This document provides guidance on hiring user experience (UX) design professionals. It begins by defining UX and the key skills involved, such as user research, information architecture, and visual design. It then describes common UX roles like researchers, information architects, and visual designers. The document advises hiring a team to cover all needed skills. It provides tips on determining skill needs based on a company's projects and evaluating candidates based on work samples, understanding of UX fundamentals, and soft skills. The overall document aims to help readers understand UX roles and how to identify, assess, and hire the right UX talent for their organizations.
What UX is, how it works and why it matters. Train your teams to recognize and strengthen the links between customer experience indicators and your overall business performance. Learn how to work with your customers to design successful products, services and experiences.
Product + UX: How to combine strengths to make something truly great! *Updated*Jeremy Johnson
*Updated version for Vista UX Conference Keynote* With modern organizations finally starting to embrace User Experience as part of their product teams, and product leaders moving to more strategic roles within these teams, how can we combine the strengths of both roles to make something truly great?
The document provides an introduction to UX and UI design. It defines UI as the visual elements and interface a user sees, while UX encompasses usability, aesthetics, and the overall user experience. The author is working on a game project and learning UX/UI design. They explain that good design requires both good UI and UX, and that UX can be improved through testing and research, even with limited design skills. The basic UX design process involves research, wireframing, mockups, and interactive prototypes. The document outlines several future topics to be covered.
The document discusses user experience (UX) and how it differs from common sense and information architecture. UX focuses on understanding user needs and designing products and services to meet those needs. The value of UX is that it leads to faster and better solutions, greater productivity, and helps companies avoid failures caused by not understanding users. UX combines skills like strategy, research, design and development to simplify complexity and create desirable, feasible and viable solutions from the user's perspective. It is important to involve UX early in projects to avoid costly redesigns later. The amount of time a UX project takes depends on its scope, from a few days for simple projects to over a month for complex ones.
This document provides an overview of user experience (UX) design. It defines UX design and distinguishes it from customer experience design. UX design focuses on the quality of the user's experience with a product, service, or environment. It draws from many disciplines like psychology and design. The document also discusses responsive design and how the UX must be responsive across devices. It outlines the common roles, skills, and resources involved in UX design projects, including strategists, designers, visual designers, and technologists. Finally, it addresses some common misunderstandings about UX design.
UXPA 2013 Annual Conference Thursday July 11, 2013 1:30 pm - 2:30pm ET by Paul Bryan
UX Strategy is an emerging discipline within the field of user experience. Companies around the world are realizing that they need to move beyond basic usability and interaction design, and begin developing a comprehensive rationale that guides user experience design programs to successful outcomes. This session discusses how to assemble the key components of a user experience strategy. It addresses topics such as establishing a user experience vision, aligning user experience with business strategy, modeling and segmenting user behaviors across channels, developing a UX scorecard that tracks design performance, and producing a UX road map.
Putting the "User" back in User ExperienceJeremy Johnson
If you ask a organization "Are you customer centric?" - of course they say "yes", but as you peel back the layers too many organizations have teams of people building products - and the user is nowhere in sight. This talk will go over a number of ways to include users in your product design process, from start to finish. It's time we truly live up to the term "User Experience".
What UX is, how it works and why it matters. Train your teams to recognize and strengthen the links between customer experience indicators and your overall business performance. Learn how to work with your customers to design successful products, services and experiences.
Product + UX: How to combine strengths to make something truly great! *Updated*Jeremy Johnson
*Updated version for Vista UX Conference Keynote* With modern organizations finally starting to embrace User Experience as part of their product teams, and product leaders moving to more strategic roles within these teams, how can we combine the strengths of both roles to make something truly great?
The document provides an introduction to UX and UI design. It defines UI as the visual elements and interface a user sees, while UX encompasses usability, aesthetics, and the overall user experience. The author is working on a game project and learning UX/UI design. They explain that good design requires both good UI and UX, and that UX can be improved through testing and research, even with limited design skills. The basic UX design process involves research, wireframing, mockups, and interactive prototypes. The document outlines several future topics to be covered.
The document discusses user experience (UX) and how it differs from common sense and information architecture. UX focuses on understanding user needs and designing products and services to meet those needs. The value of UX is that it leads to faster and better solutions, greater productivity, and helps companies avoid failures caused by not understanding users. UX combines skills like strategy, research, design and development to simplify complexity and create desirable, feasible and viable solutions from the user's perspective. It is important to involve UX early in projects to avoid costly redesigns later. The amount of time a UX project takes depends on its scope, from a few days for simple projects to over a month for complex ones.
