Carlos Neves

In the previous article, we discussed the fundamental characteristics of UX (holistically analysing behaviours, creating empathy and eliminating assumptions, and assuming a central role in the brand’s relationship with customers). In this article, we will detail some of the activities and tools we use to define intentional and memorable experiences that simultaneously meet specific business objectives.

The solution to a UX problem is to get a clear answer to the following questions:

1. What’s the problem? (Clearly identify the problem)
2. Who has this problem? (Who are we designing the experience for?)
3. What are the goals? (Business and users)
4. How will we solve the problem? (Strategy)
5. Which features are needed to achieve those goals? (Functional requirements)
6. How will the product work so that those goals can be accomplished? (Problem’s solution).

To find the answers, the UX team uses different activities and ux tools that must adapt to the complexity of the problem. These are the most significant:

A big part of the product’s success comes from finding the right problem to solve.

The discovery phase is probably the one that varies the most between projects. More complex projects will include significant user and competitor research activities, while small projects may ignore some of these activities, maintaining informal interviews, surveys or field studies.

What activities do we perform?

UX workshops for discovery, empathy and prioritisation – UX workshops are used throughout the process to solve cross-functional ownership issues and achieve consensus, among other goals.

Strategy is one of the processes that should have priority in the context of a UX definition.

Defining a clear strategy will shape the project’s objectives – what the organisation hopes to achieve, how success should be measured and determining priorities. At this stage, we should find answers to three fundamental questions: where is the company now, where does it want to go, and how does it want to get there?

The objective of the analysis phase is to extract concrete results from the data collected during the previous stage, moving from “what” users want/think/need to “why” they want/think/need.

What activities do we perform?

? Interpret data – we interpret the data to explain and understand raw data.

That interpretation summarises the patterns or underlying concepts found in the raw data: Key Insights (persona, action, need, constraint), Job-to-be-done (situation, motivation, expected outcome) and User Stories (such as persona, action, result)

? Functional analysis – functional analysts ensure, at this stage, that the focus is on the user, their objectives and how they perform the tasks to achieve said goals.

? Mental models – the way people build their mental models are based on many factors such as past experiences, knowledge level, and cultural references. The structure of a mental model diagram is divided into two parts: problem space and solution space.

? Experience map – an experience map is an extended version of a mental model based on a universal framework: product lifecycle stages, user experience emotions, data collected and insights from the UX team.

This phase of a UX project is collaborative and iterative. The premise is to present ideas to real users, obtain feedback, refine the ideas and repeat the process in an agile way. These ideas can be represented by interactive wireframes or functional prototypes, deliberately low fidelity prototypes to delay – at this point – any conversation related to graphic identity, branding or visual details.

What activities do we perform?

? User flows – when designing a digital product, we need to know what is expected of people, what we want them to do and what steps they need to take. User flows provide a guide, showing the succession of interactions that users must make from the starting point to completing the task.

Knowing the paths you want the users to follow informs how a product needs to be structured; Understanding information architecture – our brain prefers order to chaos. Information architecture takes the features of a project and places them so that they make sense to whoever will use them.

Information architecture can be divided into the following parts:

• Identify: what content do we need to tell the brand’s story? What elements do we need to communicate what we need to convey?
• Classify: categorise the content and design its distribution in the organisation and hierarchy of the product.
• Map: structuring and organising, deciding how each concept or block of content will lead to the next.

Information architecture organises content into manageable hierarchies. This structure establishes how people will assimilate the ideas presented in a logical succession.

? Wireframes – creating a wireframe provides a high-level plan for each page, with visual indicators such as lines, grids, and boxes showing where content, images, and other elements will go. They are typically low resolution with a sparse and minimal layout.

Whether it’s a simple map of boxes, lines and boxes or a more sophisticated representation, wireframes provide a framework that also serves another essential function which is communication: they are a powerful visual tool, making it possible to show everyone, regardless of their job role, how the product will be structured.

This phase is where the high-fidelity design is developed, and the product’s first version is validated with stakeholders and end-users through user testing sessions. The role of the UX team shifts from creating and validating ideas to collaborating with development teams to guide and defend the product’s vision.

What activities do we perform?

? Prototyping – prototyping works like an almost finished version of a project.

Navigation, interactions, and key visual and content blocks will be in place. It is unnecessary to have all elements, but everything the user needs to interact and experience must be integrated.

Prototypes allow you to get feedback and adjust before you finish defining the UX. You can make both low and high-fidelity prototypes. Low-fidelity prototypes focus on function over visual design, while high-fidelity prototypes focus on the look and feel of the final version of the product.

? Micro-copy – text clusters responsible for shaping a generous portion of the experience. The effective use of these texts allows to guide, involve, suggest and create pleasant experiences.

