The document discusses the importance of user experience (UX) in product design, emphasizing that it balances user needs with business goals to ensure design feasibility. It outlines the UX design process as a cycle of research, design, testing, iteration, and validation, while highlighting the benefits of effective UX, such as reduced costs, increased revenue, and shortened time to market. The author, Susan Culkin, also provides insights into best practices and resources for UX design.

1. What’s UX?
And why do you need it?
Susan Culkin
sculkin.wordpress.com
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

2. Susan Culkin
 User Experience (UX) & Interactive Design for over 15 years
 Nashville for > one & half years 
 Started two UX Departments, one for Thomson West Business
and Cablevision.
 Have experience designing for lawyers, doctors, patients,
teenagers, soccer moms, librarians, insurance brokers, CEOs,
CFOs, CIOS, retirees, and more
 Got into UX & Interaction Design after a career in Graphic
Design
 Passionately believe that User Experience is the key to a
successful product and a successful team.
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

3. Core Skills
• Design Strategy
• Interactive Design
• Information Architecture
• Visual Design
• User Research
Soft Skills:
• Information Design
• Storytelling • Presenting
• Usability • Facilitating
• Sketching
• Design Management • Critiquing
Enterprise Skills:
• Domain Knowledge • Marketing • Analytics
• Business Knowledge • Social Networks • Agile Methods
• ROI • Use Cases • Editing and Curation
• Technology • Ethnography

4. User Experience is about
finding the sweet spot
between the user’s needs
and thebusiness goals,
ensure that the design is
on brand, and work with
the technology team to
ensure the solution is
feasible.
* I’ve based this on Tim Brown of IDEO’s approach. I highly recommend his book Change by
Design but for a shorter explanation from the master you can go here: www.ideo.com/about

5.  User Experience is the overall experience and
satisfaction a user has when using a product or
system.
UX includes:
• interactive behavior
• usability
• enjoyment
• fitting the way users think and act
people think and act
customers think and act
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

6. What do UX Designers do?
When an architect designs a building for you, there is a simple, reliable process:
Research Design Test Iterate Build & Validate

7. What do UX Designers do?
When a UX designer designs an app for you, there is a simple, reliable process:
Research Design Test Iterate Build & Validate

8. Rachel Hollowgrass, Business Analysis and User Experience Article - for Modern Analyst
(May 2011)
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

9. BA UX
 Focus on business  Focus on human
stakeholders users
 Analyze market  Analyze market &
situation technology trends
 Document business  Document experience,
processes journey maps
 Manage business  Design interactive
requirements solution
 Research technology  Conduct usability
testing
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

10. BA UX
Explore how Explore how people
technology supports interact with and use
business technology
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

11. Apply design to business strategy
11 © 2013 Susan Culkin.

12. I am not the customer.
Teams so often get trapped in their own ideas and forget that the people they are
designing for aren’t involved in the product they are creating. What seems obvious
to someone working on the project everyday may not be so obvious for the people
they are designing for. Remind yourself “I am not the customer.”
12 © 2013 Susan Culkin.

13. Here’s an advanced
search page provided
by a very successful
online retailer. –
designed by and for
software engineers.
13
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

14. Same page later
released for users –
focused on results,
not query
14
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

15. Why should this matter to me?
and
How can I convincemy co-workers
this should matter to them?
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

16. It’s good business sense
 The most common results from investments in
improving UX are:
 Decrease in development and support costs
 Increase in average revenue per user
 Decreased time to market
Source: Strategic Data Consulting, Special report: UX Business Impacts and ROI (2009). © 2013 Susan Culkin.

17. Decrease Development & Support
Costs
 Poor requirements definition and management consume
over 1/3 of IT’s app development budget.
 Companies with a low level of requirements maturity failed to
achieve their business objectives on almost half their projects,
while taking 35 percent more time to complete them.
 The User Interface of software is:
 47‐66% of a project’s total code
 40% of the development effort
 80% of the unforeseen fixes required (the other 20% are bugs)
Sources: Strategic Data Consulting, Special report: UX Business Impacts and ROI (2009) and IAG
Consulting (2009) © 2013 Susan Culkin.

18. Decrease Development & Support
Costs
McAfee’s UI redesign saved
them 90% support costs.
Source: Strategic Data Consulting, Special report: UX Business Impacts and ROI (2009). © 2013 Susan Culkin.

19. Increase Revenue
 Good experience leads to increased loyalty
 Companies can monetize loyal customers 2.4
times more than neutral customers
Source: Strategic Data Consulting, Special report: UX Business Impacts and ROI (2009). © 2013 Susan Culkin.

20. Decrease Time to Market
 UX investments made in the concept phase
reduce product development cycles by 33‐50%.
 A one‐quarter delay in time to market equals a
loss of 50% of that product’s profit.
 About 5% of features are used 95% of the time.
UX can better focus feature sets.
Source: Strategic Data Consulting, Special report: UX Business Impacts and ROI (2009). © 2013 Susan Culkin.

21. User-Centric Design
Plan Research
Design
Measure
Adapt
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

22. “Our clients are as fickle as the next deal.”
-- Jeff Bezos, founder & CEO of Amazon.com

23. 23
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

24. The UX Designer – Graphic
Designer – Business Analyst –
Front-End Developer –
Back-End Developer –
Technical Writer.
24 © 2013 Susan Culkin.

25. Susan
Be deliberate.
Create beautiful
Culkin
things.
Design Strategy | Interaction Design |
Care. User Experience
Email: susan.culkin@gmail.com
Twitter: uunan
Cell: 703.851.0391
Site: sculkin.wordpress.com
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

26. Wireframing tools
I am not endorsing the following companies or their products. But people often ask
me what tools I use for prototyping and wireframing so here is a list of inexpensive
options for beginners. You can always create wireframes and prototypes in
business applications like PowerPoint© and Viso©. Remember the purpose of
wireframing and prototype is to demonstrate an idea before you invest too much
time and effort in the final product. Paper and pencil is still a great option.
 Balsamiq has a software download and an online subscription option
 Axure the higher priced option generates a specification doc that has
saved me LOTS of time. Developers are always happy when I deliver Axure
prototypes with the text spec doc.
 Protoshare is a web-based, collaborative prototyping application
 Mockingbird is an online wireframe tool with simple drag-and-drop
elements
© 2013 Susan Culkin.

27. Books & Sites
I guess I am endorsing these resources. I have found them to be very helpful and
insightful. There are many more but these are the first that come to mind. Enjoy
and please share your own in the comments
 Change by Design, Tim Brown
 Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design, Bill
Buxton
 Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug
 Six Thinking Hats, Edward de Bono
 www.uie.com : User Interface Engineering
 boxesandarrows.com : Boxes and Arrows
 www.uxbooth.com : UX Booth
© 2013 Susan Culkin.