Designers Empathy@# Design Journey
- Am I happy?
I like to start with some yes or no questions to assess how I feel. I don’t spend too much time answering these — I know that my first response is usually my truest one. - Am I grateful?
I remind myself all the time to appreciate what I have. This question prompts me to do that. - Do I like my job?
We spend most of our time at work, so it’s important to feel good about what we do. - Do I feel good?
When I’m in a good mental and emotional place, I’m better equipped to connect with the people in my life. That’s why I work on my own energy before trying to help others. - What new things am I learning?
If I don’t have a good answer for this one, I know it’s time to make a change. When I’m not learning, I’m not growing, and when I’m not growing, I feel frustrated and weak. - Where is my career going?
I want to wake up excited every day for what’s ahead. Some advice: If you can’t identify your long-term goals, start thinking about them. You don’t need to know exactly what you want to do, but you should have an idea of the direction you want to take. - How meaningful is my work?
This is very simple: I want to feel like my work matters. - How can I get better at what I do?
The better I become at what I do, the bigger impact I can make, which leads to both more satisfaction and more income. - What’s my number-one priority right now?
I probably ask myself this question every day. When we focus on too many things at the same time, we don’t make much progress at all. - How can I achieve that number-one priority more quickly?
This question is not about being impatient — it’s about being creative. Imagining how I might achieve my goals faster pushes me to come up with new ways to get better results. - What tasks should I stop doing?
We all waste time. It’s important to identify the tasks that distract you from your real goals, and stop doing them. - What tasks am I procrastinating?
It’s always tempting to avoid difficult or uncomfortable tasks. But putting them off until tomorrow (or months from now) will only make them that much more unpleasant when you ultimately do tackle them. - How can I help one person today?
My life has more meaning when I do something generous with my time. A simple gesture is enough. I might decide to call a family member, or cheer up a friend. - What questions am I not asking myself?
This list of questions will always be changing — because I myself am always changing. Try coming up with a list of your own, and then bring it out every month or so. After a while, you may just find that your life is better simply because you took the time to ask yourself how things were going.
15. Do at least 10% more what is expected out of you.
16. Never, ever present as fact opinions on things you don’t know.
17. Be courteous and considerate always — up and down.
18. Don’t knock, don’t complain — stick to constructive, serious criticism.
20. Don’t be afraid to make decisions when you have the facts on which . to make them.
21. Quantify where possible.
22. Be open-minded but skeptical. 8. Be prompt.
Who can be UX designers?
- Who is a problem solver, Analytical thinker. cognitive, psychological in nature.
Who can be UI/VD designers?
- Who has a Visual Eye with understanding design principles.
What is Design?
- Design is in all the things used in our daily life and getting habituated to it.
What is your design references?
- Dribbble, behance, awwwards,
What is your tool plugins?
For Sketch using craft
For XD-
What is Design Process?
It is not Magic it is a practice. Whereas Magic is also a Practice !!
- Emphathize- Learn about the user(Understanding Problem/Research) we are trying to solve Discovery of larger group or community and their problem and how we can solve as per their capability ( users goal and objective )
- Define- (Defining the problem)- WHY we need this, Analysis- Interviews ( Mind Mapping), to remove our assumptions., Functions,Competitive analysis - Evaluating existing task flows, Task Analysis- Proposing new task flows. Need to define the technology.
-Ideate- What - (generating ideas), solution- how will the pieces fit together, Draw sketch ( Low-Fi ), visualize- Creation of Information Architecture — Defining Navigation ( Card sorting )Evaluating current and proposing new architecture
https://medium.com/@kimberlea.d.smith/user-flow-information-architecture-89a6d8808f12
- Prototype- How, sketches,( Low-Fi, High-Fi)
using Tools like sketch, XD, Figma, Invision, Axure
-Test: User, AB testing, Case scenarios, task based, Usability testing
What is our role into that?
-Our role is to try to improve the experience by noticing.
What we need to do for that?
-Look broader
-Stay younger as we need to think young like a child with curiosity in everything.
What understanding we need to have before starting any design?
- How we can align the brand and the user together understanding the business and user demographic.
- Getting solution for the problem.what is worth doing to meet the business goals synced with all stake holders. Are we developing something new or existing product and if it is benefiting
aligning user with the brand.
What is UX?
