UI/UX Design Course for Beginners (2024)

Summary

Highlights

• Kickass UX offers an engaging free course for beginners to learn UX design from scratch. 🆓
• The course includes a comprehensive Figma workbook to guide learning and application. 📘
• Students get hands-on experience by solving a problem for REI, a real company. 🏕️
• Encourages practical learning by comparing your work with expert answers in the Figma workbook. 📈
• Covers the entire UX process, focusing on both user needs and business goals. 🤝
• Highlights the importance of framing the problem and defining design questions. 🧩

Key Takeaways

• Learn UX by doing, and start solving real-world problems! 🛠️
• Familiarize yourself with UI/UX tools like Figma to enhance your learning experience. 🖌️
• Understand the importance of user research and its role in creating meaningful designs. 🔍
• Grasp the full UX process, from researching and understanding to visual design and handoff. 📊
• Realize the need for continued learning and explore pathways to transition into a UX designer. 🚀

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction The 'Introduction' chapter of the UX course sets the stage for what the course aims to achieve. It acknowledges the inadequacies in existing UX courses, both free and paid, based on extensive research. Consequently, this course was created to fill those gaps. It promises a comprehensive journey into UX, boasting over 20 lessons and hours of valuable content designed to build a strong foundation in UX.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Framing the Problem In the chapter titled 'Framing the Problem', the main focus is on the hands-on learning approach to UX design. Key takeaways include the importance of applying learnings and integrating essential skills for a successful UX journey. The course emphasizes active participation, encouraging learners to engage in research and develop practical solutions to real-world problems, specifically for the camping company REI.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Analyzing the Competition This chapter, 'Analyzing the Competition,' details a course sponsored by a group that guides students through the initial two phases of the UX process, crucial for anyone beginning in UX design. The course includes a specially designed Figma workbook to streamline your workflow and reduce uncertainty. A standout feature of this workbook is the ability for students to compare their progress and solutions with examples provided by the course creators, enhancing the learning experience through practical, side-by-side analysis.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Sketching and Wireframing The chapter 'Sketching and Wireframing' provides insights into utilizing various course materials such as a Figma workbook, course slides, and a Lo-Fi wireframing kit, which are accessible on the Kickass2x free UX course page. It highlights that there is no need to take notes, as main points and takeaways are provided below each video. Additionally, downloading the course material provides access to all slides. The chapter concludes by encouraging feedback from learners regarding their course experience.
• 03:00 - 04:00: User Flows and Prototyping This chapter discusses the importance of maintaining originality in your portfolio. It advises against using work from this course as a case study in your portfolio because (1) the course does not offer a complete case study, and (2) everyone completing the course will present the same problem and solution, which could indicate that it originates from this course, something undesirable for unique portfolio presentation.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Usability Testing The chapter titled 'Usability Testing' serves as an introductory guide for those beginning their journey into User Experience (UX). It emphasizes that while the course provides foundational knowledge of the UX process, additional steps are required for those aiming for a career in UX. To secure a job in this field, creating at least two unique case studies demonstrating the ability to follow the UX process and showcasing one's skills is essential. The chapter also outlines various pathways to acquire the necessary skills, including self-study, university education, or specialized programs and boot camps.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Visual Design and Handoff The 'Visual Design and Handoff' chapter introduces a Flagship program for UX/UI expertise. By the program's conclusion, participants will have developed two unique case studies and a standout portfolio, equipped with the skills necessary to secure a job in the UX field. The program is personalized, offering one-on-one mentorship and career guidance tailored to each student's needs. The chapter begins by encouraging participants to reflect on their motivations, mirroring the start of other programs offered.
• 06:00 - 06:30: Conclusion The conclusion emphasizes the importance of understanding one's motivations for pursuing the course. It prompts readers to reflect on deeper reasons beyond surface-level motivations, as these will sustain them through challenges. It suggests potential motivations such as wanting to overcome client and stakeholder subjectivity, breaking through a career ceiling, or seeking a career change.

UI/UX Design Course for Beginners (2024) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Welcome to our free ux course this course is meant to help you kick-start your ux journey so you can learn the fundamentals at this point you may be asking yourself why did you create this well we did a ton of research on ux courses mostly free and some paid and what we found wasn't that impressive or that helpful which is why we decided to create this Kick-Ass free ux course here are five things that you're going to get from this course first there are over 20 lessons and hours of content that teach
• 00:30 - 01:00 you the fundamentals if you continue to apply these learnings and add a few other key skills to your tool belt we're confident that you'll have what it takes to successfully kick start your ux journey second you learn ux by actually doing this isn't a course where you just sit back and you do your best to absorb the information instead you'll do research and start to build a real solution to a user and business problem for REI if you're unfamiliar with REI they're a camping company you can check them out at rei.com and know by the way this is not a promotion and we're not
• 01:00 - 01:30 sponsored by them by the end of the course you'll have gone through the first two phases of the ux process which are the most fundamental for getting started in ux third we specifically designed a figma workbook for this course to help guide you through the process we've taken the guesswork out of it by following these steps you'll move through the faces of the ux process with confidence the 4 fourth thing is really special within the figma workbook you can actually compare your work to ours we added screens that show our answers so when you're done with a particular exercise you can make it visible and see
• 01:30 - 02:00 how you did also alongside our figma workbook you can get additional course material like the course slides and a Lo-Fi wireframing kit get those resources at kickass2x.com under the free ux course page the final thing you don't have to take notes below each video we added a main points and takeaway section plus if you download the course material you'll have all the slides too because it took a few months for us to put this free course together once you're done with the course we deeply appreciate hearing how your experience was also we'd be incredibly
• 02:00 - 02:30 grateful if you'd be willing to give us a testimonial to let other designers know how it went but before getting into the weeds we just want to be 100 clear we don't recommend you use the work from this course in your portfolio there's two reasons for this first you won't have completed a full case study and second everyone who goes through this course will be working on the exact same problem and solution if everyone uses this as a case study in their portfolios it will be evident that it came from a course which is not what you want and
• 02:30 - 03:00 this course is just the first step on your journey into ux it's meant to help you start learning the ux process and begin practicing it for yourself if you have your site set higher and want to land a job in ux there will be many more steps you have to take to get there if a ux job is your destination you'll have to produce at least two of your own unique case studies that prove you know how to follow the ux process and highlight your skill set you can learn the necessary skills to land a job on your own by going to a university or by going through a program or boot camp that's actually why we built our other
• 03:00 - 03:30 program ux UI expert that's our Flagship program and it's meant to help you fully transition to ux by the end of ux UI expert you'll walk away with two unique case studies that are wholly your own you'll also have a portfolio that stands out and you'll possess the knowledge on how to land a job in the field the program is highly personalized to your needs we provide one-on-one mentorship ship and career guidance to every single student anyway let's get back on track we'll start this free course the same way we do in our other programs we want you to take a moment and reflect on why
• 03:30 - 04:00 you're here we believe that knowing your why will make you more successful in this course so why are you doing this why do you want to learn ux everybody in life has deep motivations you need to know what yours are because they're going to keep you going long after your surface level motivations have run out so why why are you here what do you hope to get out of all of this maybe you're tired of dealing with client and stakeholder subjectivity on a daily basis or maybe you feel like you've hit an artificial ceiling and there's no upward mobility in your career or maybe you want a career that
• 04:00 - 04:30 pays you well or it could be that you want to have a positive impact on other people's lives and you can't do that in your current role maybe it's all of them maybe it's none of them whatever your why is just know that we have your back and are excited to see you succeed one last reminder before signing off don't forget to get the free course materials head over to the free ux course page on kickass2x.com and sign up to receive the free resources in your inbox well that's it for the introduction we are super psyched to be part of our ux journey we'll see you in the next lesson
• 04:30 - 05:00 foreign [Music] so as part of this free ux course you will solve a problem for a company called REI it's an outdoor recreation Service Company so let's dive into the project brief REI is currently the best place to find and shop for top of the line hiking
• 05:00 - 05:30 equipment and apparel please go take a look at the website by going to rei.com with this ux project your goal is to help people find nearby hikes and backpacking trips so they can plan for the next adventure currently the website doesn't have any interactive resources to plan Outdoor Adventures next let's talk about the two main users we use this type of service first at day hikers who look for hikes within a few hours of where they live second a Backpackers will look for
• 05:30 - 06:00 multi-day overnight trips in the outdoors keep in mind that hikers and Backpackers the users can be subdivided into two user types first a non-registered users these are people who have not registered to the REI site yet that means that they cannot add ratings commands or write trip reports and second are REI users these are users who have a nari account which allows them to add ratings trip reports and
• 06:00 - 06:30 save hikes now that you have a general understanding of the users let's go over a few reasons why you should build this solution first so that REI becomes the hub for everything hiking and backpacking so that people can not only purchase gear but also know where to go on the next adventure second hiking and backpacking is on the rise from 2006 to 2019 the number of hikers increased by 66 percent in the US and third it's a great monetization
• 06:30 - 07:00 opportunity as it allows REI to make product recommendations based on the type of hike a user selects let's now talk about the features to consider these are examples of solutions that you might or might not consider depending on where your problem definition takes you find hikes view interactive map see hikes on the map view wildfires on the map search for hikes filter hikes by
• 07:00 - 07:30 rating mileage elevation gain 12 features for example Coast River waterfalls Etc animals allowed kid friendly parking pass for example non-required national park pass Etc submit a trip report which means the ability to write a hike review add pictures rating Etc share a hike for example link text email
• 07:30 - 08:00 Etc one more time just to be clear we are not saying that you have to design for all these use cases this is just for inspiration and to get your creative juices going remember that all good ux starts with a solid understanding of the problem so you don't go and start designing Solutions before you deeply understand the problem alright and before we wrap up let's talk about the three main competitors all Trails Gaia WTA Washington Trails Association that's
• 08:00 - 08:30 it for the project brief that's all you need to get started finally remember that we also included the project brief in the figma workbook so if you don't have your workbook yet go download it at kickass2app.com under the free ux course page good luck completing this project you got this hey kickass fam so wanted to make a quick video to help you navigate and use
• 08:30 - 09:00 the workbook that we created for you so here is the work group right it's on your desktop let's say on your Mac and then when you double click it it just doesn't work so it's a fake file but it doesn't let you automatically open figma that's a problem right so how do you actually open this file so the way to do this is you open figma and you will see that there is an import file button here when you click on this button you'll then be able to import the file so you do this you click open and then it will open up and then once you have
• 09:00 - 09:30 your file in your figma here is what you will see first of all we have a cover for the free ux cores I will give you a few tips to get started we totally encourage you to download the desktop app and then here you will see that there are a few recommended plugins it's really up to you if you want to get them or not and one more thing is our answer is there a few screen that we hid from you so that you can check the answers later on without having to see the answer right away so you can actually do
• 09:30 - 10:00 the exercise without cheating pretty much right so um here is the first tab right I'm going to show you whether that in action here is the industry SWOT and competitive analysis done this is for the first phase of the ux process which is research understanding and here you'll see that you know you connect your industry Trend and there is this transparent one here same as SWOT analysis you'll see there is a transparent one it's our answers and same for competitive analysis and this
• 10:00 - 10:30 is the same for all pages first you do the exercise you do everything you have to do and then when the time comes to actually check and you want to compare your answers with our answers there are two ways to do this right so you can click here and then press zero on your keyboard just zero and then the other way is that you will see that when you select that frame you see that there is a path through of zero percent if you change that to be one hundred percent on scannual you'll see it zero percents back to transparent so
• 10:30 - 11:00 that's how you can check your work against ours so that you can make sure that you're moving forward with confidence the the next thing that you will do so think of this left hand side panel as all the steps that you will need to take in order to complete the case study so we start by conducting an industry SWOT and competitive analysis that will give you a good idea of the business environment just at a glance where you don't want to be a business you're not here to be a business analysis you hear for ux design but
• 11:00 - 11:30 because ux is at the center of the user the business and the technology you don't want to miss out on any of this right so that's why I think a little bit of context from a business standpoint will truly truly help you so next once you have that overall view then you will frame the problem and framing the problem exercise is absolutely amazing it's one of the Cornerstone of how we teach ux and I hope that you know this exercise will
• 11:30 - 12:00 give you more clarity into the problem will help you understand the bounds of your problem so this is a very very important exercise then once you're done with this there are five interviews that we conducted for you here is everything that people said and then you can just read it and at the end of each transcript what we wanted to do is write your five key takeaways and other takeaways that's all you have to do right so we gave you two examples here and here of how we we did this and then
• 12:00 - 12:30 it's really up to you to figure out how you want to do the rest and then the next step is once you've gathered once once you understand the data from those interviews then you want to chunk it down into um smaller cards right you want to break down the problem you want to break down all this amount of data because back in the user interview that that's a lot of data right how do you actually make sense of it how do you actually start understanding seeing the patterns seeing the transforming well the infinix diagram is the best way to do this and
• 12:30 - 13:00 this is where you're going to do this and then once again if you want to check our answers it's right here and once you're done with this exercise you'll understand the problem much much better and that means that you might want to reframe the problem the problem might not have changed in which case that's fine you don't need to reframe it but if you've noticed that after learning a lot from this ethnic diagram you're like you know what the problem I was about to solve it not is not exactly right then that's exactly what you would do you would reframe the problem here and then
• 13:00 - 13:30 you would you go to the next step which is to analyze comparison Solution that's just to get the creative juices going just to see you know how to competitors solve a similar problem we don't want you to copy them it's just for you to gain an understanding of how it's done out there and see you know where the pros and cons of each see how that couldn't influence your your designs so once you're done with this then you go into sketching this is pen and paper it needs to be very fast and iterative you don't want to be in Sigma if you have a
• 13:30 - 14:00 white board at home then even better just just use that whiteboard through a bunch of different iterations for your solution and then once you're done with this you will then start your digital wireframes you can use our Lo-Fi wireframe kits or you can build your own components entirely by yourself is really up to you will leave it up to you and the last part is will be creating your user flows from beginning to end how does a user achieve a goal where do they start what do they do in
• 14:00 - 14:30 the middle how does it end and once you have that then once you have that full flow you understand how the user is going to be able to achieve their goal and that's the case to the workbook in a nutshell and so we hope that you like it and if you have any questions would be super happy to help and good luck cheers hey what's up kickass fam so designers
• 14:30 - 15:00 love to be creative they love to solve problems but we see a lot of them struggle in the career so is it time for you to look into ux before we start to follow along a course Go download the lesson slides at kickass ux.com under the free ux course page now let's get started and talk about why graphic UI and web designers switch to ux over the past few years we've talked to hundreds of designers looking to transition into ux that lost passion for
• 15:00 - 15:30 their jobs and thoughts ux was the best route with every new conversation we kept hearing the same four things over and over first they were tired of the subjectivity of visual design they worked tirelessly producing beautiful Pixel Perfect work only to be confronted with stakeholders opinions they would consistently have to go back and redo their work based on opinions they didn't even agree with and they had no way to defend their work how many times has
• 15:30 - 16:00 this happened to you you given a design task you go into your creative cave and you spend a ton of time crafting beautiful Pixel Perfect designs you pour your heart and soul into the work and you really believe in what you created yet when showing it to stakeholders it feels like hitting a wall of subjectivity to respond with things like I kind of like it but it doesn't look quite right to me or I think this is cool but it doesn't work for us or I'm
• 16:00 - 16:30 underwhelmed or even this isn't what I was looking for by the 50th iteration you're saying kill me I'm done with this not only it is mentally exhausting it makes you feel like you only exist to take orders like your only purpose is to push pixels until your manager or client is happy that's why we're so passionate about empowering designers to go past this problem thanks to ux it is a game
• 16:30 - 17:00 changer more on that later but the thing is that we are plenty of horrible stories from tons of designers and this one may sound familiar you're working on a design project and go to a meeting with a few other stakeholders everyone wants to come together to help ideate on the best design possible while this sounds great not everyone agrees on the final design so it becomes designed by committee you hear a ton of different opinions and can't fully Defend Your
• 17:00 - 17:30 Design decisions against the barrage of conflicting feedback usually this means the design quality takes a massive nosedive and what about this situation an executive stakeholder or client wants to listen in on a meeting when seeing your designs they ask to add something that makes the composition feel unbalanced and diminishes your role as a designer because they are higher up in the company you don't feel you have the authority to push back against their decision in these situations train to
• 17:30 - 18:00 defend your visual design decisions is pretty much like talking to a huge wall of subjectivity it can feel even more frustrating when stakeholders don't know design principles battling against subjectivity can seriously chip away at your passion for graphic design after all hitting the subjectivity wall might be okay a few times but after the 50th or 100th time it's normal to start losing passion your enthusiasm for graphic design might still be intact but maybe not as a career second they felt
• 18:00 - 18:30 sick of taking orders and pushing pixel until the manager or client felt happy third they were done just making things pretty and wanted to make an impact they wanted a deeper motive and felt like visual design was too surface level by itself last the felt visual design was too narrow and the creativity was constrained they wanted to expand their creativity to full product design not just the visual assets but here is the
• 18:30 - 19:00 thing we only just scratching the surface here some designers are so done with their career here are a few quotes from fellow graphic visual or UI designers we've heard let's start with this one quite frankly salary I can't make a living in graphic design and I have experience in physical product design and graphic or my biggest pain is not being valued for the work I do and feeling like a NAFTA thought to put a Band-Aid over an issue or even currently
• 19:00 - 19:30 my largest pain is that I deal with people who have a knife or design and then ask you to make design changes that either fall out of brands or the elements of design and because my salary sucks I don't really care about defending my stance do you see why we are passionate to empower designers to become kickass your designers they aspire to become valued team members who are fairly compensated for the work they do who wouldn't want that when we ask
• 19:30 - 20:00 them designers have great aspirations such as I want to ensure that my designs are research based and solve user and business needs or this person who said I'm looking into ux as I would love to work on the whole process of creating a product that will fit to the end user needs effectively not just making it look pretty you get the point there is a chance that one or several of these statements resonate with you if any of
• 20:00 - 20:30 them do resonate with you that can be tough to live with on a daily basis over time these feelings truly undermine your passion for the field that's where ux comes in instead of going up huge wall of subjectivity from your boss and clients you only have to jump over small subjective hurdles which is much easier thanks to user research while subjectivity still exist in ux design there are plenty of strategies you can use to mitigate it there are so many benefits transitioning from graphic
• 20:30 - 21:00 designer to ux designer you go from being an order taker to a decision maker as a ux designer you have the creative freedom to explore many ways to solve a problem in fact that's a big part of the job and then test your ideas with actual users so you have real world data to back up your design decisions as a ux designer you go from just making things pretty to making things beautiful and useful relevant and meaningful for
• 21:00 - 21:30 people you go from just creating the visual design to a multi-faceted creative career where you broaden your impact you're in tune with the people who use the product because you take taken the time to understand their problems and needs and on top of all of that you still retain the ability to create High Fidelity designs that look stunning we are willing to bet that want to get a taste of ux you will not want to go back so why are graphic designers incredibly well positioned to become top performing