? Functional guides – we produce visual, navigational and documentation guides to provide alignment with the UX and Development teams. This way, we ensure that the teams are updated on any development and changes made to the navigation structure or visual resources.

? Usability tests – once you have a working prototype, it’s time to do usability testing.

Usability tests can be moderated or unmoderated.

Face-to-face (moderated) tests allow you to analyse how people react emotionally to the experience, receive unfiltered feedback and understand what’s working and what is not.

Usability tests can happen at any point during the process.

As we’ve seen, the ideal experience allows users to perform a task effectively and positively, ending with a feeling of satisfaction.

This premise is deceptively simple: building the ideal experience is a more complex journey than one might think at first – in fact, it’s a journey of learning, trial and error, successes and failures, and many iterations and evolutions.

It doesn’t have a beginning, middle and end because the ideal experience changes as our users change; therefore, it’s iterative by nature. Xpand IT’s UX business unit is focused on creating omnichannel experiences that are useful and enjoyable for end-users and thoroughly adapted to our client’s business needs, goals, and vision.

Read the first part of this article. 

The UX process aims to build better experiences for digital products: it shapes the scenario, guides people and offers them something useful and valuable and affects how they feel. Content, structure and navigation come together to provide a memorable experience. An ideal experience allows users to perform a task effectively and positively, ending with a sense of satisfaction. Discover the UX framework at Xpand IT:

The UX process starts with understanding the business goals and the best way to reach a target audience. By understanding the psychology (behavioural and cognitive) of the target audience, it’s possible to provide them with a positive and memorable experience.

In the field of Behavioural Psychology, we know it’s possible to induce people to have certain behaviours by submitting them to certain stimuli. In UX, this means that, through small stimuli in the interface, it is possible to guarantee that the user has the expected behaviour.

Therefore, when developing a digital product, it’s essential to consider the expected behaviour of the user and what can be done to reinforce it.

Cognitive Psychology is the area that focuses on the process of cognition and thinking. This field covers attention, memory, perception, language, and decision-making topics, among others.

Studies on perception and attention are most important in UX development routines: perception is how we capture and interpret external information through the senses. It is also related to attention, which deals with the prioritisation process our brain goes through when faced with different types of stimuli.

In addition, the experience must make sense from the point of view of structure and organisation: the human mind is constantly looking for patterns, and these must make sense to the user.

Sometimes we’re so obsessed with meeting user expectations that we don’t consider the need to focus on the brand for which we’re designing a product and experience. That is, we lose focus on what differentiates users from customers.

Before demystifying UX processes, it’s worth understanding the relationship between customer and user experience and the brand in a larger context. Each element of the customer experience contributes to creating a better brand experience.

So, what do the acronyms UI, UX, CX and BX mean, and how do they relate to each other?

UI – USER INTERFACE: The space where interactions between humans and machines take place.

UX – USER EXPERIENCE: How we feel when we interact with a product or service.

CX – CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: What happens when we interact with a product or service.

BX – BRAND EXPERIENCE: Build and aggregate the meaning of the brand in the consumer’s life.

UX + CX = BX: CX encompasses customer interactions with all facets of the brand, including the digital product, while UX is a part of the CX.

As we’ve seen, UX is concerned with user motivations:

• Why did they decide to access a website or an app?
• What information do they need?
• What problems are they facing?
• What solutions are they looking for to solve them?

UX analyses users’ minds, designing an experience that will give them what they’re looking for or need in a simple and direct way.

Unlike UI, UX moves away from visual elements and focuses on connecting and engaging people with the product, building an experience that meets their expectations.

The UX team constantly seeks to put itself in the user’s shoes and understand their logic reasoning. Their motivations and pain points are researched and uncovered to know how all the pieces fit together holistically, intending to help people achieve their goals.

It’s critical to understand their problems and the journey they will take to get where they want to go.

Research eliminates guesswork, letting us know real people’s challenges and expectations.

Genuine empathy cannot exist until we know deeply those we want to reach.

In conclusion, it is clear that UX is a multidisciplinary area that encompasses three fundamental characteristics:

• Discover and analyse behaviours and mental models to understand them in their entirety and globality (holistic doctrine);
• Have the ability to put yourself in the other person’s shoes to understand their journeys and pain points, eliminating assumptions;
• UX should be considered a central part of the macro scenario of the brand’s relationship with customers or potential customers.

In a follow-up article, we will pick up from where we left off to detail activities and tools we use to design intentional and memorable experiences that, at the same time, meet specific business objectives: How to solve a problem “the UX way”; Which activities do we perform in the moments of discovery, strategy and analysis; How to design a practical experience and design the final product.

Read the second part of this article.