Experiential Project Design

1. Experiential Project Design User Experience and Why it Matters

2. What is covered 1. What is User Experience (UX) Design 2. Understanding Our Users User Persona and Empathy Map 3. Strategy: Determining Goals for your Product 4. Planning Your Users’ Journey User Flow

3. 1. What is User Experience (UX) The cornerstone of UX is actively building an experience around your users and their needs instead of hoping your users can understand and use what you've already built.

4. Who are users? People who interact with products in order to reach a goal. Customers, donors, visitors, or anyone that uses your product or service What did you interacted with today? Often grouped by demographics or psychographics

5. Why do users’ experiences matter? Think back to a time you couldn’t ﬁnd something on the internet How a user feels about experience directly reﬂects on the view of company Since you made it, everything is obvious—to you (curse of knowledge) You want people to enjoy your product and to keep using it If you don’t have users, you don’t have a product.

6. UX vs UI

7. UX in Context: Timeline 1. Research before you begin your project 2. Don’t be afraid to change your decisions as you learn more about your users 3. Build personas to help think about different types of user of our app 4. Make empathy maps for your users to better see where they’re coming from 5. Look at your users’ goals: ﬁguring out what each user wants out of our app 6. Create a user ﬂow: help guide product’s development toward easy navigation 7. Documents help with: wireframing, design, and development choices 8. Iterate!

8. 2. Understanding Our Users Group users into representative proﬁles You are not targeting EVERYONE Assess your most realistic users WHY people are using our product? Limitations of different personas and groups *These are stereotypes and individual users will act differently than the representative persona you choose*

9. People who use a ride-sharing app Businessman Brian Social Sarah

10. Empathy How will your audience use the app based on their surroundings? What are their thoughts and feelings? What is the businessman expecting? Who are your competitors that the college students might use? Are there expected patterns?

11. Businessman Brian Pain Gain Frustrated with cabs and shuttles Scared about using stranger’s car Thinks cabs are dirty Frustrated that cabs and shuttles don’t look very professional Annoyed that there is surge pricing Annoyed about shortage of drivers Excited for a potentially new way to travel Needs a clean, convenient vehicle Can spend less on ride and get a nicer dinner Gets to educate his coworkers Feels accomplished booking a ride

12. Social Sarah Pain Gain Had a bad experience with a different ride-sharing app is leery Thinks cabs are outdated and $ Annoyed that the ride cost more at night due to supply of drivers Has trouble typing when tipsy Happy to be home safe Kept her fare under $5 Enjoyed talking to driver Pleasant experience with driver Feels like a good friend getting others home safely

13. Strategy: Determining Goals Understanding your Users’ Goals Thinking of Our Goals Combining Your Goals with Your Users’ Goals Structuring Your Users’ Experiences Around Completing Speciﬁc Goals

14. Understanding your Users’ Goals It’s best to talk to current users if possible, or potential users Listen to potential users, early and often Make sure that you understand WHY they would want your product. Your product needs to meet your users’ goals, or they won’t use it.

15. Businessman Brian: Goals Get to the airport quickly Travel in a clean car Travel alone (not in a shuttle or carpool) Book trip in advance

16. Social Sarah: Goals Travel as cheap as possible Get home safely Travel with her friends Book a ride using an app

17. Our Goals make money users to get home safely alternative to costly cabs provide drivers with a side job that works around their schedule repeat app users app to be popular need the app to route the largest number of passengers as quickly as possible.

18. Combining Goals Customer Us New shirt Ride to the airport Vehicle to pick him up promptly so he doesn’t miss ﬂight $20 Customers to use app App to be efﬁcient to provide the most rides

19. 4. Planning Users’ Journey Users Expect a Process: Understanding User Flows Getting Our Steps in Order Contrasting User Goals Making User Flows

20. Users Expect a Process: Understanding User Flows User flows are the route we want users to take from one end of the product to another. NOT the only path users can take Provide a plan to get users where they want to go as efficiently as possible. “in as few clicks as possible” The process should be intuitive Specific steps they should take to reach their goal Determine steps and order logically Guide with buttons and feedback

21. Card Sorting: Brian

24. Contrasting User Goals: Sarah Additional passengers She doesn’t know when she will be going from place to place Split Fare: Connect with other apps, like Square Cash, Venmo, or PayPal Referral codes or coupons Add in an extra stop

25. Card Sorting: Sarah

26. Making User Flows Easiest path for our users to take The more different the user goals are the more different their paths Through design and development, keep in mind each user group’s concerns Share this with clients, other stakeholders, or for future reference Diagrams with simple shapes and arrows Share diagrams with settings

27. User Flow: Businessman Brian

28. User Flow: Social Sarah

29. Recape Always prioritize what the user wants and needs. Personas to categorize types of users to meet the needs of key user groups. Empathy maps to better understand the situations and context in which app is used. Merge user goals with business goals for mutual beneﬁts. Find new features and better experience. Test early and often with real people. Card sorting exercise to think about the actions users need to take from one end of our product to the next. It all comes together in a user ﬂow - User path to reach their goals.

30. Resources: Applications Sketch is a design toolkit built to help you create your best work — from your earliest ideas, through to ﬁnal artwork. Funnelytics is a website that is meant for digital marketing sales funnels, but it has the components needed to make visual user ﬂows quickly...and it’s free! LucidChart is $5/month for a basic plan, but it includes a lot of premade shapes and features. It is less visual than Funnelytics, relying on text to convey meaning.

31. Resources: Further Reading Aligning UX Strategy with Business Goals, by Sarah Bloomer, Lori Landesman, and Susan J. Wolfe. Designing for Goals, by Brian McKenna, addresses the importance of identifying User Goals UX Strategy v UX Design: The Ideal UX PRocess, by Justinmind and Jaime Levy. User Goals and Corporate Goals, by Tyner Blain UX Glossary: Task Flows, User Flows, Flowcharts… by Naema Baskanderi Optimization Glossary from Optimizely: User Flow

32. Alena Holligan • Wife, and Mother of 3 young children • PHP Teacher at Treehouse • Portland PHP User Group Leader • Cascadia PHP Conference (cascadiaphp.com) @alenaholligan alena@holligan.us https://joind.in/talk/c619f