• 21:30 - 22:00 ux designers put simply is because they already have a ton of visual design expertise this is what takes ux designers the longest time to master at a high level the ux process boils down to four stages discover create test build and iterate basically we first start by discovering a problem we do research list business requirements and generally try to understand and empathize with users we then start creating a bunch of basic
• 22:00 - 22:30 concepts that solve their problem we test it with actual users to get their feedback if if it doesn't go well we repeat the process once it finally goes well we move on to the last stage where we create the High Fidelity solution and hand it off for final production for digital products we prefer to be more specific about what we'll be doing during each phase so this is what we personally call each of the four stages of the ux process first is research and understanding
• 22:30 - 23:00 second is information architecture and wireframing third prototyping and usability testing and fourth visual design and handoff the last and four stage is something that you already have a bunch of experience with making the learning curve much smaller while you may have never worked on actual user interfaces you already went through years of creative trial and error this has helped build your sense of why something looks good or bad the same fundamentals of graphic design apply to
• 23:00 - 23:30 the visual design side of ux the lack of visual design experience is why so many entry-level ux designers have a really really hard time getting into ux many entry-level uxrs are great at creating high-level designs that solve a problem unfortunately they don't have the experience with putting the visuals together this leads to a fun cluttered confusing and ugly looking designs that make the overall experience fall short the entry-level ux Market is extremely
• 23:30 - 24:00 competitive many candidates can get in the industry because they lack visual design skills ux designers are expected to be able to handle the whole process themselves if an entry-level uxr has to end off visuals to someone else that doesn't cut it visual design is hard it takes years of practice to master as a graphic visual or web designer you already put in your time you have experience creating stunning visuals
• 24:00 - 24:30 because of this you're ahead of the competition this makes it so much easier to transition from graphic design to ux with ux your designs are no longer just beautiful they're also useful and meaningful to people and yes you can say goodbye to walls of subjectivity you used to go up against you can backup your design decisions with user research here is the great thing about ux it's not about what you like it's not about
• 24:30 - 25:00 what your teammates like it's about creating designs that work for users the internet is packed with information about ux and it can be overwhelming this video is dedicated to giving you all the basics you need to know about ux so you can focus on what matters in this lesson we'll be answering the following questions what is ux why is ux important what does the ux process look like and
• 25:00 - 25:30 what separates ux from other types of design before we begin and so you can follow along we encourage you to download our course materials at kickass2x.com under the free ux course page the link is in the description with that out of the way let's get started let's begin with the first question what is ux ux stands for user experience and it's the process of making a digital or physical product or service useful relevant and meaningful for people all these descriptors are important let's
• 25:30 - 26:00 start with useful if a product or service doesn't help people do something they want to do no one will actually use it this is pretty straightforward next is Rel relevant their product or service needs to be suited for what the user is trying to accomplish for example imagine you're craving tacos kind of like I am right now it's raining tacos you decide to look for a Mexican restaurant near you using Google Maps but imagine you only get results for Thai restaurants Google must be confused noodles don't
• 26:00 - 26:30 belong on tortillas why at least that's not what you're looking for right now those search results wouldn't be relevant they might be useful at some other point but they're not related to what you're trying to do right now this is oversimplified but we hope you see our point last there is Meaningful think about meaningful as a positive emotion tied to the outcome a product or service provides this could be a sense of accomplishment happiness or excitement for example a few years ago my friends
• 26:30 - 27:00 and I went to Hawaii we rented a house on Airbnb the house ended up being all we'd hope for and more it was perfect for our trip and as a bonus we got to hang out with Marcus the owner of the house he was an awesome guy I'll never forget Marcus and the place we stayed Airbnb helped create a super positive memory for me something that has a very special place in my heart the original goal was just to rent a house in Hawaii not only did Airbnb help me accomplish my goal it also had a positive impact on
• 27:00 - 27:30 my life beyond the space of the app itself we still talk about Marcus to this day oh yeah by the way we called him Marcus it's way more fun to say his name that way anyway another example of meaningful is with smartsheet the Marketo University team was able to use smartsheet to reduce the time it took to compile an executive report from two weeks wait for it down to only two days that's eight more days the team can focus on things that actually matter to
• 27:30 - 28:00 them think about how freeing that must have felt and on top of that they saved the company some serious time and money making them internal Heroes that's a meaningful ux right there so let's come back around to the question what is ux ux design focuses on the interaction between physical or digital products and services like websites or apps and real people it includes all parts of the interaction between a user and a company the app website productservice Community Etc let's look at a simple example of ux
• 28:00 - 28:30 design that we all interact with every day to some extent a door imagine you walked up to this door what would you do would you try to push it open or would you try to pull it it's incredibly unclear kind of like the movie Donnie Darko adding the text push helps but it's still problematic the design of the handle screams to people to pull it open that's bad ux the basic design of the door suggests to people to do the opposite of what they should do to be successful instead a door with good ux
• 28:30 - 29:00 would make get clear to people what action they should take before they try to open the door let's now look at a digital example of ux by walking through a hypothetical example about Amazon let's say that you take the bus to work on the way you enjoy listening to podcasts unfortunately one day your headphones break you're too busy to go to the store so you decide to buy a new pair on Amazon you open their mobile app search for wireless headphones then filter the results by products that have more than four stars you spend the next 20 minutes reading through product
• 29:00 - 29:30 reviews to find the best pair for your needs finally you make the purchase two days later your headphones arrive in an Amazon branded box that scenario encompasses the user experience of Amazon your goal was to buy a high quality pair of headphones to use on your commute Amazon helps you accomplish your goal by giving you the ability to search for the type of headphones you are looking for and then letting you compare products based on others reviews the Fulfillment of that goal came when your headphones arrived at your door in an Amazon box there's a significant
• 29:30 - 30:00 distinction to call on this diagram it's that the user interface or UI is part of the overall user experience of Amazon there's a big misconception out there that UI is completely separate from ux that's just not true it's one of the pillars of ux as a whole it's a subset the entire user experience from this example spans from the start of the user problem all the way until their goal is fulfilled the user interface of Amazon played a small but critical part of that experience without the UI the user
• 30:00 - 30:30 wouldn't have been able to accomplish their goal and get their headphones with this in mind let's talk about the six core disciplines of ux first is user research second business analysis third information architecture fourth content strategy fifth interaction design and sixth visual design that's a lot of hats to wear there are many people that specialize in just one of those disciplines Ludovic and I on the other hand are considered to be ux designer generalists which means we wear all of
• 30:30 - 31:00 those hats that's all also what we teach our students to be ux generalists as a user researcher you're the voice for the user you'll conduct user interviews usability studies heuristic evaluations and surveys you'll also build empathy Maps Affinity Maps personas depending on whether or not your company believes in them or not and research reports as a business analyst you need to understand the business strategy you'll help ensure business objectives are being considered throughout the design process as an information architect you build the
• 31:00 - 31:30 foundation and framework of the design you'll design a navigation create site Maps build the taxonomy and organize information logically through schemes and structures as a Content strategist you're in charge of creating the content go figure you'll help write copy and create organize and map content as an interaction designer you bring the design to life you'll create storyboards sketches wireframes prototypes and animations that map to users mental models and finally as a visual designer
• 31:30 - 32:00 you make the designs beautiful you'll create style guides apply color theory choose typography create Graphics build icons and design the final user interface as a ux generalist you have to wear all those hats at some point or another one last point before moving on as a designer you're a problem solver all types of design out there from graphic design to UI design are about solving problems you start with what needs to be accomplished and how people react to what's in front of them and why as a ux designer your number one
• 32:00 - 32:30 priority is to understand and solve user problems okay at this point we've answered the question what is ux let's now answer why is ux important first and foremost think back to the definition of ux we provided earlier ux makes everyday things useful relevant and meaningful second ux helps you build empathy with the people who are using the product this helps you to see the world through their eyes and to build products that truly help them third ux helps you
• 32:30 - 33:00 differentiate your product from the competition using the right ux methods you will learn about what your competitors are doing what gaps are in the market and how you can do it better it then helps you validate your designs to ensure that the product or feature will be successful before you've even launched and finally ux helps you create products that are accessible through testing and accessibility guidelines we can make certain the products we create can be used by most people the next logical question is what does the ux process look like or how do I even do
• 33:00 - 33:30 this ux designers follow a user-centered design process this process contains methods and techniques from each of the six disciplines we mentioned earlier that take the user into account at every stage of the product lifecycle it allows you to turn a user problem from a set of questions and assumptions into a real world solution when you look up ux or ux process on Google it can be confusing to see what seems to be many different ux processes out there it doesn't matter what you call the ux process or what the
• 33:30 - 34:00 infographic looks like at a high level the ux process boils down to four stages one discover two create three test and four build and iterate basically we first start by discovering a problem we do research list business requirements and generally try to understand and empathize with users once we understand the problem and what the users are going through we start creating a bunch of basic concepts that solve their problem after we've settled on one concept that
• 34:00 - 34:30 solves our problem we test it with actual users to get their feedback if it doesn't go well we repeat the process once it finally does go well we move on to the last stage where we create the High Fidelity solution and hand it off for final production for digital products we prefer to be more specific about what we'll be doing during each phase so this is what we personally call each of the four stages of the ux process that we just talked about first is research and understanding second information architecture and wireframing
• 34:30 - 35:00 third prototyping and usability testing and fourth visual design and handoff each of these stages contains a set of tools and methods to solve a user problem it's important to note that these stages aren't necessarily linear and it's not a step-by-step process it's typical to jump back and forth between different phases think of this process as being Dynamic depending on the context and the problem you're solving you'll apply the methods that make the most sense let's now look at each stage of the ux process first research and
• 35:00 - 35:30 understanding before starting the designs for any successful ux project we need to fully understand a few things the business the user the product and the problem we're solving that's why research and understanding always comes at the start of any project that's also why one of the first things we do on any project is what we call framing the problem this is a living document that we use as a North star throughout the ux process to provide Clarity and help us focus on what we actually need to solve framing the problem is important because
• 35:30 - 36:00 it helps align the company's goals with the project we're working on it also identifies the questions that need to get answered through research after framing the problem we create a research plan we use the questions from framing the problem to guide our choice of research methods such as user interviews usability testing and surveys we've talked about this before but we'll say it many times over don't just use a research method because you think you ought to each research method you employ should help you answer the research questions you listed in framing the
• 36:00 - 36:30 problem if a method doesn't do that do the opposite of Nike and just don't do it after conducting a few of these research methods you'll have data to analyze as a uxer it's your job to read between the lines of what users are doing and get to why they're doing it a really great method that designers use to combine their Research into actionable and understandable chunks is by creating an affinity diagram an affinity diagram groups your research data into categories that help you see patterns across all of your research
• 36:30 - 37:00 from there you might take the categories and insights from the Affinity diagram and create personas a Persona is a fictional representation of your target user created by grouping user data gathered through research they help keep the user at the center of your process if during the ux process you get stuck you can always look back and ask what your personas would need in that situation before moving on it's important to point out that personas are a controversial Topic in the ux world there are many that believe that personas are a fantastic design tool others not so much we typically fall into the camp that
• 37:00 - 37:30 doesn't believe in personas we only bring this up just so that you understand that personas are not a tool that's universally used one last thing before moving on we just wanted to call out that there are plenty of projects out there that don't have a lot of research backing them that could be because there wasn't much time to complete research or maybe they didn't have access to finding people to interview or the timeline or whatever reason there are plenty of reasons why people don't end up having research at the beginning of their process and that's fine what matters is that you're
• 37:30 - 38:00 using data to back up your decisions so if you do not have time to complete let's say user interviews or do usability testing on an existing product then what matters is that you're finding data to back up your decisions cool with that out of the way after you've completed the research analysis you're ready to start the second phase information architecture and wireframing this phase is where you use your research insights to plan your designs and generate as many solutions as possible think of this phase as if you were in charge of building a house this
• 38:00 - 38:30 is the time when you lay down the foundation it's what supports the overall structure in this phase you might create site Maps scenarios storyboards user stories sketches user flows and wireframes wireframes are an essential part at this stage a wireframe is a simple black and white skeleton of a website or application it structures the initial details and concepts for a project wireframes also help clarify design Direction and intended functionality they're one of the most common and important deliverables in ux
• 38:30 - 39:00 it's critical to wireframe out many ideas for any given problem the best designs only come after considering it many different ways to solve a problem once you have a decent grasp on the design Direction it's time for the prototyping and usability testing phase where you'll validate your designs in this phase you'll create a test plan both a prototype run usability tests and create a report based on your findings depending on the feedback you receive you can either move back to wireframing
• 39:00 - 39:30 repeat this process and incorporate what you learned back into a prototype to retest or proceed on to the next phase it's important to point out that similar to research and understanding there are definitely projects where we don't have time to run usability testing while it's ideal to be able to run usability testing to validate our Concepts there are plenty of times where it's not necessary maybe you're based on your designs on a really well understood design pattern maybe you have data from some other research project that you've already done there are plenty of reasons why but we just wanted to call out that usability testing isn't always necessary
• 39:30 - 40:00 it's always great to do if you have the time and resources to do it because it does help validate your designs and provide you with data to back up your decisions but we just want to call out that it's not always necessary however long it does take to go through the prototyping and usability testing phase once you've decided to move on past it it's now time for the visual design and handoff phase of the ux process this is where you take your wireframes add color fonts images and Graphics to create the final designs this might sound simple
• 40:00 - 40:30 but it can take a while to get it to look and feel just right this can get pretty complicated because you have to balance new functionality with existing company design patterns such as color Choice button Styles and the controls you use during this stage you may also get feedback from your users on the designs you can get the feedback using static screens or by testing a nicer looking more detailed prototype this is also the time to create animations to show how the design is intended to look and behave finally when you feel like everything is just right and you have
• 40:30 - 41:00 the approval from your project stakeholders you'll hand off your designs to the engineers this is where you work directly with the developers to implement your designs typically the handoff phase includes deliverables such as ux specifications of color spacing behavior and animations which can all be handled through applications like figma and Zeppelin and the cloud storage app of your choice as the designs get built into code you'll pass test them and give the developer feedback this allows you to make sure that the product looks and
• 41:00 - 41:30 behaves as close to your designs as possible once you're done with all of that it's time to iterate on your work depending on the product and the product goals once the product is out in the wild you'll see how it performs and follow the process again and improve it even more and that's the beauty of the ux process it's a low pressure way to figure out what the right solution is it takes the burden off of your shoulders to be a design genius instead you can talk directly to and get feedback from users to then immediately give them the
• 41:30 - 42:00 product that they just told you they needed in short if you continually follow the ux process at some point you'll end up at the right solution and that's it that's the whole process here's the summary that shows you the types of things you'll be doing at each stage again it's important to point out that you don't have to use each of these methods to solve a problem instead think of the ux process as being flexible and dynamic and each phase as having its own unique toolkit different problems require different tools to solve them for example you wouldn't use a hammer to
• 42:00 - 42:30 bash a screw into place and a hammer doesn't help you solve that problem it might help you relieve some pent-up aggression but video games would probably be less destructive in this case the tool you would be looking for is a screwdriver similarly you don't use a ux method just because or to check a box saying that you did for example not every project needs a survey depending on your goals it might make sense to use one but it's not something you use on every project again think back to what we said in an earlier video you are a ux
• 42:30 - 43:00 treasure hunter you take the best Next Step based on what you know currently and what you still need to learn this same principle applies to almost all ux methods and techniques only use what you need to solve the problem effectively and efficiently that's a big part of what makes up your expertise as a ux designer understanding when and why you would use a particular method at the end of the day this makes almost every ux project unique sometimes you conduct user interviews create Affinity diagrams build sitemaps conduct task analyzes and
• 43:00 - 43:30 other times you'd don't so anytime you're going through a project first figure out what you're trying to solve and then determine what methods to use to solve it now that you have a general understanding of the ux process and the methods used during each stage you can see how each of the six core disciplines applies across the process for example information architecture is involved starting at the end of research and understanding all the way into visual design and handoff now let's tackle the last question what separates ux from
• 43:30 - 44:00 other types of design research is the foundation of ux it informs our choices and helps us build designs that truly solve user problems the ux process makes design decisions objective because decisions are based on user feedback and not just our own opinions by contrast other types of design can be mostly subjective many of the decisions are based on the opinions of the designer or other stakeholders involved in the project to highlight this let me tell you a very real story that I got to
• 44:00 - 44:30 witness firsthand when I first started in ux I was tasked with redesigning a pricing page for a website our goal was to improve or maintain the conversion rate if you're unfamiliar with the term conversion rate that's the percentage of users who take a desired action our other goal is to make the user interface look more modern I worked with a graphic designer and a product manager on this project during the first meeting the graphic designer showed the latest mock-ups he had created the product manager told them to change everything around just because I'm not kidding she
• 44:30 - 45:00 wanted to add more buttons different colors for the buttons and generally wanted to move things around why because she liked it that way there was no design logic behind it and the worst part there was nothing the designer could say or do to change her mind I really felt for the graphic designer it was a terrible situation to be in fortunately unless you work with the Grinch you don't have to worry about that as a ux designer because you can support your design decisions with real data from
• 45:00 - 45:30 real people who actually use your product yes there are people on the team where even when you present them data they still believe their opinions matter more but still while subjectivity still does exist in ux having data helps to alleviate a lot of it you have more than just design principles to fall back on and that's really what separates ux from other types of design ux design is focused on the user Business and Technology needs and relies on user research other types of design are mostly focused on stakeholder needs and
• 45:30 - 46:00 rely far more on principles so with all of that said with everything we've gone through the ux process creates certainty and a product well before it's even created we design products that are easy to use and are what users are looking for one last thing before signing off as a quick reminder don't forget to go download our course materials at kickass ux.com under their free ux course page we'll see you in the next video
• 46:00 - 46:30 there's one thing that most ux boot camps and universities don't teach their students and it's honestly hurting their chances of Landing a job as a ux designer what's that one thing that's what I'm going to cover in this video so here's the thing the ux process isn't linear but for some reason some boot camps and universities teach their students to follow the process like a linear checklist that's just plain wrong the best way to describe ux design is as a critical thinking process where you
