UX Designer’s ToolkitDesigning a better world

Rachel LiuApril 2014

Objective

• Understand how UX plays a fundamental part for designing a better world

• Become familiar with the Lean UX process

• How to develop your skills in UX everyday

Rachel Liu UX Designer

@rachelsliurachelsliu@gmail.com

Why Digital Projects Fails

“I can’t find what I want”

“Why is it so hard to use?”

“I’m so confused, what does this error message

mean?”

“Oh crap, just made a mistake, how do I undo?”

First impressions

The first 10 seconds of the page visit are critical for users' decision to stay or leave

Case Study: Ryanair

Customer’s perceptions

“They have a famous (and intentional) unattractive and cluttered website that comes along with a frustrating user experience”

- Philip Joyce, Designer

Ryanair’s customer experience

What Ryanair could look like

Consumer Sentiment Comparison

Ryanair’s Design Strategy

• Nov 2013: New digital strategy for the ‘new Ryanair experience’, reducing booking process from 17 down to 5 clicks

• Feb 2014: Seat allocations, allowing a second bag, duty free bag rather than cramming everything into 1 hand luggage

• April 2014: New improved website, aim to be more intuitive and mobile passes

• June 2014: Mobile app for smartphone and tablets

"What’s always ‘in’ is good usability and giving consideration to what a consumer wants to achieve when they come to the website - that will never get old”.

-Simply Zesty's head of design Rick Monro

UX to the Rescue!

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.

10 Principles of UX

1. Experience belongs to the user

2. UX is holistic

3. Great UX are invisible

4. UX is a lifecycle

5. Context is king

6. Great experience is about control

7. UX is social

8. Psychology is primary

9. UX is a conversation not a one-off product

10. Great experiences are simple

Case Study: TFL TFL new website

TFL: Putting Users First

• User-centred design approach - putting customers at the heart of design process

• Beta site launched mid 2013 in parallel to current site

• Using social media as a feedback forum

• Website officially launched on 25th March 2014

User’s Goals

“What people really wanted was a great Journey Planner, maps, live travel information, localised and personalised content – all on their device of choice.  

We needed to be great at catering for mobiles, tablets, laptops and desktops”.

- Phil Young, Head of Online at TFL

TFL’s Success

• “New TFL Journey Planner Crowned Best User Experience of 2013 at UXUK Awards”

• “Award for best Mobile Solution at International Design for Experience Design”

• 6m pages in 1million visits from over 900,000 customers

UCD Definition

User Centred Design is the discipline of generating solutions to problems and opportunities through the act of making something ‘new’, where the activity is driven by the needs, desires and context of the people for whom we design.

1. Research 2. Define 3. Design 4. Evaluate

UCD Process

Why Lean UX?

• Evolution of product design, takes the best parts of designer’s toolkit with the ever rapid changing technology and demands of businesses today

• Not about features or documents, it’s about how it works: measure what works, learn and adjust

Lean UX Process

Lean UX = Design thinking + Agile software development + Lean startup

Eric Lies cyclical model Design’s cyclical model

Learn by Doing!

1. Learn

2.Build3. Measure

- Empathy map- User journey

- Concept poster- Show & tell

Goal: Understand the UCD/lean UX process

Brief: Design a service for group holidays

• Get into groups of 4/5

• Choose a customer segment

• Draw customer’s face in the centre

• Give customer a name, demographic characteristics

• Divide into 6 segments

• Post-its to answer questions

Exercise: Empathy Map

Goal: Understand how product/service will by used by target audience

Persona example Smart Socialite

Persona example Smart Traditionalist

Exercise: Journey Mapping

• Main steps for the group holiday service (beginning to end) as headings

• Feelings/emotion under each stage

• Service solution: Find opportunities to solve pain points and boost joy points

• Use your empathy mapping to guide you, relating to user’s needs

Goal: Understand all the touch-points across a product/service from a user’s perspective

Exercise: Visualise the vote

• Everyone has three votes each• Individually, choose your top three ideas in

your head• All together, place the dots next to the

solutions • Tally the dots to select best idea/s • Select best idea, discuss or re-vote again

Goal: Uncover the strongest ideas or patterns of interest, building consensus and priorities

Exercise: Concept poster

• Based on best idea, develop the solution more fully

• Design a concept poster• Use empathy map and journey map to aid

you

Goal: Create compelling poster that summarises your product/service idea

Exercise: Show & Tell

Goal: Cross-collaboration, exchanging ideas and learning from each other

• Each team pair up with another team from a different customer segment

• Walkthrough the empathy map, journey map and your poster pitch

• Other team provide feedback on three things to consider/improve on based on their customer segment

• Teams swap tasks

Key Takeaways

1. Re-ask the problem and solve the right problem

2. Design for emotion by adopting the attitude of:

You?

Humble

Empathetic

Imaginative

Collaborative

Iterative

Curious

3. Practice Lean UX - learn, build, measure, iterate and validate with real users

4. Designing great products is the responsibility of everyone - advocate cross-functional teams

5. A great designer isn’t a UX hero but a great facilitator who advocates collaboration and team cohesion

“As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life”.

-Amy Poehler

Recommended Reading

Goodreads - UX list

Questions? Rachel Liu@rachelsliurachelsliu@gmail.com