Discount User Experience Design
An Introduction to UX and UX Methodologies on a Budget

What is User Experience Design (UXD)?

Experience Design.

“
Experience design is the practice of designing
products, processes, services, & environments with
a focus on the quality of the user experience...
Aarts, Emile H. L.; Stefano Marzano (2003). The New Everyday: Views on Ambient Intelligence. 010 Publishers. p. 46.
“

Experience is everywhere, everything.

Bad experiences get noticed.

Good experiences go unnoticed.

Good experiences go unnoticed.
(Generally)

A few very important exceptions.

Good User Experience Design lowers
barriers between users & their goals.

Great User Experience Design lowers
barriers between users & their goals, as
well as encourages buy-in
(true believers).

Good vs. Great
Expected, Functional Unexpected, Remarkable

Great User Experience Design
anticipates needs and delivers, simply.

Bad User Experience Design is...

Oh snap.

Creating Remarkable User Experiences

An Overview of Process

Traditional Waterfall Process
Define
Design
Develop
Deploy

Traditional Waterfall Process
(Let’s not do this)
Define
Design
Develop
Deploy

Modified Waterfall Process
(Ah, that’s better)
Define
Design
Develop
Deploy

Define the Problem

The Foundation

Define the Problem
Stakeholder Interviews
Customer/User Interviews
Customer/User Surveys
Competition Analysis
User Personas
Contextual Inquiry
Card Sorting
Usability Testing

What to use when?

Don’t Need Every Tool.
Just the Right Ones.
(Phew)

No time. No money. Make it awesome.

Stakeholder Interview(s)
Determine business goals.
Gauge and fine tune expectations.
Talk to those with the closest contact with customers/users.

User Interview(s) and/or Survey(s)
(when possible)
Understand goals.
Discuss pain points with existing solutions.
Insight into environment and context of use.

You might know some people who use
computers. Ask them some stuff.

Give Users a Voice
...in your head.

Practical Personas

Practical Personas

Practical Personas
Motivations
Scenarios
Features
Behaviors

Motivations
“Find a vacation rental within budget and availability range.”

Scenarios
“Mary has a week of vacation she’s planning and only a
couple windows of opportunity in which to use it.”

Features
“Advanced search and sorting options for vacation rentals.”

Behaviors
“Sorts and filters with Ajax-powered sliders on search
results pages.”

“ “
Personas are to persona descriptions as vacations
are to souvenir picture albums.
-Jared Spool

Collaborate.

Understand the problem? Cool.
Design the solution.

Design
Sketches/Paper Wireframes
Interactive Prototypes
Visual Design

Sketches/Paper Wireframes

Fail fast to succeed quickly.

6-Up Approach

Interactive Prototype

Paper or HTML?

Whatever Communicates Best

Test Early, Test Often
(Ideally)
Define
Design

Everyone is a UX Designer

Practice Mindful Design

Thx!
Some further reading:
http://delicious.com/jdelabar/ux-design
Hit me up for book recs!