• 46:30 - 47:00 take the best Next Step depending on the information you currently know and what you need to answer here's another way to describe it as a ux designer you're basically a treasure hunter you start with one clue on your treasure map aka the problem this provides you with your bearings and what you need to do first so you follow the first clue and take the best next step to find the second clue you're always basing your next decision on the previous clue and the data you've gathered so far about the
• 47:00 - 47:30 treasure hunt eventually after finding many Clues and basing your decisions on your research you'll have found the treasure AKA built the product or feature with that metaphor in mind in ux you don't do something just because if you were searching for a treasure you wouldn't just go dig a random hole in a random spot right similarly in ux you do something because you need to know the answer before moving forward for example you don't conduct user interviews just because you think you ought to you might
• 47:30 - 48:00 do them because you have questions that can only be answered by users or maybe you need to validate your concept with them or a plethora of other reasons regardless of the reason you need to have a why behind doing something again you use your critical thinking powers to determine your best next step based on your current position what you know and what you need to learn as a ux designer unless you're working with a researcher you are the decision maker behind what research has done for the project you're working on which is why why it's so
• 48:00 - 48:30 important that you don't look at ux as a checklist or a linear process with most projects in the real world you jump back and forth between different phases of the ux process you always base your decisions on the data you currently have and what you still need to answer if you can get your answers from other products in the market great if you can get them from existing research fantastic if you have to get answers from users that's also great unfortunately many boot camps and universities teach that this is the
• 48:30 - 49:00 only way and if you don't do it this way you're doing it wrong that's absolutely false the point is you don't always have to be the one conducting user research to be following a human-centered process what matters is that you're basing your decisions on data with that in mind when you're done with our free ux course we want you to start thinking through what questions you need to answer and how you'll go about getting those answers so you can solve your problem that's where framing the problem comes in we'll cover that in a few lessons framing the problem is one of the very few things we
• 49:00 - 49:30 do on every project regardless of project size it helps provide you with a true understanding of the problem and what questions you need to answer so you know you're creating the right solution for the user you then use that document as a North star throughout any given ux project you continually check back in with that document to make sure you're solving the right problem and that you've answered all of your questions so with all of this in mind in the future when you're using your newfound ux skills we want you to start thinking
• 49:30 - 50:00 like a ux treasure hunter always be asking yourself what's the best next step to take based off of what I know now and what I still need to learn then do the thing that makes the most sense you got this hey what's up kickass fam so you're interested in learning more about ux but there is tons of conflicting information out there and it's easy to assume the
• 50:00 - 50:30 wrong things and get into bad habits so it doesn't happen to you in this lesson we'll talk about the most common ux misunderstandings thanks to the previous lesson you have a general idea of what QX is about let's take some time to go over what it is not starting with the number one misunderstanding ux equals UI UI stands for user interface which refers to the visuals a user interacts with in a product or service it connects
• 50:30 - 51:00 the user with a product's functionality in the job dial ux designer the word that everyone gets caught upon is designer and traditionally that meant working on the aesthetic of a product while UI plays a role in ux it's only one of the things that ux designers tackle on a daily basis think of UI as a subset of ux remember the six core disciplines of ux that we covered in the previous lesson visual
• 51:00 - 51:30 design is only one part of ux it's not the whole thing as many think it is the primary focus of a ux designer is to identify and solve a problem that helps users accomplish their goal while meeting business objectives this means that far before getting into the how it's crucial to understand the why and what furthermore when ux designers get into the how they first start with sketches and soon after low Fidelity mock-ups
• 51:30 - 52:00 where UI is not a concert the starting point of any good ux is done on a whiteboard or with pen and paper this by definition is low Fidelity because there is a small amount of detail it's meant to be iterative and fast the goal of starting with Lo-Fi is to test your early Concepts and ideas with users testing Lo-Fi mockups with users helps you gain an understanding of what works and what doesn't this allows you as a designer to move forward confident that
• 52:00 - 52:30 you're attacking the right problem for the right people early designs that are too high fidelity will ultimately slow you down and any feedback you receive will be focused on the visual and less about functionality you will get booked down in the minutia and will miss out on learning what works functionally imagine you task with building an arm clock you wouldn't want to start by focusing on finished materials like wood or carbon fiber instead you'd want to start by
• 52:30 - 53:00 researching the target audience and their needs that way you can create a product that is useful relevant and meaningful for people maybe you learned to research that the target audience for this alarm clock is people with visual impairments they don't care about the finished materials they want big numbers and large knobs in this scenario a pretty alarm clock that doesn't serve their goals is useless all in all ux shouldn't be confused with UI visual design is only one aspect of ux the
• 53:00 - 53:30 second misunderstanding ux designers need to be able to code the ability to code in ux design is an ongoing and polarizing debate some swear by it and argue that it's necessary for ux designers to know at least some coding the usual reason provided for this argument is that it arms ux designers with a deeper understanding of how products are built which in turn enables them to create products that are more feasible to develop on the other side
• 53:30 - 54:00 there are people who believe that ux designers should not have to know how to code our point of view on this subject is clear in order to get your first job in ux you don't need to know how to code period once you get in the field of ux and if you are interested in becoming more technically Savvy with code then by all means do it it can only help you forge closer relationship with developers and that's a good thing the vast majority of ux diners we know don't know how to code if that many people go
• 54:00 - 54:30 to job without that technical knowledge so can you the third misunderstanding ux is just about the user yes it is about the user and there's so much more to it ux meets at the intersection of user goals business objectives and Technical feasibility finding that balance is key understanding what the business is trying to accomplish dish is critical for example if a specific feature of a product negatively affects retention
• 54:30 - 55:00 this will impact profitability this is crucial information for you to know it tells you that you need to redesign that feature with a focus on retaining users the same thing applies to technology how useful would it be if you created the best user experience but it was technically impossible to implement while users are of course Central to ux Business and Technology are an equal part of the equation the fourth misunderstanding only ux designers can
• 55:00 - 55:30 have input on the design this misunderstanding is directly related to the one we just talked about though it may sound surprising ux is everyone's business product managers developers Marketing sales Paul ever say in the final experience it doesn't matter how great of a user experience you create if developers can't build it at the same time it doesn't matter how great your design is if the team can't Market it or sell it it's problematic if a marketing
• 55:30 - 56:00 team creates a vision that doesn't match the product that will negatively impact sales the point is that ux affects every team that's why they all must have a seat at a table ux is everyone's business the fifth misunderstanding Your Design is your baby do you want to know how to spot mediocre ux designers the ego is buried inside their designs as soon as someone gives them negative feedback they get tense defensive and
• 56:00 - 56:30 stop listening don't be that person you have to be able to step back and be objective about your designs you are not your designs approach them with an open and curious mind be open to feedback don't assume that you've thought of everything or that you've designed it in the best way possible user research is your best friend that I gathered from user research helps you be objective about your designs we highly recommend thinking at least twice before socializing a design that has little to
• 56:30 - 57:00 no user research to back it up mediocre UI designers fall in love with the solution while great ones fall in love with a problem onto the last misunderstanding do I like the user of your product don't fight it okay you are not your user it's easy to assume that if your design is clear to you then it will also be clear to your users if that's what you believe you couldn't be more wrong users often struggle with the most simple
• 57:00 - 57:30 interactions sometimes they will not see a pattern you want them to click on sometimes they will get confused that they don't know where to start in your mind you're like come on it's right in front of you don't you see it the point is that until you've tested your designs with users you should not assume anything they might approach the task or user interface in a totally different way you don't know and that's fine there are things that you want to learn so you can make your designs user friendly as a
• 57:30 - 58:00 quick recap these are some of the most common misunderstandings about ux we hope we've cleared this up for you feel free to take a screenshot or download our slides on kickass ux.com under the free ux course page hey what's up kickass fam so stakeholder relationship is at the center of creating great products unfortunately there are a lot of stakeholders which can be really confusing so in this video
• 58:00 - 58:30 we'll go over the key stakeholders you will typically encounter and we'll tell you how to effectively communicate with each of them the main people that you will interact with are product managers owners PMS developers devs and Executives secondary stakeholders include project managers the marketing creative team and or external influencers like I.T or sales as a ux designer you're responsible for
• 58:30 - 59:00 researching and creating the designs that will be built by the developers let's dig into the specifics during the research and understanding phase you will work with your pm to understand the business problem that you are solving if you have ux researchers at your company you will help them put together a research plan to understand user goals if you don't you will be the one completing all the research tasks once you have Clarity on the business and user goals you will work with the PM ux researcher lead developers and other
• 59:00 - 59:30 stakeholders to frame the problem then you your pm and devs would listen into user interviews conducted by the ux researcher you'll analyze the data with the researcher to come up with a general design Direction once you've defined the exact problem to solve and the product team is on board you will go on to the next phase of the ux process information architecture and wireframing in this phase you mostly work with the product manager they'll provide feedback on your
• 59:30 - 60:00 storyboard story map and wireframes also make sure to involve devs during this phase to ensure that your designs are feasible and realistic in general it's a good practice to continually check in with devs and involve them throughout each phase to ensure they can actually develop your designs then in the next phase prototyping and usability testing you will work alongside the product manager and ux researcher to put together a usability test plan that
• 60:00 - 60:30 defines all the tasks that your prototype will account for that way you can create an end-to-end prototype with all the necessary screens and interactions then you your pm and devs would listen into the usability tests conducted by the ux researcher after completing your usability tests you will work with the ux researcher to analyze the findings this will help you develop actionable list to address user feedback depending on the company you work for once you've gained the confidence that
• 60:30 - 61:00 your solution solves the problem you'll put together a deck to share your designs and research findings a wide array of stakeholders will listen in during that meeting such as product managers developers design leadership ux researchers project managers and Executives this is a make or break meeting because this is where your designs are ultimately approved or not finally during visual design and handoff you will work with other design team members to ensure that you're using the
• 61:00 - 61:30 right design patterns and that your designs are consistent within the product once you and your design team are satisfied with the look and feel of the final designs you will give them to the developers to implement handing over the designs is a process and not just a deliverable depending on the project this can last for days weeks or even months you'll collaborate with your developers very closely provide them with the necessary assets and answer any questions they might have about your
• 61:30 - 62:00 designs you will also address all the edge case scenarios that developers need for example how does the interface resize when the screen gets smaller does text truncate Etc so UL assist developers in interpreting your designs so that the end experience is as close as possible to what you've defined as you can see the ux process is not a solo practice it's essential to be a team player and work alongside different types of stakeholders to build a successful
• 62:00 - 62:30 product as in life communication is a central part of ux design learning the jargon and how to communicate with others on the team takes time we can't stress this enough communicate early and often here is an important quote from Tom graver's book The most important thing you can do to improve communication between you and your stakeholders is to improve those relationships earn trust and establish a rapport that will speak more for you than your words let's now
• 62:30 - 63:00 talk about how to best communicate with each stakeholder starting with product managers PMS PMS are responsible for communicating a Clear Vision of what needs to be done and executed by Leading cross-functional teams they sit at the intersection of the business marketing development and design teams you can think of them as conductors who find alignment with all teams to solve business and user problems as efficiently as possible for example if
• 63:00 - 63:30 your team has 5 months to build a feature product managers ensure everyone shares the same vision while making sure the necessary resources are in place to ship a quality product on time expect to spend a lot of time with your PM it's essential to keep them in the loop with everything you're doing so that they can ensure your progress aligns well with other teams resources and schedules imagine your usability test indicates the architecture of your product has to be seriously revised the product manager
• 63:30 - 64:00 will be responsible to communicate and follow up with a team to ensure that the new architecture is built on not communicating soon enough about your progress with PMS could put time pressure on other teams and result in missed deadlines if you're falling behind don't keep it a secret it's impossible to manage be sure to communicate sooner than later think of a PM like the captain of a ship they have the final say on when things happen and the general direction as a ux
• 64:00 - 64:30 designer you like the first mate or Navigator you set the direction and keep the captain informed so that they can make the best decisions the PM role is to take business and user goals together PMS ensure their team produces a well-designed and useful solution for users then measure this by tracking key performance indicators kpis this can include adoption engagement and retention rates to effectively communicate with PMS show them how your
• 64:30 - 65:00 solution solves user problems while supporting business objectives this is why when starting a ux project it's important to understand the desired business impact ask your PMS for the kpis they will be tracking to assess the success of your solution now let's talk about developers devs devs are the ones who actually bring your designs to life they are the keepers of the code without them they wouldn't be a product as a ux designer you live in a world where
• 65:00 - 65:30 anything is possible developers on the other hand provide you with implementation boundaries it's essential to involve devs as early as possible in the product development cycle so you don't run the risk of creating designs that are unnecessarily hard to implement keep in mind that implementation boundaries should not restrain the user experience designed for the ideal world if you run into complications it's important to discuss how to scale the design back with the product manager and the lead developer
• 65:30 - 66:00 so that it can still be built on time communicate with them early and often to bring their unique perspectives to the table they often come up with alternative Solutions and think about edge cases error States Etc that no one else on the team considers it also helps them feel more involved in the product definition process if they don't know what you're designing they can't plan for the work what may seem trivial to you as a ux designer could in reality
• 66:00 - 66:30 take weeks or months for developer to build also if you don't involve them early devs may be more reluctant about implementing your Solutions because they feel like their voice haven't been heard once you've completed your designs Dev will ask you questions to understand how to interpret the screens you provide them there are many details that a static image can't communicate provide the design specs so they can understand and code the screens you give them communicating with developers is a two-way street you don't merely send
• 66:30 - 67:00 them screens and hope for the best that's a recipe for disaster instead help them understand your designs be a good listener be responsive to their feedback and concerns from time to time conversations with devs might be hard to understand that's normal because both roles use very different vocabulary if you don't get what they're saying ask them to explain you're better off telling them that you don't understand rather than noting and not knowing what
• 67:00 - 67:30 you agreed to that's especially true for junior designers don't be scared to admit that you don't understand something that will Fast Track your learning you can also invite your PM into this discussion so Nothing Gets Lost in Translation and everyone is on the same page all in all developers are great to work with as they provide a unique perspective and actually you build what you design if you provide them with the design spec they need listen well and ask them to clarify
• 67:30 - 68:00 things you don't understand you'll be well on your way to building a great relationship it's also important not to assume that all devs fully understand ux design in fact you'd be surprised to learn how blurry some dev's understanding of your job is some have no idea that you arrived at your final designs after testing them with users it's essential to check their understanding of ux if they don't know much about it help them understand more about the ux process and how users are co-creators of the solution otherwise
• 68:00 - 68:30 devs might push back on your designs because they might think that you came up with them entirely by yourself when they have questions or concerns about your solution provide them with as much context as possible show them all the thinking and testing that went into your designs often the concerns are valid from a technical standpoint it's your job to explain why where users struggled and succeeded as an anchor for your argument with devs communicate the value
• 68:30 - 69:00 that your designs have on the user and The Business finally let's talk about Executives Executives could be directors vice presidents or in the case of smaller companies the CEO even though execs are barely involved in the design process their opinions can literally make or break your solution once you're confident that your designs effectively solve the problem and that you have enough supporting data put together a slide deck to present your work and research findings
• 69:00 - 69:30 that's the meeting where execs have an opportunity to chime in often it may be the only opportunity to provide feedback as they have little time on the busy schedules with execs the key is to provide them with a certainty that you've done your due diligence to solve the user and business problems translate your work into numbers because that's the language they speak let's say that you've redesigned the sign up experience and that the success rate went from 80 to 95 percent that's something you would
• 69:30 - 70:00 want to highlight however don't just rely on numbers as a ux designer you are the voice of the user it's powerful to share some of the most impactful quotes that you've heard during the research the key is to provide exacts with the whole story so they understand how you got to your solution just showing them the solution without covering the business context user context and research findings within most cases fail tell them the why and how before even
• 70:00 - 70:30 bringing up the what finally they will give you feedback they have a lot of contacts that you don't have and often have a unique perspective when they provide feedback don't be defensive show them that you heard and value their feedback there are two types of feedback the type you agree with and the type that you don't regardless of what you think it's crucial for you to listen to execs ask clarifying questions and thank them for it now if you agree with the feedback say something like
• 70:30 - 71:00 thank you this is great feedback and we'll think of a way to integrate it in the solution then move on and after the meeting go fix it if you don't agree with the feedback ask clarifying questions to be 110 sure that you on the same page if you still disagree respectfully bring the user back into the conversation and or how the solution supports business objectives use the findings from your user research to back up your decisions then ask if that
• 71:00 - 71:30 addresses their concerns if it does great if it doesn't thank them again and assure them that you all work on it after the meeting check in with your manager to understand how best to proceed now that we covered all the primary stakeholders let's talk about the secondary stakeholders starting with project managers before we begin it's worth noting that sometimes when people say PM they mean project managers not product managers in the world of ux when you hear people
• 71:30 - 72:00 say PM most of the time they are referring to product managers in our case PM designates product managers too now that we covered this let's dive into more details about project managers they want to ensure that every project is on time and under budget they have the bird's eye view of many projects to understand how to make all teams as successful as possible depending on the company you work for you might or might not interact much with a project manager
• 72:00 - 72:30 if you end up working with them keep in mind that time and resources are the two things they care most about if you run into a roadblock in your project they'll want to know as soon as possible so they can provide immediate help depending on the situation they might extend the project timeline and or add a few extra resources to help you and the team move forward clearly communicate about the progress of your project and tell them about concerns and any the other issue that could impact the schedule and
• 72:30 - 73:00 budget they've set be proactive about it for example if there is a 20 chance that something might derail projects even though it's only 20 percent you need to let them know and the sooner the better another type of secondary stakeholders are the marketing and creative teams many different roles make up the marketing and creative teams first they are marketers they want to understand the problem that your solution solves as well as provide
• 73:00 - 73:30 you with feedback and context they care that the product and the marketing strategy are aligned in successfully solving the audience's pains this enables them to market the product in ways that resonate the most with the target segment second you might also work with product marketing managers who ensure that the product and the marketing teams are aligned without them it's easy for both teams to work in silos and come up with a product that does one thing and a marketing strategy
• 73:30 - 74:00 that misses the mark third there are visual designers who create the visual that the ux designers need to polish the product experience an example of this would be visuals for empty States or larger more detailed icons fourth there are creative directors want to understand your project design and intent so they can help the team be aligned and set a corresponding creative Direction with the marketing team the key is to gain Mutual understanding and