This document provides an overview of user experience (UX) design. It defines UX design and distinguishes it from customer experience design. UX design focuses on the quality of the user's experience with a product, service, or environment. It draws from many disciplines like psychology and design. The document also discusses responsive design and how the UX must be responsive across devices. It outlines the common roles, skills, and resources involved in UX design projects, including strategists, designers, visual designers, and technologists. Finally, it addresses some common misunderstandings about UX design.
UXPA 2013 Annual Conference Thursday July 11, 2013 1:30 pm - 2:30pm ET by Paul Bryan
UX Strategy is an emerging discipline within the field of user experience. Companies around the world are realizing that they need to move beyond basic usability and interaction design, and begin developing a comprehensive rationale that guides user experience design programs to successful outcomes. This session discusses how to assemble the key components of a user experience strategy. It addresses topics such as establishing a user experience vision, aligning user experience with business strategy, modeling and segmenting user behaviors across channels, developing a UX scorecard that tracks design performance, and producing a UX road map.
Putting the "User" back in User ExperienceJeremy Johnson
If you ask a organization "Are you customer centric?" - of course they say "yes", but as you peel back the layers too many organizations have teams of people building products - and the user is nowhere in sight. This talk will go over a number of ways to include users in your product design process, from start to finish. It's time we truly live up to the term "User Experience".
This document discusses user experience (UX) and its key components: usability, design, accessibility, human factors, and marketing. It defines UX as how users perceive a website based on whether it provides value, is easy to use and navigate, and is pleasant to view. The document then examines each UX component in more detail, providing examples and best practices for optimizing the user experience of a website.
UX & UI: The differences between two abbreviationsJessica Kainu
The difference is that one has an X and one has an I. I mean, yeah but there's a little more to it. This presentation describes the differences between UX and UI design. This focuses on where overlap with UX and UI happens, why this matters, the UX process, and what it is like to work on an agile team.
A myriad of user experience deliverables are available to the UXD practitioner, but which are most effective for capturing the design concept, process, and vision? We survey preferred sets of deliverables and give pointers for choosing yours.
Whether you are an indie practitioner, agency design lead or internal designer at a large company, you have no doubt experienced difficulites selling UX activities or Experience Design as a whole to clients, partners or bosses. Beyond touting the wonderful and magical ROI UX brings to the table, there are concrete strategies you can use to get your point accross and they aren't what you think. Learn how to identify and overcome common barriers to achieving a unified approach to user centered design.
User Experience Design: A Primer for MarketersJason Brush
This document provides an overview of user experience design for marketers. It discusses how design has evolved from focusing on advertising, branding, and product design to also encompass digital experiences through websites, apps, and other interfaces. The value of companies like Uber and Airbnb that don't own assets but provide digital experiences is highlighted. User experience design is explained as an interdisciplinary practice that includes human-computer interaction, information architecture, visual design, and other areas. The design process of empathizing with users, exploring solutions, and executing prototypes is outlined. The importance of user research, prototyping, testing, and iteration is emphasized to create user-centered experiences.
The document discusses the disciplines of user experience (UX). It defines user-centered design as a process that considers user needs from the beginning. User experience is described as how a person feels about using a system and should be useful, desirable, usable, valuable, accessible, findable, and credible. The six core disciplines of UX are identified as information architecture, content strategy, user research, interaction design, visual design, and usability evaluation.
The UX design process involves understanding business needs and consumer needs through research. Key steps include stakeholder insights, consumer research to identify needs and behaviors, developing personas to represent different user types, creating a mental model and information architecture to organize content to support user tasks, and interaction design to define the screen-level experience. The goal is to intuitively address consumer needs through an application's information architecture and design.
Principal and Director of User Experience of Blue Flavor, Nick Finck presents a session on what makes a good user experience, what is the process for creating a good user experience, and where user experience as a discipline is headed.
Easy UX Process Steps Must follow by every UX Designer Think 360 Studio
User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) designers are essential for any startup business. The ordinary generalization for ux designer is that they are regular graphic or visual designers. UX designers wear numerous caps in a startup. This includes showcasing, arranging, planning, imparting and testing. Every UX designer should follow these simple process.
Basics in User Experience Design, Information Architecture & UsabilitySebastian Waters
Presentation for my talk about the "Basics in User Experience Design, Information Architecture & Usability" at General Assembly Berlin, January 9th, 2013
Introduction to UX provides an overview of user experience design including what it encompasses and how the process works, the goal and principles of UX design, how to measure and improve UX, and the role of a UX agency. Presented by Ari Weissman, lead experience architect at EffectiveUI.
Product + UX: How to combine strengths to make something truly great!Jeremy Johnson
With modern organizations finally starting to embrace User Experience as part of their product teams, and product leaders moving to more strategic roles within these teams, how can we combine the strengths of both roles to make something truly great?