- Feeling and emotions while using any product or service which comes on our daily life and getting benefits out of it.
What is Usability?
- Determining the product is simple and easy to use by the end user.
What is Accessibility?
- Ensure the product is available and accessible by one and all with and without disability.
- Resize Text, Color Contrast, Proper Alt Text,
What are the UX process?
User experience process starts with understanding the users pain points, what they go through sketching the story from start to end using story telling methods, doing a research from the outer world on the trend, drafting a low fidelity sketch with design principles, designing the visual aesthetics with high fidelity design and moving it to the tech to implement the functionality and Evaluating it with user feedback and UI improvements with usability testing.
- Understand: Learning about the users and their problem.
Activities: Meet, Talk, Observe
Outcomes : Creating user persona with their demographics on their real environment. creating user story by the help of empathy map and story telling technique with start to end using 5e steps ( Entice: How to motivate user to use the product, Enter : How they initiate and enter, Engage: How they are engaged by our experience, Exit: what they take while exiting and extend is if they are referring this or using this repetitive , Analysis- Interviews , Evaluating existing task flows, Task Analysis, use cases . IA which is done with the help of card sorting
Tools can be used XMind and mindomo a structured diagram to keep information into visual to communicate with stakeholders.
- Research: explore how the outer world is working on such features.
Activities : Competitor and Domain analysis, UX/UI Trend and guideline analysis.
Outcomes: Bunch of Ideas and material.
- Sketch:
Activities: Draw paper Sketches, white board flows, Low-Fi Wire frames to share ideas with stakeholders using 3 design principles ( Fitts law which is place of elements, Mimicry which is reference from something from real world and aesthetic is to make it visually appealing
Outcomes: User Flows, sketches, wire frames,
- Design: prototype High fi with detailed visual design
Activities: Visual /UI Design with guidelines, Stakeholders feedback on technical and business perspective
Outcomes: High-Fi Mock ups using Sketch, Invision.https://www.atlassian.design/
- Implement: building functionality by tech team.
Activities : Implement back-end functionality
Outcomes: Developed UI with complete functionality and experience following the designed theme and style
- Evaluate: Validating User Flows
Activities: Validating user flows
Outcomes: User Feedback, UI Audits, Improvement areas
search or the UX/ XD etc?
- Qualitative and Quantitative methods which includes empathizing or field study using empathy map- what the user says, thinks, Does and feels by doing Focus group interviews
one on one interview observing customer behavior
Data comes from What, How .
How do we define the Qualitative method?
- which is change and observe through tangible field study on everyday activity. its an iterative process
How do we define the Quantitative method?
- Which can be counted or measured by asking question to focus group with getting the task time by methods like card sorting 20 users, Tree testing- 50–100, eye tracker 40 users
What is Demographics and where we use it?
- Demographics: Name, picture, region, gender.
- We use it to create journey maps, user stories.
How do we do persona study?
- User needs and their goals by understanding their demographics by empathy mapping technique.
- Pain points
- Motivation
What is Information Architecture?
- Structured information of organisation which includes their tasks and goals, navigational elements, user flows. putting the pieces together to understand the flow of the product or the service
What is card sorting?
- It helps to create IA categorizing information into buckets, Method to evaluate Information architecture.
- Grouping and labeling Max 20 users
What is AB Testing ?
- Statistical version of 2 or more Version, Data Driven Approach,
What is a Flowchart?
To understand the process in a visual representation.
Few tools to create are Microsoft invisio and Flow map
What books to follow for UX?
- Don Norman
What is Material Design?
Technology behind the interfaces, HUMAN and device relationship, Technology behind the interface.
What is a design process?
one of them- Strategy- user study_ UX stake holder interviews, usability evaluation, competitive analysis, persona study, scenarios, idealizations,
Low and hi fi , high fi usability test.
scope: requirement, features, content
structure: flow Information Architect how will the pieces fits together
Skeleton wire frame: components to be used
Surface: visual
What is UI Design?
- User Interface design is visual or look and feel. in layman language its an skin and cloth of any skeleton.
Few Trending Fonts:
http://www.typevibes.com/
Awareness of trending pairing fonts
serif ( With End Strokes- Times new roman): Rockwell, Sabon, Jura, Brela, Cormorant, Crimson text
sanserif ( Without Strokes- Arial): DIN 1451, Proxima Nova, Montserrat, Nunito, Ui Sans, Open sans, Segoe UI, Moon, Coves, Big john, Slim John, Baron, Aqua Grotesque, Dense
To pair the fonts We need to take care of the Type faces, Contrast with Serf and Sanserif,
Likes:
Bebas neu bold with montserrat.