• 74:00 - 74:30 fine alignment on how the product solves someone's problem marketing and ux are very similar as they both aim to solve user paints marketers help Their audience understand why and how the solution addresses it and your designers design the solution itself the goal is to help each other get aligned that way what's marketed describe what the product actually offers as for the creative team pay close attention to the style guides they use enter your design
• 74:30 - 75:00 follow their Styles printing requirements Etc the goal is to ensure that any visuals that are in your product align with the creative Direction set by that team finally the last set of secondary stakeholders are external influencers including I.T cells Etc this group is much more remote and you might not directly interact with them yet they will at some point gain awareness of the products you've built it can be a good idea to reach out to
• 75:00 - 75:30 the sales team to learn more about the customer from their perspective sales people usually know more about users and their pains than the ux designers themselves because they talk to customers every single day salespeople can be a great resource to quickly gain an understanding of the customer paints without having to conduct any research yourself and that's it with this lesson there was a lot of information so don't forget to download the lesson slides go to kickass ux.com under the free ux course page hopefully this lesson gives
• 75:30 - 76:00 you better Clarity on what a product team looks like but keep in mind that depending on the company these roles can vary they are not set in stone thank you trying to create a product without doing the proper research is the equivalent of using a bow and arrow to shoot a Target while blindfolded in the dark while riding a horse that's also blindfolded you might hit the target but the chances
• 76:00 - 76:30 are much higher that both you and the horse will get seriously hurt that's why this video is all about the first phase of the ux process research and understanding get stoked because this phase provides you with the information necessary to create a kick-ass solution in this lesson we're going to cover what user research is and why it's important what the research and understanding process generally looks like types of research and research biases let's get after it have you ever been in a situation where you didn't know what to
• 76:30 - 77:00 get someone for their birthday while you know this person fairly well you just have no idea what they might want since you're trying to keep it a surprise you don't come right out and ask what they want which means you've got to take your best guess you can't be sure they'll even like your gift they may love it or they may give you one of those fake Smiles say they love it and then figure out how to return it think about user research as the process of finding out what your friend wants for their birthday you cut out the uncertainty by talking to your friend AKA the user
• 77:00 - 77:30 about what really matters to them so let's get started on what user research is and why it's important usability.gov defines the user research process as the focus on understanding user behaviors needs and motivations through observation techniques task analyzes and other feedback methodologies think about it this way in order to provide users with an impactful solution you need to keep users at the center of your process how could you give someone something meaningful that solves their problem if
• 77:30 - 78:00 you don't fully understand them or the problem that they're facing here's another way to think about it conducting user research makes you a detective trying to solve a mystery you're trying to uncover the user's problem it's your job to use whichever detective methods necessary to solve the mystery and with that in mind user research is the process of asking who what where when why and how you first need to understand who your users are what problem they're facing where they're facing this problem when they're facing it why they're
• 78:00 - 78:30 facing the problem and how they're currently facing the problem that was a lot of saying facing the problem but let's keep moving on why is the most important of all these because y tells you the root cause of why something happened this is the reason we recommend you use a method called the five wise basically you ask why someone does something five times the idea is that you keep asking until you understand the true reason behind the event for example let's say that you're trying to analyze why someone was late to work that could
• 78:30 - 79:00 go something like this why were you late to work because I got got up late why because I worked late last night why because I have three critically important projects that I need to get done in the next week you're probably getting tired of this but why because someone was let go from our team last month and I'm now doing the work of two people why because there's no one else to do the work and we haven't found a replacement yet by the end of this example you learn the deeper reasons behind why this person was late to work you gained insight into the problem which is what research and understanding
• 79:00 - 79:30 is all about at the very heart of user research is the fundamental statement you are not the user this is what makes user research important because you are not the user you don't know their problems and how they're trying to solve them by extension your team members are not the user they don't always know your users problems or how the user will behave which is another important reason to do user research it helps the whole team to understand who what where when why and how we can't even begin to tell
• 79:30 - 80:00 you just how this one thing mixed user research so valuable many times you'll find that people on your team have already made up their minds about how things need to be solved if there isn't research to back it up they'll contaminate the design with their own assumptions and the user will be left wanting now let's discuss what the research and understanding process typically looks like in the beginning of this phase and before designing everything we first need to figure out the problem we're going to solve to do this we use methods such as looking at
• 80:00 - 80:30 industry Trends SWOT analysis competitive analysis researching user panes and heuristic evaluations using these data points we frame the problem by stating what the problem is what we know about it and how we plan on fixing it from there we'll start getting feedback from users either through interviews usability tests or more indirectly through surveys finally you synthesize all of the research using Affinity diagrams personas archetypes or user segments and research reports which
• 80:30 - 81:00 prepare you for the next phase in the U X process now let's look at different types of research on the most basic level we can divide ux research methods into two buckets quantitative and qualitative quantitative research is measured numerically here are a few examples of quantitative questions how many people visited this page how many people clicked this button what percentage of people prefer this name for the product how many people are using this feature this makes surveys an excellent quantitative method of
• 81:00 - 81:30 gathering information because you get responses to your questions in a numerical format it gives you a level of understanding of what is happening or what is preferred however quantitative data alone doesn't address why someone takes a specific action that's where qualitative research comes in qualitative research gathers non-numerical data and focuses on deriving meaning from that data it helps you understand the deeper motivations behind behaviors and attitudes qualitative questions are open-ended like what would you expect when you clicked that button why do you think
• 81:30 - 82:00 that and of course why usability tests are all about washing people's behaviors when using your product researchers can dig into behaviors while they observe them and ask why people do what they're doing for example let's say that you're testing the discoverability of a new feature in your app quantitative data might look like four or five users found the feature qualitative data would be something like users who found the feature expected to see X instead of Y because Z wasn't clear another way you
• 82:00 - 82:30 can divide up research methods is attitudinal versus behavioral think of it like what people say attitudinal versus what people actually do behavioral we see this all the time with New Year's resolutions don't we the attitudinal side of someone would say I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to get ripped when in actuality they don't ever go that comes back to the reason we ask why so many times when asking why enough times you'll learn the underlying reason behind someone's Behavior While most usability studies are focused on watching users Behavior
• 82:30 - 83:00 they are also aimed at learning about how users feel attitudinal data now that you have a general understanding of quantitative versus qualitative and attitudinal versus behavioral let's look at a chart showing how different research methods are related to each of those categories the vertical access has attitudinal at the bottom and behavioral at the very top the horizontal access has qualitative on the left and quantitative on the right this shows you that the methods located in the bottom left help you understand why someone takes a certain action qualitative and
• 83:00 - 83:30 how they feel about it attitudinal the methods in the top right corner show you what people actually do behavioral and the numbers to back it up quantitative in the future use this chart from Nielsen and Norman to pick the right research method for what you're trying to learn now let's talk about research biases have you ever heard of the phrase leading the witness this is something in law where the prosecutor asks questions and makes statements that push the witness to say something that they normally wouldn't that's basically the same thing as research bias and it's
• 83:30 - 84:00 something you should try to avoid research bias is when the researcher influences the data so that it portrays a predetermined outcome for example imagine that we worked at Dropbox and we wanted to test the new location for sign up we wouldn't want to use the term sign up in the task we gave participants that would give them something defined on the screen and would skew our results instead we might say something like how would you go about getting a new Dropbox account while it's almost impossible to remove research bias completely it's
• 84:00 - 84:30 important to acknowledge accept understand and account for it with all the information about user research that we just went through we just wanted to call out one thing most projects don't require using the full set of methods in fact there are some projects that hardly use any instead you always want to focus on using the methods that make the most sense for any given project getting back to the definition of ux we talked about in an earlier video ux is the process of making a product or service useful relevant and meaningful for people to
• 84:30 - 85:00 truly do this you need user research with with user research you can understand the impact of your design on users without working with users you're just designing based on your own subjectivity and your own bias user research is the you and ux hey what's up kickass fans so how do you know if you're solving a good business problem or how do you know if it's meaningful or if it's even worse pursuing in this video we'll help you
• 85:00 - 85:30 quickly and effectively answer those questions before we get started this is the first lesson where you will do exercises in the figma workbook so don't forget to go download the resources at kickass2x.com under the free ux course page alright let's get started so we're going to talk about how you can identify a problem to solve using industry and competitive analysis they will help you identify problems find gaps in the
• 85:30 - 86:00 markets identify business opportunities and know how to differentiate your Solutions we'll cover how you can gain a better understanding of the market by looking at industry Trends and conducting both a SWOT and competitive analysis alright let's get after it without data you're just another person with an opinion Edward's damning many products fail because they don't solve a real user problem without really understanding the user you are not practicing ux you're subjectively designing features to put
• 86:00 - 86:30 it simply without the user there is no ux it's just the x that said there is more to ux than just the user ux at the center of Technology business and user without the business ux cannot exist at least not as a career knowing the business objectives behind the feature is equally important for now think about this step in the process as a funnel at the top of the funnel you look at industry trends just become familiar
• 86:30 - 87:00 with the market and note what's most important then work your way down the funnel by conducting a SWOT analysis last you go down the follow by conducting a competitive analysis it's easier to conduct research on larger corporations especially those that are publicly traded makes it far easier for you to find existing data such as investor reports and various other analysis you can also Target smaller companies if you want to for your case study but just
• 87:00 - 87:30 be aware that you'll have to dig a little bit more to find useful information let's go into more detail on how we work our way down the funnel remember we start at the top of the funnel by looking at industry trends for example if your case study targets Spotify search for music industry Trends online don't worry about learning about Spotify or its competitors just yet the goal of this first step is to get reimbursed in the industry at large this helps you to understand where the industry is headed when doing this spend
• 87:30 - 88:00 at least 30 minutes reading about industry trends that relate to your company and note the key insights once you have done that it's time to conduct a SWOT analysis this will give you a more detailed insight into the company and its position in the market SWAT stands for strength weaknesses opportunities and threats a typical sword is created in a four-part quadrant like this strengths and weaknesses relate to the internal environment of the company while opportunities and
• 88:00 - 88:30 threats relate to the market the external environment let's dive deeper into each category strengths are the internal factors that positively impact the company such as knowledge brand reputation intellectual property Etc weaknesses are internal factors that negatively impact the company such as low funding poor product quality bad customer service Etc opportunities are external factors that have the potential to positively
• 88:30 - 89:00 impact the company such as acquiring competitors strong market growth predictions International presence Etc threats are external factors that have the potential to negatively impact the company such as government regulations new competitors economic downturns Etc a SWOT analysis will give you a high level idea of where the company is headed both internally and externally while Justice SWOT analysis on its own will not help
• 89:00 - 89:30 you identify a precise problem to Target it will provide you with valuable context using Spotify as an example imagine that in your SWOT analysis you learned that the podcast Market is growing which is a business opportunity later on when you find user pain points you discover that users are really frustrated to have to use competitors apps to listen to podcasts you've just found an opportunity worth pursuing and while the SWOT results may seem elusive at first they will help you later when
• 89:30 - 90:00 the time comes to put all the pieces together there are two ways to approach your SWOT analysis either fill in the four categories of a SWOT by doing some in-depth research online and create it from scratch yourself or Google your company name followed by SWAT to Find analysis that have already been conducted once you have completed your SWOT analysis it's time to head to the bottom of the funnel by conducting a competitive analysis a competitive
• 90:00 - 90:30 analysis answers questions like what are your competitors features what Solutions do competitors have that your product is lacking what unique features does your product already have that are worth investing in competitive analysis helps you find ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors and to find gaps in the market this is what an empty competitive analysis looks like let's still use Spotify as an example first figure out who the top three competitors are if you don't know who
• 90:30 - 91:00 they are crunchbase.com is a great way to find them otherwise if you're designing a mobile product the app store or Google Play Store are a great way to find competitors focus on the biggest competitors and leave the rest second try each product and figure out what the main features are if you're looking to redesign a desktop app only look at the features of competing desktop products similarly if you planning to redesign a mobile app just look at the features of
• 91:00 - 91:30 competing mobile products don't look across platforms as the feature set will be different most of the time mobile is a simplified version of what can be found on the desktop for example if you're targeting mobile download all the apps on your phone and create accounts for all four products yours and the three compositors once you have access to all products try them one by one to understand their main features you can also look at the respective marketing insights would often list out the
• 91:30 - 92:00 feature set we recommend using pen and paper to start with and write all the main features that each product offers start with your company and list all of its main features then do the same for all competitors don't look at the products in relation to each other after writing the features for each product the ready to identify Trends and potential differentiators at this point go back to your competitive analysis table and fill it in once you have
• 92:00 - 92:30 completed both axes fill the main content area with your findings the most common answers are yes no or a key metric in this example you can see that radio shows is answered by using yes no and the streaming quality is answered using data such as 256 kilobyte per second or 16 and 24 bits boom that's it once you've finished your competitive analysis you will be able to identify both potential gaps in the market and
• 92:30 - 93:00 feature sets that can further differentiate your product from its competitors now we've seen the three techniques to identify a problem on the market industry Trends SWOT analysis and competitive analysis while the SWOT analysis results may seem elusive at first once your competitive analysis is complete you'll be able to see Trends which will help you identify what problem to Target in the Spotify example imagine that your SWOT analysis showed
• 93:00 - 93:30 that there is growing customer interest for better streaming quality and in your competitive analysis you found that spotify's trimming quality is not up to par with other competitors this may be a pass to pursue and a problem to solve to recap we covered researching industry trends performing a SWOT analysis to gain a more detailed insight into the company you're targeting and its position in the market then conducting a competitive analysis to identify gaps in the markets
• 93:30 - 94:00 and ways to differentiate your product learning about the industry helps you identify business opportunities this is the stepping stone to knowing what problem to solve and because ux is nothing without the user it's important to know where the business intersects with usernetes now it's your turn to do the exercise head to the figma workbook and go to the industry SWOT and competitive analysis tab happy analyzing
• 94:00 - 94:30 hey what's up kickass fam so what's the one thing you have to do regardless of the ux project framing the problem it acts as the North Star throughout the ux process it provides Clarity on what is to be sold and without it you would most likely solve the wrong problem after this lesson you will complete the framing the problem exercise in the figma workbook alright let's get started in this lesson you will learn how to frame the problem a process that
• 94:30 - 95:00 provides focus and Clarity for your project the framing of a problem is often far more essential than its solution Albert Einstein before designing anything you need to have a solid understanding of the problem that you're solving to get that understanding you need to truly Define the problem what is it that you're solving exactly without scoping the problem and providing contacts for what you're after you'll lose track of what and who you're designing for imagine if you were flying
• 95:00 - 95:30 from New York to Warsaw Poland if the plane was aimed even one degree of course you could end up in Romania getting eaten by vampires in ux the same thing happens if you don't frame the problem correctly if you don't truly understand the problem you could end up building the wrong solution at the start of many ux projects ux designers conduct what's called a stakeholder interview these are one-on-one interviews with people such as the product manager developers ux manager and any other
• 95:30 - 96:00 stakeholder who has a vested interest in the Project's outcome in each interview you record their beliefs assumptions and questions to help gain Clarity on the direction you will take to solve the problem stakeholder interview a great and are super helpful however we have a faster way of accomplishing this our method gathers stakeholder opinions assumptions and questions with everyone in the room instead of the time
• 96:00 - 96:30 consuming one-on-ones it's called framing the problem framing the problem is a document that we create at the beginning of a project this includes a few simple steps to gain Clarity on the problem we're trying to solve and what outcomes we'd like to see in your situation don't worry about the fact that you're doing this on your own that's totally fine in the future you will work with others on your team to produce a document like this framing the problem has six steps the first step is
• 96:30 - 97:00 to define the general problem you're solving from the business and user perspectives based on what you already know about the problem and what you learned during the industry and competitive analysis write a general problem that you're solving from the business perspective this could be lost Revenue lower user retention or a missing feature that other competitors have then think through the problems users are facing and what they are feeling as they're going through the experience you can look at products
• 97:00 - 97:30 reviews forums or even talk to real users to learn more about how real users feel about the product experience Step 2 your create a design question also called a how might we question how might we is really important how implies that this problem is solvable might implies there are many possible way ways to solve the problem and we implies that we all going to work together to solve the problem while you'll be completing this
• 97:30 - 98:00 by yourself in the future it's best to do this with a group to get multiple perspectives basically you fill in the following sentence how might we insert goal you train to have on users the third step is to describe the specific impact you hope to have on the business and users for example maybe on the business side you want to see increased engagement with this new feature or increase revenue or increase product stickiness meaning customer retention step 4 State your
• 98:00 - 98:30 assumptions associated with the problem these are things you believe to be factually the case for your product stating your assumptions does two things rather than keep this information in your head it lists out what's you and other teammates believe to be certain and allows you to analyze them from a more unbiased Viewpoint and two helps you decide whether or not these are things you need to validate through research for example let's imagine we're working for Airbnb and we're working on
• 98:30 - 99:00 a new feature that helps people plan trips with others using Airbnb one of our assumptions may be that we believe people expect to be able to split the payments with others using Airbnb by listing this out this helps us evaluate whether or not we need to do research on a specific problem in our experience most things that end up in this category on a given project don't end up getting researched that's what the next step and section is for which leads us to step 5
• 99:00 - 99:30 list out all of the questions you need to answer to properly solve the problem what don't you know about the problem what do you need to learn to be able to move forward this step is important because these questions form the basis for your research you'll need to answer all these questions to effectively design the solution to the problem for example using the same Airbnb example about planning trips with others maybe you're uncertain whether people would actually communicate with Airbnb or if
• 99:30 - 100:00 they use outside communication methods like email or text that would become a question that we need to answer through research answering that question would help you figure out whether or not you have to build an internal chat tool specifically for communicating with people to plan a trip the final step is to list out all the constraints that are associated with the project for example this could be tight project deadlines or a lack of Staffing
• 100:00 - 100:30 Resources to accomplish the feature in your case your constraints could be the fact that you're working on your own and don't have a team of funding to complete the project and that's it sometimes the insights you gain from your research will indicate that you actually frame the wrong problem at this point you'll come back to the document and rewrite it to reflect the problem that you are now trying to solve in other words framing the problem is a living document that might change along
