).
- Product managers can conduct focus groups, surveys or manage from within but this causes UX to miss the boat.
- Conduct behavioral or ethnographic user research.
- Get out of the building! Focus on user pain points and opportunities.
“Know the user, and you are not the user “– Arnie Lund, UX leader
7. Doing Agile without aligning to UX
Comment: Scrum masters and product owners must learn about and leverage Lean UX methods and techniques. Dev teams that marry Agile + UX will yield higher ROI.
- Too many teams try to keep UX Designers away from users in favor of PhotoShop, with time used as a driver for killing UX process.
- Agile and UX need tight coupling, with leadership on the UI/UX driven by UX not dev.
- Don’t slop, do fast but comprehensive UX.
“Build a shared understanding; make decision-making more transparent”-Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX champion
More deep thinking at: www.www.experiencedynamics.com
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