UX Strategy is a term that has been around for quite a while but is often not really well understood or implemented in business. Some companies have dedicated UX teams while others have a single UX champion who is struggling to make sense or identify what UX means to their organisation. How can organisations start thinking about how to bake UX into how they work? This tutorial at UXPA 2015 in San Diego, CA, took a pragmatic look at deconstructing what UX and UX strategy means to organisations, and looked at a framework to provide practical strategies to help connect UX Strategy to Business Strategy with the aim of truly embedding user insights and user centered design into the culture of their organisations.
User experience design involves human-centered problem solving to ensure users' needs are met efficiently and pleasantly. It is an interdisciplinary process that includes research, prototyping, testing and iteration. The goal is to understand users, define the problem, and design a simple, elegant solution through a user-centered approach. While advocacy for UX is sometimes needed when working with other fields, the work can be very meaningful when it improves people's experiences.
UX 101: A quick & dirty introduction to user experience strategy & designMorgan McKeagney
This document provides an introduction to user experience (UX) strategy and design. It discusses the history and evolution of UX from early command line interfaces to modern touchscreen interfaces. It outlines fundamental UX principles like designing for users' needs and making their lives easier. The document also describes common UX techniques like personas, journey mapping, prototyping, content writing, and persuasion design. It emphasizes the importance of understanding users through research and testing designs with them. Finally, it provides recommendations for resources to learn more about UX and tips for practitioners.
Nick will explore the best practices of user experience by reviewing some of the most popular and highly trafficked websites today such as eBay, Amazon, Toyota, Flickr, Twitter, Netflix and more. Nick will identify and explain both good an bad experiences on these sites on the merits of visual design, information architecture, interaction, and ease of use. If there is time we will open the floor for audience submissions and to provide quick feedback and areas of improvement.
Updated for the Vista UX/UI Summit in Dallas, TX
You can view a video of this presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfASJamxjy4
User Experience has a direct impact on your bottom line, and it’s about time we start telling execs in their own language. I’m sure many of you spend a good amount of time evangelizing what it is that you do, and the value it adds. Over the past 15 years I’ve introduced User Experience to everyone from CEOs to developers — using storytelling, metrics, and case studies you can prove without a doubt the value that you bring.
In this talk I’ll explain what metrics to track, how to position your work, and stories where User Experience directly effected the bottom line.
The document outlines the UX design process and key competencies of a UX designer. It discusses the main stages of the design process including analysis, ideation, design, prototyping, documentation, implementation, and deployment. Analysis involves user research, competitive analysis, and trend analysis. Ideation is the formation of design ideas through sketching and creating relationship maps. Design includes wireframing, visual design, and prototyping interfaces. Prototyping tools like UXPin, InVision, Proto.io and Axure are mentioned. Documentation and working with developers to implement the design are also covered.
The Soft Skills That Get You Paid | UX DesignLaith Wallace
The document discusses soft skills that are important for user experience (UX) designers to have in order to be successful. It states that technical skills are increasingly being outsourced, so soft skills help UX designers differentiate themselves. The key soft skills discussed are empathy, effective communication, confidence, problem-solving, collaboration, facilitation, time management, and self-awareness. Developing these soft skills, such as active listening and being flexible, can help indicate strong qualifications to employers during interviews. The document promotes learning soft skills to advance one's UX design career.
UX for start-ups, presented to start-ups in Wayra, LondonKarl Saynor
This document provides an overview of UX (user experience) and its importance for startups. It defines UX as the art and science of understanding user needs and championing the best overall experience. UX encompasses tools and techniques to deliver value to both users and business goals. The document encourages startups to get started with UX today by talking to users, sketching ideas, and testing frequently with a focus on simplifying tasks. It argues that UX benefits startups by reducing wasted effort, improving products, and increasing customer satisfaction, adoption, and investment.
1) The document outlines the typical process a UX design team follows which includes research, brainstorming, design, and usability testing.
2) During the research phase, the team gathers data through interviews and observations to understand user needs and pain points.
3) In the brainstorming phase, they generate design solutions like mental models, journey maps, and prototypes.
4) The design phase involves creating wireframes, prototypes, and considering information architecture and interfaces.
5) Usability testing ensures the design is intuitive by testing with users through methods like usability tests and A/B testing.
This document discusses user experience (UX) and its key components: usability, design, accessibility, human factors, and marketing. It defines UX as how users perceive a website based on whether it provides value, is easy to use and navigate, and is pleasant to view. The document then examines each UX component in more detail, providing examples and best practices for optimizing the user experience of a website.
UX & UI: The differences between two abbreviationsJessica Kainu
The difference is that one has an X and one has an I. I mean, yeah but there's a little more to it. This presentation describes the differences between UX and UI design. This focuses on where overlap with UX and UI happens, why this matters, the UX process, and what it is like to work on an agile team.