• 100:30 - 101:00 the way as you gain a deeper understanding of the user to recap framing the problem is a document created at the beginning of a project to Define exactly what you're trying to solve it has six steps starting from defining the problem to listing out constraints now it's your turn to frame the problem go to the framing the problem tab in the figma workbook and use the worksheet to frame the problem you'll see a transparent frame in figma that has our answers to framing the problem we recommend that you don't look
• 101:00 - 101:30 at it until you've done it yourself then when you finish doing it on your own you can go and see how your work Compares happy framing conducting user interviews is an essential part of the ux process but it's one of the trickiest methods to master in this video we're going to talk about how to successfully conduct user interviews so buckle up because it's going to be an intense in-depth ride we'll cover what user interviews are and
• 101:30 - 102:00 why they're important when to conduct them how to prepare for them how to conduct user interviews the do's and don'ts of user interviews the drawbacks of user interviews and what to do after you finish conducting them by the end of this lesson you'll have everything you need to plan and run user interviews as always before we begin and so you can follow along Go download our course materials at kickass2x.com under our free ux course page now that that's out of the way let's get after it there have been times in our careers where we were
• 102:00 - 102:30 absolutely certain that users of our product had specific beliefs and behaviors it was only after we interviewed them that we realized we had it wrong and that they believe something else entirely had we continued blindly with our assumptions we would have designed the wrong thing instead we learned what we needed to design by talking directly to users so with that let's talk about what user interviews are and why they're important a user interview is a one-on-one conversation between a ux researcher AKA you in this
• 102:30 - 103:00 case and a participant to conduct a user interview you write a script with your research questions and then you use that script to talk to participants that's it it's one of the cheapest simplest and most common methods employed in user research user interviews help you gain an understanding of your users who they are their goals what they like about the product what they want from your product their pain points with the product and many many other things basically users will tell you their opinions and perceptions of an experience user interviews can range from 15 minutes to an hour and a half most interviews we
• 103:00 - 103:30 conduct though are around 15 to 45 minutes one of the best parts of user interviews is that you don't need to conduct them with dozens and dozens of participants to get statistically significant answers usually you only need to talk to four to six participants who represent your audience to see Trends and gain insights the structure of a user interview has three sections the introduction the interview questions and the wrap up the introduction is a pre-written script that you read to each participant to frame the purpose of the interview and set expectations for the
• 103:30 - 104:00 session then comes the questions where you ask the participants everything you need to know this is the meat of the interview and the wrap up is the script where you read closing remarks to the participant and ask if they have any questions for you user interviews are important because they give you insights into the needs and deep motivators of your users they help you better understand people's behaviors and their choices they also help validate assumptions answer research questions and give you empathy for the user conducting user interviews directly
• 104:00 - 104:30 helps you figure out the design Direction it's fair to say that without them creating user-centered designs can be like you're shooting in the dark we've covered what user interviews are let's now talk about when to conduct them user interviews can be conducted during any stage of the ux process that said they're usually most effective in the beginning stages when you're still defining the problem and figuring out the general design Direction this way it's still cheap and easy to change your approach based on user feedback user
• 104:30 - 105:00 interviews are also used during the middle stages of the process or after usability testing to gather users opinions about an existing product or design it's best to conduct user interviews in the beginning of your process if possible this way you can uncover insights and validate your assumptions up front before you sync too much time into going in the wrong direction now let's cover how to prepare for user interviews there are five primary things to do Define interview goals create your interview questions and work them into the script discussion
• 105:00 - 105:30 guide test your equipment recruit participants and conduct a dry run first before diving into interviews you need to have a solid reason for doing it you shouldn't be doing them just because you think you ought to that's a waste of time and shows that you don't know how to critically approach the problem truly think about why you're going to conduct user interviews what are you hoping to learn these are your interview goals normally you'd meet with stakeholders to identify what you need to learn together many times the reason you decide to conduct user interviews is to validate the problem you've identified during
• 105:30 - 106:00 framing the problem you also conduct user interviews to answer any questions that came up during framing the problem that said there could be many many reasons for running user interviews so make sure to fully Define your interview goals before starting next create your interview questions and add them to a script we added a sample user interview script that you can download directly from our figma workbook so if you haven't already make sure to download it from our site at kickass2x.com under our free ux course page coming back around if you frame the problem you already
• 106:00 - 106:30 have all the research questions in one place so now you just need to format them to fit your interviews with that in mind what's the first rule of user interviews don't ask closed questions what's the second rule of user interview you questions don't ask closed questions a closed question is a question where the only answers are yes or no the participant has no room to elaborate or tell you how they really feel for example let's say you worked for Alaska Airlines and wanted to understand if people felt comfortable purchasing
• 106:30 - 107:00 flights on their mobile app a closed question would be something like would you purchase an airline ticket on your mobile app the only answers are yes or no don't do this instead ask open questions open questions invite a greater response than just a yes or no answer they allow the user to fully explain their thoughts and opinions they also help you get to the reason behind why someone does something with that in mind a better way to ask the question would be something like can you tell me your thoughts about using your mobile
• 107:00 - 107:30 phone to order airline tickets also make sure to avoid leading questions leading questions buy as the participant towards a certain answer which will skew the results of your interviews using the same Alaska Airlines example a leading question could be which apps do you use to purchase airline tickets this question assumes that they use mobile apps to purchase airline tickets and directs their focus only towards the mobile space rather than more broadly again don't do this instead ask non-leading questions these don't push
• 107:30 - 108:00 the participant towards a specific response a better way to ask that question would be how do you currently purchase airline travel in general ask questions that are open and non-leading meaning they invite a greater response than just a yes or no and don't bias their answer before moving to the next thing here are a few last tips for creating your interview questions tip number one if possible create more questions than you'll have time for this ensures that you'll have something to talk about if the interview goes quickly tip number two with that previous tip in
• 108:00 - 108:30 mind ask the most important questions first just in case you run out of time and the final tip have follow-up questions or phrases prepared after your questions moving on the third thing left to do is test your equipment this can't be stated enough it's super frustrating to show up to a user interview only to find out that you're having technical difficulties not only does it make your job harder and waste valuable time it also doesn't make you look very professional to the participant and they're less likely to provide
• 108:30 - 109:00 insightful responses you don't need fancy microphones cameras or screen recorders to get the job done what you already have on your computer and phone should be enough just be prepared for the environment you're recording in after testing your equipment it'll be time to start recruiting in an Ideal World you'd already have started recruiting before any of this because recruiting takes time but when you're first starting out being confident in your process and what you've created is really important that's why we waited to talk about recruiting until now finding
• 109:00 - 109:30 the right participants is critical for gaining valuable insights and results from research unfortunately it can be challenging to recruit the right people to participate in your research there are a few reasons for that first there are just many people who don't have the time second and people you recruit need to represent the users of your product if they don't represent your users then your results won't provide you with the actionable insights to truly solve the user's needs with that in mind it's important to build criteria of who to recruit for your research the attributes
• 109:30 - 110:00 of the people you're recruiting can be broad or highly specific depending on what you're looking to learn here are a few general rules to keep in mind for your criteria first don't recruit people you know personally their responses can be biased just because they know you but in a pinch they can work if you know someone who uses your product and you can't find anyone else that you don't know you can bend that rule second as much as possible recruit people who represent your users or potential users list the attributes of the people you want to get feedback from are they
• 110:00 - 110:30 current users are they new users have they ever used your product do they use a product like yours how tech savvy are they Etc building successful recruiting criteria can be tricky if you define the criteria too broadly you might end up with people who don't really represent your users if you're too specific you might accidentally weed out good candidates and not be able to find people to participate try building criteria that are the right balance between Broad and specific research criteria include two categories
• 110:30 - 111:00 mandatory and optional mandatory means that the person fits every single item listed with that in mind list everything you know that needs to be true about people you're going to interview you don't want anyone who doesn't fit all of the mandatory criteria for example imagine you were working on a discount app for supermarkets here are a few things that could be part of the mandatory criteria these participants must go to the supermarket at least once a month and they must shop at General supermarkets like Safeway Fred Meyer
• 111:00 - 111:30 Kroger Trader Joe's HEB Albertsons Walmart Target Etc optional criteria include other attributes that might be true of your target audience these are assumptions and might not matter to people who use the discount supermarket app it's good to include some of the questions from the optional criteria at the beginning of an interview so you can learn more about the target audience what they prefer and what their actions look like back to the supermarket discount app as an example here are a few things that could be part of the
• 111:30 - 112:00 optional criteria these participants don't shop at Whole Foods those who shop at Whole Foods are typically willing to pay full price and then some that means they're probably less likely to use a discount shopping app these people also currently use coupons when they go shopping and they use apps like Groupon or living social next create your screener by turning your criteria into questions a screener is a list of questions that help you identify your target audience and weed out those who don't fit your criteria getting back to the supermarket discount app as an example here's what our screener could
• 112:00 - 112:30 look like do you shop at a supermarket if no end the interview how often do you shop at the supermarket each month if zero end the interview that's it these two questions came from the mandatory criteria and will eliminate people who do not not fit in the target audience in this same example it's also good to include some of the optional criteria as well just to learn more about the audience this might look like which supermarkets do you shop at most often do you use coupons when you shop if yes how often do you use apps like Groupon
• 112:30 - 113:00 or living social there are a few ways you can actively use your screener to weed people out of your research first if you're reaching out to potential participants through email social media or your own network you can build your screener into your message with the supermarket app example you might put out something on your social media account saying something like I'm conducting research about a new supermarket app that helps you find the cheapest prices on products if you shop at supermarkets like Safeway Kroger Fred Meyer Walmart or Target at least once a month I would love to talk with you
• 113:00 - 113:30 second you can use a screener in real time when you talk directly to someone during an interview or test you can do this at the beginning of your session if they don't pass your screener you politely let them know that they don't fit the parameters of your test thank them for their time and send them on their way the last way to use your screener is during a remote survey or usability test the screener would be at the beginning and depending on the responses the software would then either let them proceed or it would send them to an exit page where it tells them they didn't fit the criteria as a side note in order to do this your survey or
• 113:30 - 114:00 usability testing tool would need to have a screening feature or conditional logic built into its functionality now let's talk about the different ways you can find your participants we'll break these down into two categories first we'll cover the free or inexpensive methods second we'll show you the other ways you might recruit participants when employed as a ux designer when you have a bigger budget let's start with the first category free or inexpensive methods first is your own network think about your friends family Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Etc use whatever works
• 114:00 - 114:30 to find people who fit your criteria second would be using services such as Amazon Mechanical Turk the advantage is that you'll interview people you don't know which means you're less likely to buy as participants while you do have to pay pay for Amazon Mechanical Turk this is a fast and cheap way to get great results for example you can easily get 20 survey results that require about one to two minutes to complete for a total of three to six dollars or you can complete five 15-minute interviews for a
• 114:30 - 115:00 total of ten to Fifteen dollars within Amazon Mechanical Turk you can create screeners and Target specific demographics to ensure that you're attracting the right type of user the third inexpensive slash free method snowball recruiting this means at the end of a user interview or usability test you ask if they know anyone else who would like to participate last in the cheap inexpensive category gorilla recruiting this is where you go to a coffee shop or store and ask people to participate in a 5 to 15 minute conversation or test you usually offer
• 115:00 - 115:30 an incentive like a five dollar gift card to Starbucks there are three main downsides of gorilla testing one it takes some practice and confidence to approach people in the wild two you might end up standing around and waiting for people to show up three you might not end up with people who fit your criteria because you can't be too picky about who agrees to talk to you now let's talk about methods that require a larger budget first online ads you can put out ads online through whatever ad medium you'd like to use this usually works best for surveys using platforms
• 115:30 - 116:00 like Facebook allows you to be hyper targeted with who you recruit but you risk paying for people who click your ad and don't actually sign up depending on the ad platform you use you might end up with people who don't represent your user second you can choose a research participant recruitment agency this is a really efficient way to recruit people but it also costs a lot to do this last method is one of our favorites because of how easy it is but it really only applies when you're employed as a ux designer basically you work with someone
• 116:00 - 116:30 on your team typically for marketing support or sales to get emails of people who are using the product you then reach out to them directly to sign up for research you can also work with someone from marketing to send out a blast email to the entire list to ask for participants next let's talk about gaining participants consent for research this is actually a lot easier than it sounds all you have to do is get them to sign a consent form which is a document that says they agree to participate in the study this protects you and eventually the company you work for from someone who thinks they deserve
• 116:30 - 117:00 credit or financial compensation above and beyond any incentives you provide for their help in your study we recommend looking up research consent forms on Google and copying one for your own use now that we have talked through the different ways to find participants and gaining their consent let's talk about incentives incentives are just what they sound like they are a form of reward or financial compensation to entice people to participate the size of reward usually depends on the method you use as well as the amount of time the research takes if you're conducting five
• 117:00 - 117:30 gorilla tests at a coffee shop that each last 15 minutes we recommend providing an incentive of five to ten dollars per test that works out to around 25 to 50 in total if you're conducting your interviews using Amazon Mechanical Turk those same five interviews that require 15 minutes to complete would only cost you anywhere between ten fifteen dollars in total that's two to three dollars per test that said you can start by providing no incentives at all and see if people agree to participate when you are employed as a ux designer it's not
• 117:30 - 118:00 unheard of to provide somewhere between 50 to 200 to someone depending on the amount of time it takes and the complexity of the research it's important to point out that there are other things you can provide in return for someone's help other than just straight cash you just have to ask yourself what can I offer that would make it worth that person's time so if you're on your own or working for a company without a budget you can still offer incentives you'll just have to be creative and there are plenty of folks who are just willing to help for free all in all when it comes to recruiting
• 118:00 - 118:30 use whatever works best for you to find the right people to talk to just do your best to find at least four to six participants once you've added your interview questions to the script tested your equipment and recruited your participants finally you'll conduct a a dry run with a friend or family member this will help you practice your delivery and smooth out any of the Kinks in the script and questions do everything like you would for a real interview this means that you'd start by reading the introduction script recording the session and asking them all of your questions even if you
• 118:30 - 119:00 already know their answers this will help you get a sense of how long it takes if everything is worded correctly and how it flows if you're running remote sessions now is a great time to make sure that you won't have any technical difficulties after your script is ready and your participants are recruited all you have left to do is run each user interview so let's talk about how to run one for yourself remember each user interview has three parts the introduction the questions and the wrap up with this in mind the first thing you do is read out the introduction script to the participant it's the exact same
• 119:00 - 119:30 intro for each participant which helps eliminate biases because you begin the session the same way every time the introduction script does six things first it sets the participants expectations for the session and helps them get get comfortable talking with you second it informs them why you're conducting the interview third it tells them to only share their opinions not what they feel others believe fourth it assures them that there are no right or wrong answers and that you're not testing their knowledge this is so
• 119:30 - 120:00 important because it helps them Express their opinions without feeling like their intelligence is being questioned fifth it frees them up to be as honest as possible sixth it gets their permission to record the session and assures them that the recording will only be used internally for your notes and nothing more after the introduction you'll start asking the interview questions ask each question one by one and take notes on their responses don't be too focused on your notes though or you might miss something you'll always have the recording you can analyze later
• 120:00 - 120:30 also don't be afraid to go off script many times your participants will dig into a topic that you didn't account for that's awesome take advantage of it you can prompt the user to tell you more by asking can you tell me a bit more about that or even just why you'll be surprised how much you can learn from doing that finally after your questions you'll wrap up the session by asking them if they have any questions for you and thanking them for their time now let's cover some do's and don'ts of user interviews do ask to record the session and let
• 120:30 - 121:00 them know how you're going to use that information don't assume that it's okay just to record someone that can become a serious legal problem do focus on the participants don't focus on note-taking you'll always have the recording to go back to we highly recommend using a service like dovetail to transcribe and analyze your results you can find a link in the description for dovetail do ask seemingly simple questions don't make assumptions sometimes you'll assume that you shouldn't ask a basic question because
• 121:00 - 121:30 you think you know the answer however you don't truly know the answer so ask the question do make your participants feel comfortable it's always a good idea to start out interviews asking open-ended questions about them to get them warmed up and comfortable talking with you be okay with silence this can be hard for some folks but this is crucial doing this gives the user space to say what they want without being interrupted additionally periods of Silence put pressure on them to pipe up some of the best research findings come from a few seconds of Silent Reflection
• 121:30 - 122:00 from the participant don't try to fill in the silence just ask your question and listen do you keep an eye on the clock to make sure you don't run over this session time don't continue over time without getting their permission first continuing past the agreed upon time is poor form it shows a lack of respect for the participants time for interviews using Amazon Mechanical Turk avoid going over at all costs be neutral don't provide expressions or mannerisms that the participant can react to you can buy as the participant by not doing
• 122:00 - 122:30 this properly they can change how they respond based on how you're acting so be friendly but be as neutral as possible be open be curious show that you're genuinely interested in what they are saying remember you're learning from them you're the student they're the teacher don't act like their responses aren't interesting if participants feel like you're bored with their answers they'll stop talking if someone tells you something interesting that isn't in the script go with the flow you might find some hidden gems moving on let's talk about some drawbacks of user
• 122:30 - 123:00 interviews first people tend to say they'll do one thing when they'll actually do another this comes back to what we've talked about in the intro to research and understanding video with attitudinal versus behavioral research user interviews are inherently attitudinal what they say they'll do as we don't observe them behave the way they would when they're actually using our product without us around this can potentially skew our results for example let's say you're interviewing users about a dieting app they might say they'd love to use it but in actuality they'd rather sit on the couch with a pizza and wouldn't download your app in
• 123:00 - 123:30 the first place this can sometimes give you false positives second your interview will only be as good as your participant's memory there's a good chance that your participant won't remember everything about what you ask them this means that you'll get incomplete data and not get all the details you are looking for plus when it comes to biases people might try to fill in their memory gaps with information even if it's not true because they don't want to disappoint you or come across like they're not smart research biases are definitely a thing
