1. UX 101 sneak peek #2: UX strategy and the power of focus

    Our goal with User Experience 101 is to help you start creating great user experiences.

    We believe the foundation of great user experience is strategy, and strategy is fundamentally about focusing your efforts on what is most important to your users.

    Easy to say; hard to do. But we’ve found a few techniques that can help sharpen the focus of a design team or project…

    • Engage stakeholders. Even if you’re the world’s most brilliant user experience designer, you can’t go it alone. You need to understand the different perspectives and goals in your organization, and how they interact with your users’ needs and tasks. That’s why interviewing stakeholders throughout your organization provides a critical grounding for your user experience process. See Conducting Successful Interviews With Project Stakeholders and Setting Up Business Stakeholder Interviews for some recommendations.
    • Think in terms of mantras rather than mission statements. Nearly every organization has a stated mission or purpose. The problem is that this mission is often so vague and diffuse as to provide little or no focus for design efforts. Guy Kawasaki has criticized these nebulous mission statements, such as “The mission of Wendy’s is to deliver superior quality products and services for our customers and communities through leadership, innovation, and partnerships.” He suggests short, simple, “mantras” instead. Wendy’s mantra could be “healthy fast food.”
    • Establish strong experience principles. It’s great to say you have your users’ needs in mind, but it’s far more compelling if you can state specific principles that guide your design efforts. For example, Google has developed 10 explicit principles they try to adhere to in their product design. These principles, such as “Every millisecond counts” help focus feature development and design discussions.
    • Make the future tangible. It’s not enough to have a mission. You can’t build a mission. As Jared Spool argues, you must create tangible expressions of what experiences you want your users to have in the future. It takes courage to create and articulate a vision, and it’s easy for others to criticize your vision. But you can fight for your users’ interests.
    • Simplify. “Feature creep” has long been a bane of software development and often harms the user experience. Laura Klein asks, “How many features does it take to destroy your product?” And Jason Fried from 37signals argues that design teams should “Start with No” and “Make each feature work hard to be implemented. Make each feature prove itself and show that it’s a survivor. It’s like Fight Club. You should only consider features if they’re willing to stand on the porch for three days waiting to be let in.”

    Ready to start developing a user experience strategy, and focusing your designs? Join us.

    Discounted pricing expires on August 15th, so don’t wait!

    Register online today at http://ux101.eventbrite.com/

    In future sneak peeks, we’ll discuss two more perspectives on user experience we’ve found helpful…

    • Research is about EMPATHY
    • Design is about CLARITY

    Stay tuned!

    jacksonfox  /  1 year ago  /  Notes