A myriad of user experience deliverables are available to the UXD practitioner, but which are most effective for capturing the design concept, process, and vision? We survey preferred sets of deliverables and give pointers for choosing yours.
Whether you are an indie practitioner, agency design lead or internal designer at a large company, you have no doubt experienced difficulites selling UX activities or Experience Design as a whole to clients, partners or bosses. Beyond touting the wonderful and magical ROI UX brings to the table, there are concrete strategies you can use to get your point accross and they aren't what you think. Learn how to identify and overcome common barriers to achieving a unified approach to user centered design.
User Experience Design: A Primer for MarketersJason Brush
This document provides an overview of user experience design for marketers. It discusses how design has evolved from focusing on advertising, branding, and product design to also encompass digital experiences through websites, apps, and other interfaces. The value of companies like Uber and Airbnb that don't own assets but provide digital experiences is highlighted. User experience design is explained as an interdisciplinary practice that includes human-computer interaction, information architecture, visual design, and other areas. The design process of empathizing with users, exploring solutions, and executing prototypes is outlined. The importance of user research, prototyping, testing, and iteration is emphasized to create user-centered experiences.
The document discusses the disciplines of user experience (UX). It defines user-centered design as a process that considers user needs from the beginning. User experience is described as how a person feels about using a system and should be useful, desirable, usable, valuable, accessible, findable, and credible. The six core disciplines of UX are identified as information architecture, content strategy, user research, interaction design, visual design, and usability evaluation.
The UX design process involves understanding business needs and consumer needs through research. Key steps include stakeholder insights, consumer research to identify needs and behaviors, developing personas to represent different user types, creating a mental model and information architecture to organize content to support user tasks, and interaction design to define the screen-level experience. The goal is to intuitively address consumer needs through an application's information architecture and design.
Principal and Director of User Experience of Blue Flavor, Nick Finck presents a session on what makes a good user experience, what is the process for creating a good user experience, and where user experience as a discipline is headed.
Easy UX Process Steps Must follow by every UX Designer Think 360 Studio
User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) designers are essential for any startup business. The ordinary generalization for ux designer is that they are regular graphic or visual designers. UX designers wear numerous caps in a startup. This includes showcasing, arranging, planning, imparting and testing. Every UX designer should follow these simple process.
Basics in User Experience Design, Information Architecture & UsabilitySebastian Waters
Presentation for my talk about the "Basics in User Experience Design, Information Architecture & Usability" at General Assembly Berlin, January 9th, 2013
Introduction to UX provides an overview of user experience design including what it encompasses and how the process works, the goal and principles of UX design, how to measure and improve UX, and the role of a UX agency. Presented by Ari Weissman, lead experience architect at EffectiveUI.
Product + UX: How to combine strengths to make something truly great!Jeremy Johnson
With modern organizations finally starting to embrace User Experience as part of their product teams, and product leaders moving to more strategic roles within these teams, how can we combine the strengths of both roles to make something truly great?
UX Strategy is a term that has been around for quite a while but is often not really well understood or implemented in business. Some companies have dedicated UX teams while others have a single UX champion who is struggling to make sense or identify what UX means to their organisation. How can organisations start thinking about how to bake UX into how they work? This tutorial at UXPA 2015 in San Diego, CA, took a pragmatic look at deconstructing what UX and UX strategy means to organisations, and looked at a framework to provide practical strategies to help connect UX Strategy to Business Strategy with the aim of truly embedding user insights and user centered design into the culture of their organisations.
User experience design involves human-centered problem solving to ensure users' needs are met efficiently and pleasantly. It is an interdisciplinary process that includes research, prototyping, testing and iteration. The goal is to understand users, define the problem, and design a simple, elegant solution through a user-centered approach. While advocacy for UX is sometimes needed when working with other fields, the work can be very meaningful when it improves people's experiences.
UX 101: A quick & dirty introduction to user experience strategy & designMorgan McKeagney
This document provides an introduction to user experience (UX) strategy and design. It discusses the history and evolution of UX from early command line interfaces to modern touchscreen interfaces. It outlines fundamental UX principles like designing for users' needs and making their lives easier. The document also describes common UX techniques like personas, journey mapping, prototyping, content writing, and persuasion design. It emphasizes the importance of understanding users through research and testing designs with them. Finally, it provides recommendations for resources to learn more about UX and tips for practitioners.
Nick will explore the best practices of user experience by reviewing some of the most popular and highly trafficked websites today such as eBay, Amazon, Toyota, Flickr, Twitter, Netflix and more. Nick will identify and explain both good an bad experiences on these sites on the merits of visual design, information architecture, interaction, and ease of use. If there is time we will open the floor for audience submissions and to provide quick feedback and areas of improvement.