• 123:30 - 124:00 and you'll see them play out here third you might hear a bunch of noise there's a good chance that your users will ask for random product features many times that's just noise however if you hear the same thing from multiple people then the request might be worth looking into fourth interviews aren't the best platform for asking users if they want a specific piece of functionality most users will tell you yes I want that shiny new thing even if they won't use it or if it's not that helpful they think they want it attitudinal but in
• 124:00 - 124:30 reality they won't actually use it behavioral finally let's talk about what to do when you finish conducting a user interview with a participant there's a section below our user interview script template that's called the top five takeaways in our figma workbook right after each interview we recommend going to that section and writing down what you believe to be the most important insights you learned during that interview you'll also want to pull out direct quotes from your interviews that provide those insights repeat this for each user interview you can at the end you should have four to six user
• 124:30 - 125:00 interviews completed and that's it for this video I know we've covered a lot we've come a long way so here's the recap a user interview is a one-on-one conversation between a ux researcher and a participant that provides insights into the needs and deep motivators of users interviews can range from 15 minutes to an hour and a half and we recommend aiming for 15 to 45 minute sessions you only need to conduct user interviews with four to six participants to gain insights to effectively prepare for user interviews you need to Define your interview goals create your
• 125:00 - 125:30 interview questions build your script and discussion guide test your equipment recruit participants and conduct a dry run we reviewed Do's don'ts such as being okay with silence and once you're done with an interview write out your top five takeaways from the interview in the future when you're employed as a ux designer ask other stakeholders to listen into interviews you conduct it'll help the entire team get on the same page and gain empathy for users plus it's really awesome when other teammates are taking notes so you all can compare your insights so now it's time for the course assignment when you open up the
• 125:30 - 126:00 thigma workbook and go to the user interviews tab you'll notice that we did all of the hard work for you and already conducted five user interviews so now all you have to do is read through all the five transcripts then below each transcript write down your top five most important takeaways from each interview as well as other notes and observations below the first two participants takeaways you'll notice that we have two transparent screens that show you our takeaways from each interview we recommend you don't look at them until you've done it for yourself then when
• 126:00 - 126:30 you finish doing it on your own you can go and see how your work Compares you got this hey what's up kickass fam so after conducting four to six user interviews you now have a ton of data you have pages and pages of transcripts while this is great you might feel overwhelmed by the quantity of data so how are you going to organize it all how are you going to make sense of it by conducting an affinity map
• 126:30 - 127:00 by the way after this lesson you will complete your own Affinity map in the figma workbook alright let's get started we're going to talk about how to synthesize the information from the user interviews using an affinity diagram we're going to cover what an affinity diagram is and why it's important how to create one for yourself and a few tips about Affinity diagrams let's get to it let's first start with what an affinity diagram is and why it's important with
• 127:00 - 127:30 all seen movies in which detectives use boards to link suspects and incidents those boards are such a great way to connect the dots in ux Affinity diagrams do just that Affinity diagramming is a visual method you use to group chunks of data into meaningful insights you do this by writing pieces of research data down on sticky notes and then grouping them with similar pieces of information with which they have an affinity
• 127:30 - 128:00 Affinity diagrams help you understand large sets of data and visualize the relationship between different groups so for example let's say you just conducted six user interviews you will have pages and pages of notes that are not truly valuable until you break the information piece by piece you make meaning out of these pieces by grouping similar data into categories to see broad user Trends and that's an affinity diagram in a nutshell now that you have a general understanding of what an affinity
• 128:00 - 128:30 diagram is let's talk about how to create one for yourself write down all the qualitative data and direct quotes from your research onto sticky notes if you wish you can forgo using pen and paper and do this on your computer using software like fig Jam mural or Miro after you've written all your sticky notes out either physically or digitally start by grabbing a random sticky note and putting it on the wall then grab another sticky note and ask yourself is
• 128:30 - 129:00 this sticky notes like the one I just put on the wall or is it different if it's similar to the first Tiki group it with the first otherwise place it into a new group then keep repeating by adding sticky notes to new or existing groups expect to change your mind and rearrange sticky notes several times based on affinities it's important to point out that there is no right or wrong to Affinity diagramming our analytical minds want to be right someone else
• 129:00 - 129:30 could see the same data and come up with completely different groupings let the data speak for itself after you're done grouping everything grab a different sticky note color and give each group a name that accurately describes what the group is all about you can then rank your group by most important to least important based on what you've heard from user feedback the goal of this entire activity is to categorize all of the stickies into groups so you can make sense of the
• 129:30 - 130:00 large amount of data by identifying patterns then start categorizing the sticky notes into groups again don't be afraid to move sticky notes from group to group if you change your mind once you're done grouping all the sticky notes add labels to each group boom you've created an affinity diagram you now have most of your insights from your research in one place finally here are a few tips about Affinity diagrams be no sound and curious act like this is the
• 130:00 - 130:30 first time you're seeing this information resist the temptation to assign group names too early your preconceived notions will diminish your insights you'll miss the true relationship between data points expect to move stickies multiple times to different groups depending on the lens you look through a sticky note might have an affinity with one group or another if you find a sticky note has equal Affinity with multiple groups create duplicates to put one in each
• 130:30 - 131:00 group don't worry about the amount of data you have seemingly too much or too little this exercise will help you gain valuable insight into the data no matter how many data points you have if you do have a ton of data this is great this is the best way to break it down into understandable chunks just take it one sticky at a time if you're doing this physically choose a surface that allows you to use all your sticky notes you
• 131:00 - 131:30 don't want to be restricted by space include a small tag on each sticky note that includes the name of the person or other identifying piece of information of where you got that data this way you can see the similarities in the demographics between all the data points just make sure not to group your stickies based on that alone to recap Affinity diagrams are visual method you use to group chunks of data into meaningful insights they allow you to understand large sets of data by
• 131:30 - 132:00 visualizing the relationships between groups of information we also talked about how to create Affinity diagrams and finally we went over a few tips to build the most insightful Affinity diagrams once you hired as a ux designer you will create Affinity diagrams with people on your team like the product manager or ux researcher doing this in a group helps you bring additional perspectives to the table ensuring that the final groupings are well thought out when you conduct this with a team the
• 132:00 - 132:30 process of grouping stickies should be silent doing this silently levels the playing field as no one can dominate the discussion you get a better result and it takes less time alright now it's your turn go complete the Affinity map in the feedback workbook if you don't have your workbook yet go download it at kickass ux.com under the free ux course page happy mapping
• 132:30 - 133:00 humans today have their shortest attention span in the history of the world the amount of stimuli that we are confronted with has grown so much that building simple user experiences has become more crucial than ever before people don't have patience for bad ux this means that we as ux designers have to be able to simplify information down to the essentials and that's where information architecture comes in in this video we're going to give you an overview of information architecture
• 133:00 - 133:30 otherwise known as IA we'll talk about the difference between IA and ux and go over the four components of IA but before we dive in and just so you can follow along once again we encourage you to download our course materials at kickass ux.com under our free ux course page the link is in the description now that that's out of the way let's get after it so let's start with an overview of IA information architecture is the organization and structure of content
• 133:30 - 134:00 and information the goal of IA is to help people understand what they see find what they need and complete tasks information architecture connects people to the content they're looking for look at it this way if you wanted to build a house you call an architect who would create the layout and blueprint if you wanted to build a website or an application you call an information architect who would create the layout and blueprint for your app information Architects create order from chaos they build systems and structures to organize complex sets of data so people can find
• 134:00 - 134:30 what they're looking for it's all about clearly and logically organizing information here's an example of information architecture in the real world almost all grocery stores are organized in the exact same way regardless of the store brand or where the store is located this is because they use the same information principles and layout that way regardless of what store you're in you feel comfortable and generally know where to find things for example you know that you can find milk in the
• 134:30 - 135:00 dairy section which is usually located at the back of the store just like you also know that ketchup is located in the condiment aisle could you imagine a store where everything was organized alphabetically ketchup will be located next to Kellogg's cereal ham would be next to hammers it just wouldn't make sense at this point you may be wondering is an information architecture the same thing as ux the quick and dirty answer is no they're not the same thing let's dig into that a bit more by talking about the difference between IA and ux remember the definition of ux it's the
• 135:00 - 135:30 process of making a product or service useful relevant and meaningful for people by comparison IA is the organization and structure of content and information with the goal of helping people understand what they see find what they need and complete tasks when you see those two definitions side by side you can see that IA is one of the pieces that make up ux after all how could you make a product useful relevant and meaningful if no one could make sense of what they're seeing
• 135:30 - 136:00 and find what they actually needed like we talked about in the intro to ux video as a ux generalist you also need to be a competent information architect you are in charge of organizing information on screen in a way that is useful findable and helps users complete tasks in the simplest way possible now that you have a basic understanding of information architecture let's talk about the four main components of IA labeling organization navigation and search as an easy way to remember it don't forget to
• 136:00 - 136:30 mow your Lawns of information first let's talk about labeling systems or how you represent information labels and titles help people figure out whether or not the page content link button Etc will have the information they're looking for using the grocery store example products like deodorant shampoo and hand soap can be found under the label of personal hygiene just like Blu-ray discs TVs and gaming consoles can be found under the label of electronics as a grocery store Shopper
• 136:30 - 137:00 you don't expect to find Jello in the frozen food aisle that's because the label doesn't match up with how the product has been categorized people quickly scan labels before reading anything else to figure out if they're in the right place and if it's worth their time it's best to choose labels that are universally understood and familiar to users make sure these labels reflect the user's perspective not yours do your best to avoid using unfamiliar words or words just to make your content seem more interesting use what's familiar next there's organization there are two
• 137:00 - 137:30 parts to organization schemes and structures let's start with schemes and no we're not talking about pyramid schemes or the idiotic schemes of Wiley Coyote trying to kill a roadrunner no we're talking about how you categorize content and how you establish relationships between pieces of information before we go further there's a fundamental term to understand when it comes to organization schemes and that's taxonomy taxonomy seems like a scary
• 137:30 - 138:00 word because no one likes taxes but that's not what it is at all taxonomy is the classification and the grouping of information within a shared information environment put more simply taxonomy is how you name and group similar things into categories it's how you know that an orange is different than an apple and that encrypts pink Apple is a different type of apple than a Fuji apple even though they might look similar let's take a step back and look at taxonomy as one of the pieces that make up IA if information architecture is the housing
• 138:00 - 138:30 blueprint then taxonomy is the plan for each individual room the kitchen would only contain items that belong in the kitchen each bedroom would only have stuff that belongs in the bedrooms and so on it's the grouping of things within the same environment there are many ways to create a cohesive taxonomy doing so requires you to understand the needs of your users the context they're in and the content you're providing them what users are looking for needs to make sense in the context of where they're looking for it now that you have a basic understanding of taxonomy you can use
• 138:30 - 139:00 that information to determine what scheme to use in your design a scheme is a method by which you choose to categorize your content there are exact schemes like alphabetical organized by alphabet think about the contact list in your mobile phone chronological organized by date think calendars geographical organized by location then Google Maps or Airbnb and there are subjective schemes like topic organized based on the subject of
• 139:00 - 139:30 the content task organized by determining the actions and needs of the users when they come to that content audience organized for the different types of people who will be accessing that content and metaphor content organized by relating familiar Concepts such as folders applications and trash like you see in all computers great now we've covered the first half of organization now on to the second half structures organizational structures establish how pieces of information are
• 139:30 - 140:00 related to one another a good structure allows users to easily find the content they are looking for on a site there are three main organization structures hierarchical sequential and Matrix let's first tackle hierarchical structures and holy hell that's a mouthful these are also known as tree structures because there's a parent-child relationship between the pieces of information they start with the bigger categories parent and then narrow down into the more detailed pieces of content children for example Apple's website is organized
• 140:00 - 140:30 hierarchically it starts off with all of their main product lines listed at the Top If You click on any of them you'll see all the sub model is related to that category next there are sequential structures where you go step by step until you reach an outcome think of when you set up your smartphone you had to go through a setup wizard that asked you a bunch of questions in a specific order before you could actually start using your phone another example is this course you follow each lesson step by step before you can move on to the next lesson each lesson Builds on the last
• 140:30 - 141:00 until you finish the course and you've developed your ux chops finally you have a matrix structure this allows you to figure out your own path since content is linked in many different ways think Wikipedia you can find something by searching for it by reading about it on another article or in a multitude of other ways the structure of a website is incredibly important it has long-term implications of how things will be organized especially as new features roll out if you're designing something from scratch you need to make sure that
• 141:00 - 141:30 the structure you choose allows for additions in the future at this point we've covered the low in lawns let's move on to the NS and if you like dance it's it's going a little self-conscious on that one next up is navigation navigation is all about how people move through and find content when considering navigation ask yourself how do people move throughout your product to find the information they're looking for there are many types of navigation including Global and local navigation menus breadcrumbs filters links and so
• 141:30 - 142:00 on these elements help your users find the information they're looking for finally we have search this is exactly what it sounds like it gives your users the ability to find the information they need search is helpful only if a website has enough content if there is a ton of information then search can help narrow things down it just needs to be displayed in such a way that is useful and not overwhelming to recap information architecture is the organization and structure of content
• 142:00 - 142:30 and information the goal of IA is to help people understand what they see find what they need and complete tasks information architecture connects people to the content they're looking for IA is only part of ux it provides the bones structure and organization of information and finally the four components of IA are labeling organization which consists of schemes and structures navigation and search and as a good reminder don't forget to mow your Lawns of information the field of
• 142:30 - 143:00 information architecture is vast and complex which is why there are people who specialize just in IA or a sub-specialty of IA such as search schemas or taxonomy at this point you now don't have an idea of what information architecture is while this knowledge may be basic now the more you exercise your ux muscles the greater your knowledge of IA will become hey what's up kickass fam so digital
• 143:00 - 143:30 interfaces are not new they've been around for a while and that's why there is no need to complexify your Solutions or to reinvent the wheel instead we'll show you how to fast track your design process by going over 27 industry standard UI elements first are primary buttons in general all buttons indicate an action that will happen upon clicking or tapping it the primary button is the most visible and important button on the page it guides
• 143:30 - 144:00 users to complete an important action by definition there should only be one primary button per page primary buttons usually have solid bold colors as the background let's look at three examples of primary buttons first is Facebook when you make a status update the most important action is to post which is reflected in the primary button second is Google Docs after creating a dock one of the most critical action that Google
• 144:00 - 144:30 wants you to take for product adoption purposes is to share the document that's why the primary button is share located in the top right corner and third is Gmail when composing an email sending is the final action you will take that's why the primary button is sent located in the bottom left corner of the email window in all these scenarios there is only one primary button present this helps to draw your attention to it and
• 144:30 - 145:00 promote its importance there is one more thing to point out here just because there might be only one button on the screen doesn't mean that button should be a primary action next there are secondary buttons these are used for less important actions that are not as visually emphasized as the primary button while it's not always the case it's common for a secondary button to be placed next to the primary button when placed next to a primary button secondary buttons are usually the opposite action for example send and
• 145:00 - 145:30 cancel here are two example of secondary buttons first there is audible the secondary button cancel is placed just below the primary button confirm purchase the next example is Dropbox when you create a folder a model pops up asking you to name the folder and choose a location at the bottom the only two options are create which is your primary button and cancel which is the secondary button
• 145:30 - 146:00 third a tertiary buttons every company uses this button style differently these are used when an action is not necessary but the user still might want to take action like adding a description or photo or bookmarking something typically these are considerably less prominent than the primary button and depending on the product can be more or less visible than the secondary button remember you can only have one primary button on screen that's where tertiary buttons
• 146:00 - 146:30 come in they're perfect for instances where they are repetitive actions let's look at some examples of tertiary buttons first on Airbnb there are additional actions you might take for example more about the location or contacting the hosts before choosing the primary action of reserving the place located in the top right corner notice how it's the only primary action on the page another example is Google Calendar when you
• 146:30 - 147:00 click anywhere on the calendar it automatically starts to create an event for you the primary action here is to save the event however you can choose to take the tertiary action of more options in case you're looking to add more to the invite unfortunately Google broke a fundamental rule here by adding more than one primary button to the screen one for adding video conferencing and one for saving Force at toggles also called toggle
• 147:00 - 147:30 switches toggle buttons or toggle icons think of toggle like a light switch they turn something on and off for example you can toggle the Wi-Fi on and off on your phone doing so will instantly change the state without having to press save for it to be activated same thing goes for airplane mode another example is Tick Tock clicking on follow toggles following or unfollowing the respective profile fifth are segmented controls
• 147:30 - 148:00 also known as button groups they provide contextual control over specific element and a basically a crossover between tertiary buttons toggles and tabs for example on google doc if you want to align the text you would use the segmented controller toggles between left Center and right aligned or Justified another example is the health app on iOS in this instance the segmented control allows you to switch
• 148:00 - 148:30 the View using different time frames like day week month Etc six are icons icons are simplified vectors or flat images that are used in most apps they are a hybrid case because they can act as buttons toggles navigation and as a helpful image for example in Google Drive all of the icons in the left panel act as tabs changing what you see on the right side of the
• 148:30 - 149:00 screen when you click on them clicking on trash for example shows you all the items in the trash and so on or notice the search icon in the search bar all this is really straightforward seventh at checkboxes these allow users to make one or more selection from a list of options typically these are displayed vertically to keep it obvious what is available to select for example here are checkboxes being used for filtering in Amazon by checking a box in the left panel it
• 149:00 - 149:30 filters your Amazon search results another example is Google forms here are checkboxes being used in one of the fields you have to answer to complete the form you can find checkboxes in almost every product online the most commonly found in online forms and settings Pages eighth a radio button unlike checkboxes which allow users to select one or more options in a list radio buttons only allow a single selection from a list of options for
• 149:30 - 150:00 example here is a Google form that asked what age group users are in radio buttons are used for this question because they can only be one answer another example is Facebook settings here they use radio buttons to show that you can only make one choice for how you choose to receive notifications when tagged just like checkboxes you can find radio buttons in almost every online product Ninth at drop down lists or menus clicking a drop down presents a
• 150:00 - 150:30 list to make a selection from they can either allow single or multiple selections depending on the type of drop down drop downs are great for situations when you can't use radio buttons or checkboxes because there are too many options the rule of thumb is to use a drop down menu when there are more than three to four fields to choose from for example here are two drop downs the one on the left is for Amazon and is used to help you filter your past orders the one on
