How to Design Applications People Love

How to Design Applications People Love
How to think like an end-user
And figure out who your end-users are

Who's My Audience?
Developers?
Entrepreneurs?
Marketers?
Designers?
Anything else...?

My Intended Audience
Developers & Entrepreneurs
(Sorry, everyone else)
Which brings me to my next point

Reality Check
It's not easy
Lots of trial and error
Lots of surprises

Where Do We Begin?
With an idea
What are some of your application ideas?
Now we have to find our audience

Finding Your Audience

Why the “Onion Process?”

Outlining Our Assumptions

Outlining Our Assumptions
Assumptions are bad.
What assumptions did we make about:
Why people will use our app?
What people will use our app?
How people will use our app?
When / where people will use our app?
Who will actually use our app?

Assumption Maps

Testing Our Assumptions
How do we test our assumptions?
By actually talking to people

Talking to Potential Users
Get user input before we build anything
Use our time with users to test our assumptions

Finding Potential Users to Interview
Friends and family
Co-workers
Online communities
Should be specific to your audience
LinkedIn InMail / Introductions

What Do We Ask Potential Users?
Ask about everything in our assumption map
Introduce our product idea
Mock-ups are a plus
Get their gut-feedback
Ask about similar products and services
What do they like?
What don't they like?

User Feedback IRL
The users we interview are not always right
And they may not always be the best representatives
Take everything with a grain of salt

When Our Assumptions Are Mostly Wrong...
Start over with the onion process
Do a post-mortem
What assumptions lead you astray?
What did you learn?
What will you do different next time?

When Our Assumptions Are in the Ballpark
Time for an MVP
Use RAD methodologies if you can get away with it

Prototypes, MVPs, and Alpha Testing
Prototype vs. MVP?
Implement core features only
Alpha testing
Find a small, talkative group
Test usefulness of experience
Qualitative analysis
We want to know if a real product is viable

What Happens Next?
If our application idea has survived thus far:
People like our idea / application
Find the experience to be useful
Our assumptions have been reasonably tested
It might be time to start:
Business planning
Formal UX design
Beta testing

Continuous Application Improvement Cycle

Words of Wisdom

Maintain Relationships with Potential Users Throughout the Cycle
Feedback a consistent group over the lifecycle of your app = super valuable
It'll be that much easier to launch

Don't Drink the Kool-Aid
Always be skeptical of both praise and criticism of your applications
But always listen

Prepare for Surprises
Honda Element
Targeted towards younger consumers
Sold in massive numbers to...

Prepare for Surprises
Your grandparents!
Average age of Element owner: 45 years old
Still a success

Maintain the 30,000 Foot View
Does your app make your users happy?
And do they think it's worth more than what they invested into it?
If you can't answer "yes," to both of these questions, then nothing else matters

Thanks for Listening!
Aaron Stannard
Twitter: @Aaronontheweb
Blog: http://www.aaronstannard.com/
My works in progress: http://stannardlabs.com/

How to Design Applications People Love

by Aaron Stannard on Jul 11, 2010

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