Updated for the Vista UX/UI Summit in Dallas, TX
You can view a video of this presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfASJamxjy4
User Experience has a direct impact on your bottom line, and it’s about time we start telling execs in their own language. I’m sure many of you spend a good amount of time evangelizing what it is that you do, and the value it adds. Over the past 15 years I’ve introduced User Experience to everyone from CEOs to developers — using storytelling, metrics, and case studies you can prove without a doubt the value that you bring.
In this talk I’ll explain what metrics to track, how to position your work, and stories where User Experience directly effected the bottom line.
The document outlines the UX design process and key competencies of a UX designer. It discusses the main stages of the design process including analysis, ideation, design, prototyping, documentation, implementation, and deployment. Analysis involves user research, competitive analysis, and trend analysis. Ideation is the formation of design ideas through sketching and creating relationship maps. Design includes wireframing, visual design, and prototyping interfaces. Prototyping tools like UXPin, InVision, Proto.io and Axure are mentioned. Documentation and working with developers to implement the design are also covered.
The Soft Skills That Get You Paid | UX DesignLaith Wallace
The document discusses soft skills that are important for user experience (UX) designers to have in order to be successful. It states that technical skills are increasingly being outsourced, so soft skills help UX designers differentiate themselves. The key soft skills discussed are empathy, effective communication, confidence, problem-solving, collaboration, facilitation, time management, and self-awareness. Developing these soft skills, such as active listening and being flexible, can help indicate strong qualifications to employers during interviews. The document promotes learning soft skills to advance one's UX design career.
UX for start-ups, presented to start-ups in Wayra, LondonKarl Saynor
This document provides an overview of UX (user experience) and its importance for startups. It defines UX as the art and science of understanding user needs and championing the best overall experience. UX encompasses tools and techniques to deliver value to both users and business goals. The document encourages startups to get started with UX today by talking to users, sketching ideas, and testing frequently with a focus on simplifying tasks. It argues that UX benefits startups by reducing wasted effort, improving products, and increasing customer satisfaction, adoption, and investment.
1) The document outlines the typical process a UX design team follows which includes research, brainstorming, design, and usability testing.
2) During the research phase, the team gathers data through interviews and observations to understand user needs and pain points.
3) In the brainstorming phase, they generate design solutions like mental models, journey maps, and prototypes.
4) The design phase involves creating wireframes, prototypes, and considering information architecture and interfaces.
5) Usability testing ensures the design is intuitive by testing with users through methods like usability tests and A/B testing.
User experience (UX) is defined as a person's perceptions and responses resulting from use or anticipated use of a product, system or service. UX considers all aspects of a user's interaction with a company, its services, and its products. It includes factors like usability, accessibility, and satisfaction. The goal of UX design is to enhance user satisfaction and loyalty by improving the usability, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction.
Anyone who is a ux designer and is or will be working in the design field related to user experience (which should be pretty much everything), should be able to refresh their memory and vocab regarding the process and techniques of UX design through this slide.
User Empathy: Prioritizing Users in your UX ProcessMary Fran Wiley
A discussion on what user empathy is and how you can make sure that your UX process prioritizes users. Includes tips for doing this in WordPress. From WordCamp Chicago 2017
User Experience: An Industry (Always) in TransitionGino Zahnd
This document provides a brief history of user experience (UX) and discusses how it has evolved over time. It defines UX as how one feels about using a product, system, or service and notes that it involves factors like demographics, context, motivations, values, feelings and culture. The document also discusses what UX teams are typically comprised of today and lists 8 principles of UX design, including that design doesn't end with documents, to get code implemented as soon as possible, and to say "no" often. It emphasizes that the goal is to design and build awesome products.
This document discusses user experience (UX) design. It defines UX as encompassing all aspects of a user's interaction with a company, its services, and products. UX is composed of numerous micro interactions that should be informative, useful, emotional, delightful, humane, usable, and accessible. The document outlines some common misconceptions about UX, including that it is just about look and feel or usability. It emphasizes that UX is not a discrete activity but an ongoing process. It also discusses why UX is important for businesses to remain competitive and how UX can go wrong without following best practices such as understanding user needs, ideating concepts, and evaluating designs through testing.
Service Design takes UX further by involving more stakeholders and understanding their emotional journeys and reactions to a product or service. Learn more at http://www.softwebsolutions.com/resources/webinar-on-deep-dive-into-service-design.html
The basic objective of every firm is to boost sales and overall corporate growth. The importance of UX/UI design in accomplishing this aim is critical. The program's UX/UI design enhances the user experience and customer happiness, which eventually helps grow the number of users of the given application. Check out the UI UX design courses in Bangalore for more information.