• 150:30 - 151:00 the right can be shown in Google Calendar it helps to set the meeting visibility 10th a text Fields as their name indicates they enable users to enter text text Fields can either contain single or multiple lines of text these are used in every application and product online for example here are four different text Fields being used in Google Calendar at the top it's a single line text field for the title of the event then there are two single line autocomplete text
• 151:00 - 151:30 Fields one for searching for the location of the events and one for inviting guests finally there is a multi-line text box that allows you to add a description to your event 11th at date Pickers they are just like what they sound they allow users to pick a date and or time for example here is a date picker used on Airbnb it allows you to seamlessly choose a start and end date for your trip and here is an example of a date picker from Apple reminders on the iPhone 12 as search
• 151:30 - 152:00 Fields they give users the ability to search for Content using keywords or phrases the most famous search field in the world is probably Google search another example of search is on Airbnb here you search for location you like to stay at a specific time with a certain number of people 13s are Pages or pagination these are just like pages in a book but are separated digitally and connected by buttons or links think
• 152:00 - 152:30 Google search again when you get to the bottom of the page you presented with page numbers you need to press next to go to the following page of information and so on 14th add tabs these controls are most commonly placed at the top of the page and change all of the content beneath them for example when you conduct a Google search you will see a series of tabs like all maps news images videos and more if you search for Paris France
• 152:30 - 153:00 under the all tab you will see links to various sites you can navigate to if you switch to the images tab you will see related images still based on Paris France another example of tabs is Google Drive these Tabs are located in the left panel clicking them changes the content in the main area 15th are sliders sliders allow users to set a specific value or range of values for example if
• 153:00 - 153:30 you search for a flight on Google flights you can set the max price that you want to spend on your airplane tickets by dragging the slider to the highest price you're willing to pay an example of a slider that allows you to select a range of values is from Airbnb here you can set the minimum and maximum price range you're willing to pay for your trip 16th are tags these are small elements that provide information and help users find content they can be made by the user or added by the product for
• 153:30 - 154:00 example on a Mac you can tag documents and all the files using the Mac OS finder so you can quickly locate files later on another example is Airbnb they use tags to tell users the type of property if the property is managed by a super host and to tell if there is a new low price last there is Gmail you can use tags what they call labels to tag like emails it helps you organize your emails based on what you find important
• 154:00 - 154:30 in the left panel you can then find any email that has the corresponding tag 17th are breadcrumbs do you remember the story of Hansel and Gretel walking through the woods dropping breadcrumbs so they could find their way home the same idea applies here breadcrumbs are links that help users figure out where they are in a website and they are usually located at the top of a website letting the user know what page they are currently on and any previous page they came from for
• 154:30 - 155:00 example in Google Drive as you navigate between folders there is a breadcrumb list at the top of the window to let you know where you are within the file structure 18th are carousels these display content that moves horizontally either manually or automatically they allow users to browse through set numbers of pictures or content either forwards or backwards carousels are what you typically see on e-commerce websites to show product shots for example here is a carousel on Amazon to show product
• 155:00 - 155:30 images that match shopping Trends you can also find them on Instagram when users post several images in a single post 19th and notifications notifications provide relevant information to users usually through a visual indicator and or short message they are used to grab the user's attention for specific purpose notifications can indicate a positive outcome an error or a warning message some notifications enable users to take
• 155:30 - 156:00 action directly from the notification itself While others send users to the place where they need to complete the task for example here are two notifications from Facebook the First shows how many total notifications you have the second appears a quick summary in the bottom left corner of the screen when something new happens while you're viewing Facebook here is another example when was the last time you felt a buzz in your pocket from someone texting you
• 156:00 - 156:30 that was your phone's way of notifying you via sound and buzzing that someone just sent words into your phone for you to read when you opened your phone there was a notification telling you what happened tapping on that notification showed you what to do next notifications are used in almost every Apple product holder because they grabbed the user's attention this can also be their downfall for users who receive too many of them 20 years are models models are
• 156:30 - 157:00 everywhere online there are useful ads asking for your email acknowledgment creating something Etc models contain content that purposefully interrupts users to require an action of some sort they are displayed in front of all other content types and remain on screen until users have acknowledged the message and have taken action for example in Google Docs if you delete a dock that has contents in it it will automatically delete it and show you this model that lets you know what
• 157:00 - 157:30 happened you can't leave this screen until you choose to either take document out of the trash or to go to the doc's home screen another example is Google Drive when you choose to create a new folder a model shows up asking you to name the folder then create it or cancel 21st are menus menus display a list of choices or action on a temporary surface menus should be easy to interact with contextual to the user needs and easily
• 157:30 - 158:00 scannable for example in Google Docs when you click the file button a menu appears with action related to the overall dock or if you press the insert button a menu shows up with the actions related to inserting something into the document 20 seconds are cards cards are very popular these days especially on mobile there are rectangular modules that contain contents and contextual actions well-designed cards make good use of
• 158:00 - 158:30 space and present information clearly and efficiently helping to guide users through many pieces of information for example Google Drive uses cards to give previews of content so you can easily tell what you're looking for another example of cards is with Airbnb they use cards to show the availability of experiences you can easily see which days it's available and at what time 23rd at progress bars this helps users determine where they are in a sequence
• 158:30 - 159:00 of steps this can be found in e-commerce checkouts or setup Wizards that tell you how many steps are left to complete 24s are loaders also known as pinners or progress indicators these are animations that show the user the system is loading or completing an action indicating the user needs to wait here is an example of a loader in Airbnb as you scroll the map the loader pops up at the top of the map to let you know it's searching
• 159:00 - 159:30 additionally the pictures of the house is grayed out on the left giving you feedback that it's loading every online product has loading states of some kind that said depending on the product if you have screaming fast internet you might not ever see them 25th are tool tips also known as hints the goal of a tooltip is to provide contextual information of an element on Mouse hover for example in Google Docs when you hover on the comment icon the tooltip
• 159:30 - 160:00 shows up explaining what clicking on it does in this case open command history also it can be hard to initially understand the icons in the formatting toolbar upon hovering on any icons a tooltip appears describing the icon's function it can also be used to provide context on an element that needs further explanation 26 are hamburger menus these are navigation components that provide access to pages and functionalities on mobile they are almost always retracted
• 160:00 - 160:30 by default to preserve the real estate while on desktop they tend to be open by default and can manually be closed by the user these usually appear in the top left of an app for example on Google material design site the hamburger menu opens up to give a quick navigation to different areas of the website similarly on the audible app the amberger menu opens up their navigation to different features of the app like your library or stats 27s are accordions
• 160:30 - 161:00 these are used to expand or collapse vertically stacked items when a page has a lot of settings or controls they are grouped and hidden in an accordion to simplify the layout and reduce visual clutter for example on Google material design site they use accordions to expand and collapse oreas with a lot of content upon clicking one of the arrows the area expands to show all of its contents if you click on the Arrow again
• 161:00 - 161:30 it collapses back to its original state and that's it with our lists while this is non-exhaustive it covers the main UI elements that are essential to the success of any design they are countless reasons why knowing and using these common UI elements will benefit your designs users are already familiar wisdom and don't have to learn anything new this is why knowledge of your elements is essential being familiar with components and knowing which one to use
• 161:30 - 162:00 depending on the context is a large part of your job as a ux designer and that's it with this lesson we covered a ton of UI elements to quickly review them all don't forget to download the slides at kickass ux.com under the free ux course page happy learning from the margins on the side of a page to the content in between layout is in many ways the foundation of design it keeps balance and organization from one
• 162:00 - 162:30 page to the next bad layout results in creating cognitive overload for your users good layout has solid hierarchy and visual relationships and this video is all about helping you understand the difference in this lesson if it wasn't already super clear we'll be talking about layout we'll cover what layout is and why it's important we'll talk about the concept of visual weight and we're going to talk about crap no but seriously we're going to talk about crap contrast repetition alignment and proximity let's get after it let's first
• 162:30 - 163:00 talk about what layout is and why it's important at the most basic level layout is the structure and relationship between items on a page for digital products layout is all about figuring out the arrangement of images text and overall functionality let's look at it like a food recipe if UI elements such as buttons text images icons Etc are the recipe ingredients then layout provides the instructions for where and how you use those ingredients to make the overall recipe look and taste just right for example let's imagine we're
• 163:00 - 163:30 designing a travel site for the site we are creating cards to display beautiful places that people could travel when designing the layout of the card we would have a few ingredients a beautiful picture a title some body text and a rectangle the layout would be the directions of where we place these ingredients to create a cohesive visually pleasing card good layout can be learned it's part science and part art just like a good recipe so now let's talk about why it's important layout is important because it's quite literally
• 163:30 - 164:00 how the information is organized and displayed on a page intentional placement of content helps users easily scan the pay page and find what they need like we talked about before bad layout results in mental friction for your users good layout helps people to understand what they're seeing and find what they need it has a solid sense of hierarchy and visual relationships this helps the user to quickly scan and parse the contents of a page now that you have a general understanding of what layout is and why it's important let's now talk
• 164:00 - 164:30 about the concept of visual weight when you think about object weight in the real world this concept really isn't too hard to grasp Stephen Bradley described it well in his Article 19 factors that impact compositional balance when he said visual weight is the perceived weight of a visual element it's a measure of how much anything on the page attracts the eye of your viewer here are six factors that contribute to the perceived visual weight of an element on a page let's break down each of them first is size elements that are larger appear to be heavier than those that are
• 164:30 - 165:00 smaller with that in mind looking at these two squares which one attracts your eye more the bigger one right that's because our brains perceive it as being heavier than the other object second is space elements separated by space are perceived as heavier than those that are closer to other elements for example everything is exactly the same between both sets of text except the vertical distance between the header and the body text on the right is double that of the example on the left because of that space the second header has more
• 165:00 - 165:30 visual weight third is color there are two parts to color first elements with intense saturated colors appear to be heavier than those with more muted colors looking at these equal size squares the Bold or Red Square on the right draws our attention because its saturated color gives it more visual weight here's the second part of color objects with darker colors have more visual weight than those with lighter colors for example the circle on the left is a darker version of Blue so it draws our attention more than the
• 165:30 - 166:00 lighter circle on the right fourth is dimension three-dimensional elements are perceived to be heavier than two dimensional elements for example looking at these two objects the 3D cube has more perceived visual weight than the square on the right this is because our minds can assign a make-believe weight to the 3d square but it has no reference to assign a weight to the 2D object fifth is proximity elements in close proximity to one another in an area provide the perception of more visual weight in that
• 166:00 - 166:30 area for example the four squares on the right draw our eyes slightly more than the four on the left because the space between elements is less and last location an object's visual weight increases as it gets further away from the center of the composition for example look at the two canvases below the green square on the right canvas draws our attention more because it's really far away from the center of the composition it's important to understand the concept of visual weight because it's directly involved in how we lay out
• 166:30 - 167:00 objects on a page now that we've talked about weight let's talk about crap and no again we're not talking about bowel movements crap is a set of four design principles of layout created by Robin Patricia Williams contrast repetition alignment and proximity let's begin with contrast contrast is all about using visual weight to make elements stand out and draw our attention it's used to help move the audience's focus to the most important things they should see and understand usually whatever element has the largest contrast is understood to be
• 167:00 - 167:30 the most important thing on the screen contrast enables us to get a faster understanding of hierarchy and quickly see important pieces of information because it's 100 related to visual weight contrast can be created through color shape size interaction proximity font Choice Symmetry and the list goes on color contrast in particular is incredibly important for visual accessibility let's look at an example of contrast in the UI of MailChimp before we break it down just take a moment and see what stands out to you as
• 167:30 - 168:00 a quick reminder the reason that l element stand out to you is because of visual weight and contrast looking at this image six things immediately stand out first is the picture our eyes go there immediately because it's the biggest thing on the screen is off center has a person in it and has the most color in short this object has the most contrast and visual weight there's one thing to add here in general as humans our eyes are drawn to other people and so in this case not only does it have the most contrast and visual weight but because it has a person our
• 168:00 - 168:30 eyes are attracted there even more second is the headline our eyes then travel from the picture to the element most related to it to try and learn about the picture the headline is the second biggest element on the screen creating contrast in its size third the watch now button the contrast through color and size and the proximity to the headline draw our eyes to it fourth the sign up free button in the top right because the button has the same color as the watch now button the similarity and color and the visual way attracts our attention fifth the text below the
• 168:30 - 169:00 headline finally the MailChimp logo of course you may have looked at the elements in a different order but hopefully you get the idea contrast helps draw our attention and set elements apart from one another it helps focus our attention on what matters most when contrast is applied correctly it's something that you probably shouldn't notice next up there's repetition repetition is about unity and consistency it helps people quickly understand what they're looking at because they can see all similar
• 169:00 - 169:30 elements think about repetition this way it's a lot easier to look at 24 objects that look the same than to look at 24 unique objects our brains have to parse each different object separately whereas with repetition our brains can group all like objects together and to quickly understand what's going on for example every person on a soccer team wears the same Jersey the differentiating elements are the numbers and names of each player on each jersey and even the numbers and names usually appear in the same place
• 169:30 - 170:00 so if you want to know this information you know where to look could you imagine a sports team that had varying Jersey colors or patterns it would be really hard to tell who was on the same team with all of this in mind as repetition is all about consistency it's super important to keep the patterns colors fonts branding and functionality consistent across a product let's look at pitch's website to see how they use repetition first they are very intentional with their color choice and font you'll see the same font styles and colors throughout every part of their website their main gradient is used on
• 170:00 - 170:30 their primary Button as their background for their product photo and their testimonials additionally they use the same spacing and layout choices throughout their website they also cleverly repeat the exact same collaborator style for their testimonials as they use in their product this helps our brains draw the connection between the way people collaborate in their app and how they see folks who are providing them with reviews they're also very consistent with their 3D illustration even down to their signup form next up in crap is
• 170:30 - 171:00 alignment alignment is all about the organization of elements relative to a line or margin a design with poor alignment is like walking into a room that's cluttered and hard to navigate it makes you uneasy and it can be frustrating to try to even make sense of everything around you alignment is important for four reasons one it matches how people naturally scan and focus on content two it's visually appealing three it provides a sense of balance and four it creates a relationship between similarly aligned elements there are two basic kinds of
• 171:00 - 171:30 alignment Edge alignment and Center alignment with Edge alignment elements align consistently to the left or right with sensor alignment elements are aligned consistently in the center using a grid to align elements can really help create a sense of cohesion and establish a relationship between elements this is really helpful for scannability and finally in crap there's proximity this principle states that elements that are close together are seen as related this closeness shows connectedness this helps create perceived groupings and these
• 171:30 - 172:00 groupings produce cognitive load and increase readability here's an example with Google flights the type of trip number of passengers search Fields dates and filters are all close together the close proximity shows that they all work together if you're familiar with the Gestalt principles this should sound familiar because it's the exact same as the proximity Gestalt principle before we wrap up this lesson though we want to expand crap to include an h a b and a w so it's trap but what kind of a weird
• 172:00 - 172:30 combination of crab chap Ron crap hopefully that creature really doesn't exist anyway the H is for hierarchy and it's all about the correct ordering and visual treatment to allow users to easily scan and understand your content yes hierarchy and contrast are very related but we thought it was important to call it out as being separate because so many websites have a lot of contrast but still they don't have great hierarchy use hierarchy to establish relationships between parent and child content create categories and generally
• 172:30 - 173:00 build a sense of order and organization proper use of hierarchy will help make your designs easy to understand and help users figure out what matters most on the page for example Nike's navigation provides a clear sense of hierarchy through font Styles and space the top level categories of new and featured men women kids sale and back to school as tabs help to establish where you are and what you're looking at the space between those options and the menu beneath provides extra visual weight to show their importance and highlight their
• 173:00 - 173:30 hierarchy of information then in the main section they use large labels and smaller text to show where each item belongs that's a great use of hierarchy next in the Trap above there's B which is balance this plays into the Gestalt principle of symmetry and yes this one also plays into alignment but again it's something that we believe is important to call out when something is imbalanced our brain wants to fill in the gaps and and find the missing pieces to make up different shapes that aren't there balance creates Harmony associations
• 173:30 - 174:00 between content and helps lessen cognitive load look how Airbnb creates balance in their online experiences page you can literally split the page down the middle and it's equal on both sides this creates a wonderful sense of Harmony and finally there's W for white space and no this doesn't just mean using a bunch of white in your designs white space refers to the negative space or space between your content we left white space for last because it's used in all the other principles for layout proper use of white space can help
• 174:00 - 174:30 Define and separate sections establish relationships between different pieces of information and it gives your content room to breathe for example look at airbnb's help center we're using their old one because their new one isn't as good of an example anyway they use a generous amount of white space to separate the header and each of their sections it makes the page feel light and easy to consume even though there's a lot of information if the white space is removed the page doesn't feel as easy to consume because
• 174:30 - 175:00 it's cramped and harder to tell each section apart trapawa are another set of principles to consider when building a layout on a page we recommend you use them along with the Gestalt principles as both sets are interrelated okay we made it to the end to recap layout is the structure and relationships between items on a page intentional placement of content helps users easily scan the page and find what they need visual weight is a measure of how much anything on the page attracts the eye of your viewer finally we covered the very strange creature trapua contrast hierarchy
• 175:00 - 175:30 repetition alignment balance proximity and white space the secret to Great design is in the way visual elements are arranged in relation to one another and that's what layout design is all about we really hoped you love this lesson and look forward to seeing you in the next one when you're new in ux it's really easy to design a highly complex solution which is not what you want usually your designs only make sense to you that's why a great practice is to analyze
• 175:30 - 176:00 competitors Solutions and in this video we'll show you how to do just that so you can gain inspiration and design solutions that make sense to everyone before we get started you'll notice an exercise in the figma workbook under the analyzing the competition tab so if you don't have your figma workbook yet go download it at kickass2x.com under the free ux course page alright let's get started analyzing competitors and even non-competitors that have a similar problem will help you Fast Track Your
• 176:00 - 176:30 Design thinking that's because it helps you gain inspiration from how other companies have solved a similar problem don't get us wrong looking at your competitor Solutions doesn't mean that you can't be creative doing this will kick start your creative process it's worth mentioning that not all competitors have strong design standards companies that don't invest in ux usually create highly complex Solutions even still it's helpful to see how they solve the problem so you can find an opportunity to do it better additionally their designs might be tapping into a
