UX Methods & Deliverables
While there are no hard and fast rules to discover and craft the best user experiences we employ a variety of tried and tested methodologies and deliverables.
Blueprints
A map that displays all the touch-points of the consumer with your brand, as well as the key internal processes involved in it. Useful to visualize the path followed by consumers across multiple channels and how to improve the flow.
Consumer Journey Maps
A diagram that explores the multiple (often invisible) steps taken by consumers as they engage with the service. Frames the consumer’s motivations and needs in each step of the journey, creating design solutions that are appropriate for each.
User Stories
A breakdown of each user task that can be accomplished within the product experience. Reminds the team of the motivations that drive the target audience to use each feature, as well as the path that they will take to do so.
Personas
A snapshot of the target audience that highlights demographics, behaviours, needs and motivations through the creation of a fictional character. Personas make it easier to create empathy with consumers throughout the design process.
Ecosystem Maps
A visualisation of the company’s digital properties, the connections between them, and their purpose in the overall marketing strategy. Provides insights around how to leverage new and existing assets to achieve business goals.
Competitive Audits
A comprehensive analysis of competitor products that maps out existing features in a comparable way. Helps to understand industry standards and identify opportunities to innovate in a given area.
Value Propositions
A reductive process in the early stages of product definition that maps out the key aspects of it: what it is, who it is for and when or where it will be used. Helps to narrow down and create consensus around what the product will be.
Stakeholder Interviews
Defined scripts for interviewing key stakeholders in a project, both internal and external, to gather insights about their goals. This helps to prioritise features and define key performance indicators.
Key Performance Indicators
Development of pre-established criteria to measure progress toward strategic goals or the maintenance of operational goals. KPIs help inform design decisions along the way and measure results of UX efforts.
Brainstorming
A collective process that generates constraint-free ideas which respond to a given creative brief. It allows the team to visualize a broad range of design solutions before deciding which one to stick with.
Moodboards
A collaborative collection of images and references that will eventually evolve into a product’s visual style guide. It is used to show clients and colleagues a proposed look for the product before investing too much time on it.
Storyboards
A comic strip that illustrates the series of actions consumers need to take while using the product in. It translates functionalities into real-life situations, helping to create empathy with the consumer while looking at the product scope.
User Flows
A visual representation of the user’s flow to complete tasks within the product. It’s the user perspective of the site organization, making it easier to identify which steps should be improved or redesigned.
Task Analysis
A breakdown of the required information and actions needed to achieve a task. Helps the team understand the current system and its information flows and makes it possible to allocate tasks appropriately within the new system.
Taxonomies
An exploration around multiple ways to categorise content and data such as topics in a news site or product categories in an e-commerce site. It assists in defining the content structure to support both the user’s and the organization’s goals.
Content Audits
An activity that lists all content available on a website and records who owns it, how often is it updated and how good it is. This list will come in handy at various stages throughout the project and is vital to forming an understanding of both current and future plans.
Heuristic Analysis
A thorough analysis of a product that highlights good and bad practices, using known interaction design principles as guidelines. It helps to visualize the current state of the product in terms of usability, efficiency and effectiveness of the experience.
Sitemaps
An iconic deliverable that consists of a diagram of the website’s pages organized hierarchically. It makes it easy to visualize the basic structure and navigation of a website and is created to tightly couple with personas to ensure that each type of visitor can easily navigate the site.
Feature Roadmaps
A product’s evolution plan with prioritized features. It can be a spreadsheet, a diagram or even a bunch of sticky notes. It helps to centralise and share the product strategy with the team and the road that needs to be taken to achieve its vision.
Use Cases & Scenarios
A comprehensive list of scenarios that happen when users are interacting with the product. These ensure that all possible actions are thoroughly considered, as well as how the system will behave in each scenario.
Metric Analysis
A set of numbers and visuals provided by an analytics tool or a database about how the user interacts with your product: clicks, navigation time, search queries etc. Metrics can also “uncover the unexpected”, surfacing behaviors that are not explicit in user tests.
Focus Groups
A panel of people discussing a specific topic or question. It communicates the users’ feelings, opinions and even language and is especially useful when the target audience is new or unknown for the team.
Quantitative Surveys
A set of questions that provide numbers as result. These are a quick and inexpensive way of measuring user satisfaction and collecting feedback about the product. These can indicate the need for a deeper qualitative test.
Usability Tests
A one-to-one interview in which the user is asked to perform a series of tasks using a prototype or a product. This validates and collects user input of flows, design and features and is an invaluable feedback mechanism.
Card Sorting
A technique that consists in asking users to group content and functionalities into open or closed categories. Provides valuable input on users’ perception of content hierarchy, organization and flow.
A/B Tests
A method for offering alternative versions of your product to different users and comparing the results to find out which one performs better. This is particularly ideal for optimizing funnels and landing pages.
Eyetracking
A technology that analyses the user’s eye movements across the interface. It provides data about what keeps users interested on the screen and how their reading flow could be optimised by design.
Accessibility Analysis
A study to measure if the website can be used by everyone, including users with special needs. It should be designed follow the W3C accessibility guidelines to ensure that all users are satisfied.
Sketches
A quick way of visualizing a new interface by using paper and pen. Sketches are useful to validate product concepts and design approaches with both team members and users.
Wireframes
A visual guide that represents the page structure, as well as its hierarchy and key elements. These are very useful when discussing ideas with team members and clients and assist the work of designers and developers.
Prototypes
A prototype is a simulation of the website navigation and features and commonly uses clickable wireframes or layouts. It’s a quick and easy way to test and validate a product before fully developing it. They can also be used to demonstrate proposed animations and transitions.
Pattern Libraries
A hands-on library that provides examples (and code) of interaction design patterns to be used throughout the product. It not only promotes consistency, but also makes it easier improve elements as and when required.