This document discusses user-centered design and the roles of web designers. It explains that web designers encompass skills in graphic, UI, and UX design. The standard web development process involves planning, design, production, and launch. Planning includes defining user needs through research and analysis. Design involves wireframes, prototypes, and visual design. UX design focuses on ensuring a positive user experience through attributes like usability, ease of use, and minimizing errors. The goal of user-centered design is to optimize products around how users want to use them rather than forcing users to change behavior.
User experience design involves creating and coordinating all digital and physical elements that affect a user's experience with a company to influence perceptions and behaviors. Starting a new project requires understanding the company culture, types of websites, and people involved. Well-written proposals provide stability and protection by outlining the project overview, approach, deliverables, costs, and payment schedule. Defining user groups involves researching attributes and prioritizing which groups to focus on. Prototyping and testing designs with users helps improve the design by synthesizing feedback. After launch, log file data and customer feedback are analyzed to identify issues and plan further testing.
User experience (UX) design encompasses all aspects of a user's interaction with a company, service, or product. UX design aims to optimize usability, usefulness, and user satisfaction based on user research and testing. Effective UX design considers emotional responses, expectations, functionality, and stickiness from the user perspective. It involves iterative design, prototyping, and evaluation to ensure products meet user needs.
Customer Experience and User Experience has been used interchangeably. Is it the same or Any of it has wide scope. I tried to list a few points that you need to keep in mind while.
Slides from a workshop at The Net Value, Cagliari 03/2016
Your product is perfect and users are stupid. You are developing for a long time, following the perfect idea, your assumptions, you are not wrong… or not?
In this workshop you will understand the foundation of user experience. What UX is, why it is important and how you can start adopting it in your processes.
ABM College’s online diploma program in UI/UX design can teach you these must-have skills to become a successful UI/UX designer. UI/UX design is an emerging vertical which is gaining popularity by the day.
Fundamentals and practices of UX research Lucia Trezova
This document provides an overview of user experience (UX) research methods. It discusses personas, user journey mapping, card sorting, competitive auditing, heuristic evaluation, and usability testing as common UX research techniques. For each technique, it describes what the technique is used for, when it should be conducted in the product development process, and its objectives. The document also discusses low and high-fidelity prototyping for usability testing and explains how heat maps can be used to understand how users interact with websites and apps.
The Role of UX in Product Development
What Is UX?
Who Owns UX?
Barriers to Shared Ownership of UX
Working with Multidisciplinary Teams
Defining Product Goals
Conceptualizing and Communicating Design Solutions
Supporting Your Development Team
What Is the Value of UX?
Teaching/Learning IA: Considerations for UX Strategy in Educational ContextsGuiseppe Getto
My poster for the 2014 IA Summit (http://2014.iasummit.org/). It depicts a workflow for helping folks without UX experience to start working on projects.
Intranet designs guaranteed to engage and inspireInteract
How to create a beautiful intranet design your users will love in five simple steps: brought to life by outstanding intranet design examples from companies including Sony, Travelex, the NHS, Mattress Firm, Piedmont, the NSPCC, and many more.
2. ONE.
I KNOW I NEED UX. BUT WHAT IS UX AGAIN?
TWO.
WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON UX ROLES?
THREE.
HOW DO YOU FIGURE OUT WHAT KIND OF UX
PROFESSIONALS YOU NEED AND HOW DO YOU
FIND THEM?
FOUR.
HOW DO YOU EVALUATE UX CANDIDATES?
pg.2
pg.5
pg.8
pg.10
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
3. The purpose of this guide is to explain the areas of expertise that are
under the umbrella of UX (user experience) design, how to figure out
what type of UX professional you might need to add to your team,
and how to evaluate the skills and experience of UX candidates.
If, by the end, you realize you might
need help... we’re here to help!
The Team at Aquent
INTRODUCTION.
1
4. ONE.
I KNOW UX MATTERS. BUT WHAT IS UX AGAIN?
User experience (UX) has graduated from hot trend to business staple, with companies—
large and small—calling on UX professionals to create more intuitive and engaging
experiences for the users of their products and services.
As a result, most of us have heard of UX; what’s more, we all know we need UX
capabilities in our organizations. But what capabilities does the term “UX” encompass?
And how do you hire the right UX people with the right UX skills for your business?
To answer that second question, you need to be able to answer the first. And, unfortunately,
the answer to THAT question depends on whom you ask.
2
5. The User Experience Professional’s
Association broadly defines user
experience as:
Every aspect of the user’s interaction with a
product, service, or company that make up
the user’s perceptions of the whole. User
experience design as a discipline is concerned
with all the elements that together make up
that interface, including layout, visual design,
text, brand, sound, and interaction. UX works to
coordinate these elements to allow for the best
possible interaction by users.
