This document discusses user experience (UX) design and why understanding users is important. It covers defining personas and empathy maps to represent different types of users. It also discusses determining goals for a product by combining user goals with business goals. Finally, it explains how to plan the user journey through a user flow diagram that maps the optimal steps and path a user would take to achieve their goals on a product.

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

10. 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!

11. 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*

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

15. 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?

17. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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.

22. 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

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

24. 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.

25. 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

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

28. 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

29. Card Sorting: Brian

30. Card Sorting: Brian

31. Card Sorting: Brian

32. 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

33. Card Sorting: Sarah

34. 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

35. User Flow: Businessman Brian

38. User Flow: Social Sarah

41. 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.

42. 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.

43. 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

44. 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