Open sans extra bold / Cooper hewitt
Raleway/ Roboto
Sefon/bebus neue
Anton/Opensans light
Where do i take colors from for my designs?
- www.paleton.com
- https://htmlcolorcodes.com/color-picker/
- Found an article you may be interested in:
https://digitalsynopsis.com/design/2019-color-trends-worlds-most-popular-colors/ - For Kiosk displays, any sans serif font(IBM Plex Sans, Roboto, Open Sans, Cairo Black, Rajdhani, etc)
What tools we designers use?
- Structure diagram through XMind/ Mindomo
- Flowcharts through visio and flowmap.
- UXpin, Figma ( great for collaboration/Team Library)/Sketch/XD ( Pro typing Tools )
- RealTime Board/Invision: ( Feedback from Users )
- Testing through crazy egg for eye tracking and heat mapping
- usabilla
- BaseCamp : ( Project Management Tool)
- Slack : Communication Tool :
- Appear.in/Loom — ( Video Chat )
Which are my inspirational websites?
- youtube, dribbble, siteinspire, Awwwards, Dribble, Pinterests, Pixeden, unsplash, pixelbuddha, pixabay, Nice.co, Digital synopsis.Muzli, UXUI collective instagram.
What is Interaction design?
- In ter action: ongoing action between the parties. relationship with any humans or object
What is Accessibility Test and how do we do that?
How we Judge the Professional ?
Its not about years of experience or school we are coming from but about the relevance and to the trend knowledge we keep in our day to day habits and the motivation to achieve our own passion as i believe designs are iterative process as world is ever-changing and design never ends!.
JD knowledge which should be specific to the requirement which meets the budget has to match and both are syncd with their R& R
Recruiter : Do we need specialized/Individual Contributor specific to ( UX/UI/VD), Multi tasking, People Manager and understanding their JD appropriately ?
Candidates: To present their skill on their current skills.
Good portfolio is just to project your picture to sell you like a movie trailer.
Although they say don’t judge a book by its cover, we know that a good cover design helps the book sales which is actually not all ..
Would segregate in some ratio:
- Attitude 50%
- Communication skills with design thinking outcomes 30% .
- Trend knowledge 10%
- Portfolio ( Specific -UX/ UI/VD ) 5 %
- Experience/Schooling 5%
Innovative Ideas and Creativity *Problem Selection, Understanding and Outcomes *Way of Thinking *Skill on Tools *Quality of Solutions *Visual Design and Presentation and most important is the attitude.
What are design best practices?
-Words, Declutterness, clarity
-Validation
-Testing, Being humble, Delight users.
-Words: People don’t read
-Write with your heart and edit with your brain
-Consistency is the key
-Sorting the content on priority
-perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away
-Reduce the users effort
-100 clear screen is always better than 1 cluttered
-Smooth user journey without any confusion
-Ego kills design, It stops Learning and is the biggest enemy of design
-Never be satisfied , become mindful and honest
-it is not for us it is for users
-Whitespaces
-connecting feelings with features
What makes any online sale a true success:#
- 50% — product quality.
- 5% — brand name (this finding fully disrupts the myth that the more solid and famous the brand, the more sales it makes online)
- 15% — interaction with customer (e.g. engagement in social media, tech support, etc)
-10% — promotion
- 20% = user currency (7%) + translation / localization (5%) + payment methods (5%) + user support (3%)
The 5 Most Important Traits To Look For In A UX Consultant A UX consultant is someone with a more objective point of view, who can guide you through your UX related problems. But what does the ideal UX consultant have? #1: Expertise with your specific problem: i.e. for finding your users needs, you might want a UX research expert #2: Empathy: really sees through the problems, understands the background, the team dynamic #3: Flexibility/Adaptability: a good UX consultant does not feel like an outsider, becomes part of your team #4: UX process orientation: has a holistic view of the UX design process and sees the connections you might have missed #5: Curiosity-driven persistence: such drive and perspective can help push your team or your company towards new solutions and processes Think about what you mostly need a UX consultant for and take into consideration who could be ideal for your product.