Such coordination relies on the
following skills and expertise:
• Understanding user sets (user research
and usability testing)
• Planning the layout of information and the
flow of a service (information architecture)
• Designing the way that users progress from
one step to another (interaction design)
• Planning and writing copy and media
content (content strategy & development)
• Designing the interface or overall visual
system (visual design)
• The ability to pull all of these elements
together with a cohesive vision (strategist)
6. Banks offer traditional “customer experiences” such as how customers interact with
tellers at a branch or the process of finding out a balance over the phone. They also
have websites where customers can log in to view balances or transfer funds, mobile
apps where customers can deposit checks, and ATMs where customers can get cash.
It is the responsibility of the UX team to make sure that the website is easy to navigate,
the mobile app and ATM are easy to use, and that all the components look cohesive and
provide comprehensive services.
In this paper, we will be concerned primarily with user experience
and user experience design within this digital context.
BALANCE
4
People tend to associate UX with a company’s digital experiences, such as websites
or mobile applications, but UX covers a much broader spectrum than what is online.
Consider a bank.
7. TWO.
WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON UX ROLES?
The range of UX skills and specialties can be viewed as a spectrum, with one end being
“softer” skills, such as the ability to empathize with users, and the other end being more
technical, such as being able to create functional prototypes in HTML and CSS.
Most UX professionals are going to have several areas of expertise, but their skills will
tend to fall into one of three high-level skill set categories:
• User research
• Information architecture/ interaction design
• Visual design
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“Great,” you’re probably saying to yourself, “so can I hire one person to do all of that stuff?”
Unfortunately, the answer is probably “No.”
8. VISUAL DESIGNERS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTS/
INTERACTION DESIGNERS
USER RESEARCHERS
COMMON TITLES
COMMON DELIVERABLES
IN SHORT THEY...
UX Strategist, UX Researcher,
Usability Tester,
Usability Engineer
UX Designer, UX Architect,
Information Designer
UX Designer, UI Designer,
Interface Designer
• Usability tests and findings
• Analytics reports
• Personas
• Scenarios
• Journey maps
• Task analyses
• Survey creation and analyses
• Focus group findings
• Competitive audits
• Workflows
• Wireframes
• Site maps
• Content audits and inventories
• Storyboards
• Journey maps
• Low-fidelity prototypes
• Sketches
• Card sorts
• Taxonomies
Help understand who
customers are and what to
build to serve their needs
Define the structure and flow
of the user experience
Design the look and feel
WHAT’S THE
DIFFERENCE?
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• Comps
• High-fidelity wireframes
• Prototypes
• Pattern libraries (for items
like navigation elements,
links, calendars, etc.)
• Font selection
COMMON TITLES COMMON TITLES
COMMON DELIVERABLES COMMON DELIVERABLES
IN SHORT THEY... IN SHORT THEY...
9. AN EVOLVING FIELD.
The terms used above are by no means universally accepted. And rarely will the experience
or expertise of a UX professional be limited exclusively to one niche or another.
For example, an “interaction designer” at a small company might be responsible for
wireframing, prototyping, content development, and usability testing. At a large corporation,
an interaction designer might have a more specialized role and focus solely on creating
wireframes and prototypes.
It’s also becoming more and more common for folks to brand themselves as UX generalists,
regardless of their specific responsibilities, and call themselves simply “UX Designers” or
“UX Architects.”
It certainly can make sense to seek out individuals with broad experience (and there are in fact
many individual UX practitioners who have it). Still, it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to find a
single person who truly excels at and is passionate about all the disciplines that make up the
field of UX.
Instead, you are probably going to need to hire a team of generalists with complementary strengths.
There is also a growing
trend for companies
to look for an elusive
creature known as the
“UX Unicorn”
– a single person who is
expertly skilled in each
of the many areas that
make up UX.
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10. THREE.
HOW DO I FIGURE OUT WHAT KIND OF
UX PROFESSIONALS I NEED AND HOW DO
I FIND THEM?
As mentioned, you’re going to need a team with strengths and expertise across the
UX spectrum. So, when you’re ready to start hiring, where do you start?
First, take into consideration what your current needs are. What challenges are you facing
right now? What problems are you trying to solve? What are you building, and where are
you in the process? What sort of tangible outcomes or deliverables will help you achieve
your goals?
Are you starting a brand new product and need to understand the competitive landscape
and verify that your new product will serve people’s goals and needs? Then, what you
need is someone who can help you do research and build a meaningful portrait of your
users, probably someone with a strong user research and usability background.
Do you need help defining what your new application should look like and how its various
features and functions should be organized? If so, you probably need someone with a
background in information architecture and interaction design.
Are you an established brand that needs to present a modern digital presence to your
evolving client base? In that case, you probably need a team of talented visual designers
who are aware of the latest trends and best practices.
