July 20, 2021

Conducting User Interviews

As a UX designer, you’ll always focus on the user and the experience they’ll have with the product you’re designing. In this course, you’ll learn about the first phase of the design process, empathizing with users, which is critical when it comes to creating a great user experience. In order to empathize with users and understand their pain points, you’ll need to conduct interviews with real people who might use the product you’re designing.

Prepare for the interview: Interview preparation checklist as the the user researches on the computer

Whether you’re conducting interviews in person or online, it’s important to be prepared before you speak with real users. You want to make the most of your limited time together and learn as much as you can about their unique perspectives. Here are a few things you can do to prepare for interviews:

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July 19, 2021

Understand empathy in UX design

The name UX design says it all: the user’s experience is at the center of how we design products. The best way for you to create great user experiences is to know and empathize with your user. As you might recall, empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s feelings or thoughts in a situation. 

As a UX designer, empathizing with users enhances the products you create because you experience the product as your user does. The better you are at anticipating a user’s desires and needs, the more comfortable the user will feel with your design, and the more likely they will be to engage with your product long-term. 

So, let’s explore how empathy can make you a more effective UX designer!

How to empathize with users

If empathizing with users sounds like a big task, fear not! The ability to empathize with users is a skill that can be learned with practice. Here are six tips that can help you become a more empathetic UX designer.

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July 12, 2021

Different types of UX researches in the product development cylce

There are two key parts to every UX design project: conducting research to learn about the users you’re designing for, and gathering feedback about their perspectives. UX design is all about putting the user first, and research helps designers understand those users. 

UX research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation and feedback. Your product design should be built upon research and facts, not assumptions. UX research aligns what you, as the designer, think the user needs with what the user actually needs. 

Remember the product development life cycle from an earlier course of the program? The product development life cycle has five stages — brainstorm, define, design, test, and launch — that take an idea for an app, website, or product to its launch. 

Let’s check out how research fits into the product development life cycle.

Graphic showing the product development lifecycle, represented by a circle
Around the circle, there are other icons that represent the phases of the product development lifecycle – Brainstorm, Define, Design, Test, Launch. New additional phases branch out from the cycle, including Foundational research (from the brainstorm phase), Design research (from the design phase), and post-launch research (from the launch phase)
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June 24, 2021

Designing for Multiple Platforms: The Four Cs Principle

Successfully designing across platforms means providing users with a good experience, no matter what platform they use! As a UX designer, your job is to make sure that your designs account for and take full advantage of the unique features of each platform. When preparing to design across platforms, it’s helpful to keep in mind the four Cs: consistency, continuity, context, and complementary.  

Graphic from the point of view of someone looking at their hands on a laptop. They are holding a phone and wearing a watch.

Consistency: Most companies have specific design guidelines that need to be followed in order to stay consistent with their brand identity, which refers to the visual appearance and voice of a company. When designing a product, it’s essential to stay true to the company’s brand guidelines in order to maintain consistency across platforms and drive brand awareness. Maintaining a consistent design helps improve the user experience and build trust, because users can expect the design to feel familiar across platforms and products.

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June 16, 2021

Common UX Design Frameworks (part 1): Design Thinking Process and the Five Elements approach

There’s many UX Design Frameworks out there, most common among them are Design Thinking Process and the Five Elements.

Design thinking process 

Design thinking is a user-centered approach to problem-solving. It helps designers create solutions that address a real user problem and are functional and affordable. There are five phases in the design thinking process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. If these sounds familiar that’s because it is based on one of the core principles of UX design which is the Product Design Cycle which I’ve mentioned in an earlier post.

Each phase of the framework answers a specific question. 

Icons that represent the design thinking process - empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.

During the empathize phase, the goal is to understand users’ needs and how users think and feel. This involves a lot of user research, such as conducting surveys, interviews, and observation sessions, so you can get a clear picture of who your users are and the challenges they are facing.

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June 14, 2021

Entry-level UX designers, what do they do exactly?

As you start out on your path to becoming a UX designer, you’re probably curious about the actual work your new career might involve. In this reading, you can explore the different responsibilities that entry-level UX designers commonly take on during a project. You’ll also review the differences between generalist, specialist, and T-shaped UX designers.

Responsibilities of an entry-level UX designer

As an entry-level UX designer, you’ll have a lot of exciting opportunities to gain experience. When you first start out, you’ll probably take on a lot of different roles and responsibilities. 

graphic of a person using a laptop, with various icons surrounding them indicating UX design skills
Icons include user research (a tablet with magnifying glass over it) Information architecture (a series of 3 colored, numbered bars) Wireframing (a graphic of a wireframe) Protoyping (a graphic of a desktop monitor with protoype of mobile device on screen) Visual design (a mobile phone next to paint swatches) Effective communication (a graphic of two people talking)
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