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11. COVER YOUR BASES
In general, a solid UX team has expertise that covers all the various elements of UX: user
research and testing, information architecture, interaction design, visual design, content
strategy, and most importantly, the ability of the individuals to tie everything together with
a cohesive strategy.
It’s rare to find a single person who has true expertise across all these elements. For this
reason, when you’re starting out, you’ll want to look first for well-rounded candidates who
have at least one area of deep expertise.
Aside from covering all the bases, the reason you’ll want to hire a team, rather than a
single remarkable individual, is that UXers are social creatures and work best with at least
one partner in crime. No matter how skilled or experienced, every UX practitioner benefits
from having someone around with whom they can collaborate, brainstorm, and learn.
Also, keep in mind that regardless of the nature of the product, whether a new idea being
developed, or an existing service being re-imagined, UX professionals are most effective
when involved throughout the entire process, rather than being called on only once you’ve
encountered a problem.
Thoroughly understanding the user base can help set product definitions and company
goals. Flow and layout iterations up front save tons of time and money before you go into
development. The look and feel of a product will be more consistent and powerful when built into
the original concept, rather than coming as an afterthought. And, the constant collection and
integration of feedback can ensure that you’re on the right track, help you manage
resources and control costs, and uncover numerous opportunities for continued improvements.
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But what if you don’t know what you need? Or you’re working on multiple projects and
can’t determine which one person would be the best to get started?
In that case, you may want to hire a senior UX professional with experience building
teams and developing project strategy. A UX strategist like this can help identify the right
problems to address and clearly define the processes, deliverables, and talent necessary
to get you where you want to go.
12. FOUR.
HOW DO I EVALUATE UX CANDIDATES?
As if determining what type of UX support you need weren’t challenging enough, it can be
equally frustrating to find and evaluate UX candidates.
For example, UX is a buzzword right now and everyone from front end developers to
technical writers are slapping the phrase on their resume to attract recruiters desperate to
find qualified UX candidates.
Because UX professionals don’t have one set career path and often transition into UX
from other fields, it can be tricky to determine who has actually built up the expertise to be
effective and who has read just enough on Twitter to fool you.
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13. IGNORE JOB TITLES.
There are no universally accepted titles in the UX field that describe the different skill sets.
And roles can vary greatly from company to company, or even project to project. Instead
of looking at the title, take a close look at an individual’s work samples: What deliverables
were created? What processes were followed? How did the candidate work with the other
members of the team?
MAKE SURE THE CANDIDATE GRASPS UX FUNDAMENTALS.
Every last “user experience” practitioner should be familiar with the basics of user
research, information architecture, interaction design, and visual design, and know how
all of these work together. Candidates don’t have to be able to do every task on their own,
but they do have to understand why each is important and how the pieces work together.
ASK FOR CONTEXT.
Once you’ve determined that a candidate does, in fact, know a thing or two about the
core tenets of UX, ask how and where they applied these tenets. How complex was
the project? What was the budget? What exactly did this candidate do? What were the
results? Alternately, describe the business challenges you are facing and ask how the
candidate would apply UX principles and methods to address them. Knowing when to
employ what from a bag of UX tricks is a critical skill. Make sure the candidates you’re
considering have it.
DON’T FORGET ABOUT SOFT SKILLS!
UX professionals must serve as champions for the user, which often means developing
practical solutions that marry user needs with goals of the business. They then need to
present these solutions so that any member of the business team can understand and
support them. In fact, UXers are usually the glue that connects users, developers, and
business owners. Ask your candidates about a time when they had to “sell” an idea or a
solution to skeptical stakeholders. Don’t forget to consider how effectively they present
themselves and their experience to you during the interview itself!
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To provide you with some practical guidance, here are four basic rules to follow
when looking for good UX candidates:
14. CONCLUSION.
Providing a killer user experience is becoming absolutely critical in nearly every
business setting.
But a beautiful interface or website is no longer enough to please customers; users now
expect digital experiences to be intuitive, anticipatory, and attractive across all devices.
And they are rewarding companies that meet and exceed these expectations with their
money and loyalty.
Hiring a great UX team is the first step to capturing some of that loyalty. Finding UX
candidates with the appropriate skills and experience, however, can feel like looking
for a needle in a haystack, especially when starting from scratch.
It can be helpful to have a partner capable of identifying and evaluating the best
candidates, especially a partner familiar with the nuances of user experience design.
Aquent has served as just such a partner to leading companies in a broad range of
industries across the world. We not only have dedicated UX recruiters with deep industry
knowledge, but we also rely on our network of subject matter experts to interview and
assess candidates and provide support on client engagements.
As a result, we’ve done everything from helping clients identify
pressing UX needs and providing them with specific niche
expertise to building out entire UX teams.
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15. If you would like to learn more
about how we can help you
call +31 (0)20 577 11 11 or visit aquent.nl
CONTACT.
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