• 176:30 - 177:00 known mental model for users so you want to make sure you understand what they've created just in case your users have the same mental models up until now you went through the research and understanding phase which means that you know what problem you're solving and who your users and competitors are now it's time to take screenshots of how others tackle the problem here are the four steps first using the problem you framed in the framing the problem lesson make a list of seven to ten competitors if you've been following along you already
• 177:00 - 177:30 created a list of the three most direct competitors in your competitive analysis add other companies that solve similar problems to the list for example let's say you have an all online product and you're trying to make it work offline look at competitors who already have an offline mode and see how they designed it don't limit your list to only direct competitors because they might not have an offline feature it's more about the feature than the competitor find other products that have an offline mode so
• 177:30 - 178:00 you can capture as many screenshots as possible and see how it's done for example even though it does let's say that Spotify didn't have an offline mode on one hand you would find out how direct competitors like apple music or title make the offline Feature work on the other hand you could look at other products that already have a similar feature such as Dropbox or Google Drive looking outside of direct competitors broadens your perspective and provides you with insight and creative ways to solve your problem second now that you
• 178:00 - 178:30 have a list of competitors log into each product and take screenshots of the competitors experience that relate to your problem while it might seem straightforward at first the problem that you tackle has a lot more components to capture than you might expect using the same offline feature example many surrounding components related to the problem might appear here for instance how do competitors educate users about the offline feature does a banner appear telling you that you're offline does it stay on screen the whole time or does it come up once and then
• 178:30 - 179:00 disappear is there no Banner at all what happens to the controls that aren't available offline are they still enabled or disabled or are they completely removed there are a lot more screenshots to capture than you think you need to think of everything that might apply third once you've collected your screenshots import them into figma or fig Jam so you can look for insights and gain a high level View group these screenshots based on the patterns that you observe and then come up with labels for each group this should feel really familiar because you're basically
• 179:00 - 179:30 creating an affinity diagram with your screenshots if you haven't yet watched the lesson on Affinity diagramming make sure to check it out and apply what you learn here for example imagine that you've collected a bunch of screenshots at this point you have an identified patterns after you've spent some time organizing them based on the patterns You observe your collection of screenshots would go from something like this to this at this stage your screenshots are organized in distinct groups once your groups are formed label them in the offline feature example the
• 179:30 - 180:00 first group might be called offline feature education the second available offline folder and the Third offline Banner now for the fourth and last step after you've organized all of your screenshots into groups rate each screenshot based on which provides the most elegant design when rating them ask yourself which solution solves a problem the best and why which is the simplest which is the most intuitive rate each screenshot from one to four with one being poor two okay three good four
• 180:00 - 180:30 excellent these screenshots give you a high level view of how your competitors solve a similar problem also you'll have an archive of your competitors IA and UI elements which provide a great reference to recap you can Fast Track Your Design Thinking by looking at other Solutions doing this will give you a starting place for your creative process and help you discern how to tackle the problem in the simplest and most intuitive way beware not all competitors have strong design standards companies that don't
• 180:30 - 181:00 invest in ux usually create highly complex Solutions finally we covered the action steps to take from capturing categorizing rating the screenshots of competitor Solutions and that basically what you're creating is an affinity diagram this method will help you start your designs on the right foot it can prevent you from creating a highly complex Solution that's not user friendly and again you're trying to create a product that fits users existing mental models this helps ensure that you're considering all design patterns so you can create a solution that feels intuitive and familiar to
• 181:00 - 181:30 users and this analysis is useful throughout the design process referring back to this as you go through the rest of the ux process will continually Inspire your information architecture and visual design now it's your turn go to the analyzing the competition tab in the figma workbook and start adding screenshots of competitors Norm normally you'd take screenshots of 7 to 10 competitors or similar products but for this free course you just need to look at three products all Trails Gaia and WTA the Washington Trails Association
• 181:30 - 182:00 and as one last reminder if you don't have your figma workbook yet go download it at kickass2x.com under the free ux course page happy analyzing if there's one thing that's Universal about ux designers everywhere is that we are always sketching sketching is a blast it helps you get out a ton of ideas and quickly validate them so get your pen and paper ready because we're going to dive in and talk about sketching and ux the Oxford dictionary
• 182:00 - 182:30 defines the word sketch as make a rough drawing of that's the main idea we want to get across it's rough it's not meant to be pristine and look perfect it's meant to rapidly translate your thoughts on paper there are so many reasons why we sketch we sketch to explore Concepts we sketch to communicate our thoughts and ideas to others Concepts can be tricky to explain with words sketching helps to get the meeting across we sketched to get feedback on ideas sketching can be a fantastic way to validate your Concepts before you spend
• 182:30 - 183:00 time wireframing we also sketch to refine ideas to make them better to hone them into something pure there's almost always a way you can improve your designs sketching can help you get there quickly which is another reason why we sketch because it's fast which means it saves you time to illustrate exactly what I mean about that here's a slightly embarrassing personal story from a conference I went to during a rapid prototyping session we were told to sketch out a bunch of ideas on the note cards and then line them up into something cohesive instead I whipped out
• 183:00 - 183:30 my computer because I was convinced that I could wireframe faster than everyone else around me who was sketching at the end of the allotted time I was only about 75 done and I'm fast at wireframing let's put that into perspective let's say I'm starting on a project and I want to jump to wireframing instead of sketching at 75 percent the speed wireframing would take me a full eight hours while sketching would have allowed me to finish two hours earlier now multiply that over a five day work week that would be 10 hours of wasted time it adds up quickly
• 183:30 - 184:00 and bear in mind that 75 is a super optimistic speed compared to sketching it's so much faster to sketch switching between different ideas and Concepts while wireframing is tough unless you're using a wireframing kit you have to create every object from scratch which takes time if you decide to move something it takes even more time plus once you start wireframing you naturally want to make it look nicer which is a huge mistake at this point in the process if you were sketching instead it's simple to create new DSR switch to
• 184:00 - 184:30 a new one all you have to do is just move your hand over and draw more shapes and the best part almost everyone can sketch your sketches don't have to look great to do what you need them to do again your goals are to explore generate ideas communicate with others get feedback refine your Concepts and save time before putting pen to paper determine if you are designing for mobile Android or Apple or for desktop it's important to figure that out up front because that will determine the screen orientation and resolution for your designs if you're designing for
• 184:30 - 185:00 mobile you can then use a ruler to draw a small portrait rectangle the same goes for desktop but you'll draw a larger landscape rectangle to make the most of your sketching session whip out your research including these three items first framing the problem second your Affinity diagram and third the competitor screenshots that you put together earlier in this course the framing the problem in Affinity diagram are high level documents that you should keep referring back to throughout any ux project the reason you pull them back out now is to help set up your mental
• 185:00 - 185:30 state use these as a refresher to kick start the exercise then start by looking at competitor screenshots to get a sense for how they solve the problem for example let's say that you're creating a new work management app and you're working on a new feature for sharing you would start by looking at your competitor screenshots to understand how they designed their sharing features keep in mind these are used to generate ideas so don't just copy them outright now you're prepared to make the most of your sketching session so to begin sketching create a container for either
• 185:30 - 186:00 mobile or desktop that you'll sketch inside we talked about this earlier next referencing your research and how others have solved the problem start generating sketches even if you feel lost or like your ideas are stupid just put your pen down and start drawing bad ideas keep exploring UF designers are pioneers that dedicate serious time to finding new ideas and bringing those ideas into the world we have to look at all possible options and iterate to do that we sketch and with that in mind a big difference between entry level and senior level ux
• 186:00 - 186:30 designers is how many different options they explore before settling on the idea they believe is best and even once they settle on an idea they iterated on it over and over they didn't just settle with the original idea that's exploration it's about looking at all the possibilities you don't know how something good might be until you see it yes you can work through many ideas in your head but you can't work through everything most of the time sketching Sparks new and better ideas here are a few final tips before signing off first
• 186:30 - 187:00 remember that your sketches don't need to be pretty they just need to outline the placement of your UI elements second do your best to draw straight lines it's something that you can practice and will help you with your sketching in the long run third keep your sketches high level at least at first you don't need to get into the details or used colored pencils or pens lines boxes and other shapes are plenty to get the idea across think of your sketches as your solution skeleton they help you uncover the ideal information architecture
• 187:00 - 187:30 finally always create multiple sketches of the same screen and weigh the pros and cons of each one until you're happy with one in particular keep in mind that your sketches only show a snapshot in time they don't illustrate how a user moves through your Solution that's what a user flow is about but don't worry about that for now we'll talk about that in a future video to recap sketching is the process of making a rough drawing and we sketch to explore Concepts to communicate our thoughts to get feedback to generate many different ideas to refine those ideas and because it's fast
• 187:30 - 188:00 now it's your turn open the figma workbook and go to the sketching tab if you haven't already downloaded the figma workbook go to kickass2x.com and go to the free course page once you've opened the file it's time to start sketching all the screens that play a central role in your product when you're done sketching take pictures of all of your sketches using your smartphone and upload them to the thigma file when people think of ux people generally think of wireframes they are considered
• 188:00 - 188:30 one of the most important deliverables throughout the ux process by the end of this video we hope that we'll have demystified wireframes and empowered you with enough knowledge to make your own in this lesson we're going to go over wireframes what they are the pros the cons the tools you can use to create them some tips we'll look at wireframes compared to other design documents and finally how to do it for yourself let's get after it so let's start off by defining what wireframes are as defined
• 188:30 - 189:00 by usability.gov a wireframe is a two-dimensional illustration of a Pages interface that specifically focuses on Space allocation and prioritization of content functionalities available and intended behaviors if this definition puts you to sleep here's an illustration of an angry cat in a box that cat knows about space allocation to put it far more simply just think of wireframes as low Fidelity digital illustrations of a website here's an example because they're low Fidelity they do not include any styling color or Graphics think of
• 189:00 - 189:30 wireframing as the skeleton of your website they are static don't show interactions and are entirely about communicating the site structure and functionality you don't need to have the details ready before creating wireframes they can be high level and conceptual or they can have more detail it's really up to you and where you are in the process as you iterate on your designs you'll move your wireframes up the Fidelity food chain adding more and more detail in case you weren't aware for some design terminology final designs that are high fidelity are generally referred
• 189:30 - 190:00 to as mock-ups or comps comp stands for comprehensive and it's the final version of what the page will actually look like now let's talk about the pros of wireframes first they're relatively quick to make because they usually aren't that detailed and don't use any color second they provide early visuals to communicate layout Concepts functionality and interactions with team members third they're easy to turn into low Fidelity prototypes to test with users and fourth their easy to change at this point you might be saying that sounds great why would I do anything
• 190:00 - 190:30 else so let's talk about the downsides of wire framing there are two primary cons first because they are lower Fidelity they don't include the details or technical functionality this can make wireframes harder for team members users or clients to Envision second as you increase the detail on the wireframe with real content it can throw off the layout regardless of the pros or cons wireframing is still considered to be one of the main ux deliverables it's usually a necessary step that you'll take to successfully complete a case study let's move on to wireframing tools
• 190:30 - 191:00 there are many tools that you can use for wireframing but here are just a few figma sketch balsamic Miro action and Adobe XD that was a bit quick and easy let's get a bit more into the weeds by talking about some tips for wireframing first start with sketching sketching can jump start your creative process and help you get miles further with your wireframes second don't use color stay with black and white or grayscale you don't want people to get caught up in the visual design at this stage you're
• 191:00 - 191:30 trying to Define functionality third use free wire kits to get started quickly the figma community has a ton of different free wire kits that you can download to get you started download one or two of them to save yourself some time fourth don't fall in love with your first great idea keep iterating we've said it before and we'll say to again one of the major differences between an entry level and Senior ux designer is that the senior continues to explore they don't stop with their first good idea they try out a ton of Concepts so they can choose
• 191:30 - 192:00 what works best now let's compare wireframes with other design documents so there's no confusion about ux deliverables first wireframes versus mock-ups we've already talked about this a bit but let's go over it again here's an example of each with a wireframe on the left and a mock-up on the right mock-ups are High Fidelity visuals of the product that you're creating they show what the product is actually going to look like after prototyping and testing you'll turn your wireframes into mock-ups mock-ups are where you finalize
• 192:00 - 192:30 your visual decisions and experiment with different styles and placements next there are prototypes a prototype is a clickable early version of a website meant to simulate user interactions so you can get feedback on a concept they are made by linking screens together and creating interactions on a page to show how the product works you can build a prototype at varying stages of the ux process it can be built early on in the wire trimming stage or when things are more visually finalized like an example on screen the main point is that they are functional Dynamic and simulate user
• 192:30 - 193:00 interaction by contrast wireframes are static and low Fidelity now let's talk about how to turn your sketches into wireframes before wireframing gather the following artifacts to guide you throughout the wireframing process first framing the problem second your competitors screenshots and third your sketches then start by opening your wireframing software next select the right screen resolution frame depending on whether you're designing for desktop or mobile if you're designing for desktop choose a resolution of 1440 by
• 193:00 - 193:30 1024 pixels or 1280 by 720 pixels by choosing a smaller size it forces you to simplify your designs and ensure they'll work across different screen sizes for mobile use a resolution of 375 by 812 pixels for iOS and 360 by 640 pixels for Android then pull up the website or app you are working on so you can use a similar layout in your wireframes for example if you're designing a new feature for Airbnb pull up their website to see their General layout this
• 193:30 - 194:00 provides the structure to build your wireframes in before taking a screenshot make sure to use the plug-in window resizer to set the browser to the resolution you chose make sure you don't skip this because that way when you drop the screenshots into figma they'll automatically fit into the frames and they'll be at the correct break point size this ensures that you'll get the correct measurements of font size spacing Etc you can also use these screenshots as stencils templates where you just draw your shapes over them like this
• 194:00 - 194:30 [Music]
• 194:30 - 195:00 [Music] [Music] thank you
• 195:00 - 195:30 [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] when wireframing and designing in general it's important to think through all the elements that will be reusable in this case each card is being reused over and over again that means we can turn our wireframe version into a component then if we make one change it will change all of them while this takes
• 195:30 - 196:00 a little bit of time up front to set up it saves you a ton of time in the long run once the component is set up we recommend you move it somewhere where you won't accidentally mess it up then you can just copy and paste it throughout the frame don't try to be Pixel Perfect here seriously if you do the pixel monster will come out of your closet and roast your computer in the Flames of Hellfire anyway when you're actually wireframing just start dragging in elements from the wireframing kit Library
• 196:00 - 196:30 using these objects start copying the company's permanent UI elements onto your wireframe don't overthink it and that's really it to wireframing to recap wireframes are static low Fidelity digital illustrations of a website they don't include any styling or color and are the skeleton of your website they are relatively quick to make because you aren't focused on visual design they provide early visuals that can be used to communicate layout Concepts functionality and interactions with team members they are really easy to iterate on you can quickly turn them into a low
• 196:30 - 197:00 Fidelity prototype to test with users and we showed you an example of how to wireframe and stigma when you get hired as a ux designer we recommend that you annotate your wireframes and keep design documentation to help people understand what's happening on the screen to do this add a section next to your wireframes explaining how it works and anything else that's important to note now it's your turn go to the wireframes tab in your figma workbook and start creating your wireframes for the REI hiking app as a reminder if you haven't
• 197:00 - 197:30 already and at this point I honestly don't know how you wouldn't have done it yet go to kickass2x.com and go to the free ux course page to download the thickness workbook then when you're actually wireframing use your framing the problem competitor screenshots and sketches to guide your wireframing session happy wireframing hey what's up kickass fam so just like a good story has a beginning middle and end a good product experience helps
• 197:30 - 198:00 users to go through the end-to-end Journey from the beginning all the way to the end and to do this ux designers create what's called user flows after this lesson you'll complete your own user flows in the figma workbook alright let's get started look at this image it's a beautiful picture of a Snowy Mountain big deal right but what if I was to tell you that it's only a small piece of a larger image as you can see that picture was just a small portion of
• 198:00 - 198:30 the Greater Image the first picture only gave you a small glimpse of the entire experience this gives you the full view after all how can you understand what's there if you can't see the big picture that's what user flows give us the full picture of the user experience in this lesson we're going to cover user flows what they are and how to take wireframes you just created and turn them into user flows but before we can dive into user flows we first need to understand
• 198:30 - 199:00 flowcharts as defined by the Oxford dictionary a flowchart is a diagram of the sequence of actions of people or things involved in a system or activity it shows how things work together in a sequence what decisions happen along the way and the outcomes here is a flowchart for Robot vacuum cleaner it shows all the stages the vacuum goes through and the decision points along the way until the vacuum finally turns itself off the shapes
• 199:00 - 199:30 using these flowcharts have meaning peels denote the start and the end of the process arrows show the direction of the flow and the relationship between different steps in the process the parallelogram denotes an input or output rectangles represent a process diamonds represent a decision and the circle with an X shows a summing Junction of points that happen simultaneously in this example the
• 199:30 - 200:00 vacuum turned on and planned its route at the same time before following the route with this out of the way we can now talk about user floats user flows are a type of flowchart that keep the user at the center of the flow there is a lot of confusion out there about the terminology of user flow and what it truly means there are few different terms that people throw around such as wire flows task flows screen flows UI flows anyway you name it but don't worry about the semantics what matters is a
• 200:00 - 200:30 technique and how valuable it is to you and your process there are two ways to create them first just like a flowchart here is an example of a user flow of someone trying to get directions through Google Maps this type of user flow is really helpful when you want to better map out the flow of screens before getting into any details the second way to create them is by using wireframes or High Fidelity mockups to show how each screen connects
• 200:30 - 201:00 with the others and the decision the user will make to accomplish a task there are cheap and fast way to get a holistic view of the user experience they show how things work together ending with the achievement of the user's goal user flows are helpful to get the entire team on the same page so that anyone who looks at your work can understand how each page and interaction fits together you can use user flows to document an existing product or to design something from scratch the focus
• 201:00 - 201:30 on Flow above all else which means you can create the information architecture that follows users expectations now let's talk about how to create your own user flow first thing first choose a user goal to create the flow for for example using Google Maps to get directions next determine if you want to create a basic user flow or a more visual one using your wireframes what you choose will really depend on where you are in your process if you've been
• 201:30 - 202:00 following along with the free course we recommend you choose the more visual user flow using your wireframes if you want to create a basic user flow without mapping the screens together pull out a Word document and start writing down all the tasks in order that it would take to complete the user's goal using the example of getting directions in Google Maps first I'd log in then I'll input an address next I view all the locations and choose the correct one to get directions then I'll confirm the route
• 202:00 - 202:30 and start the directions finally I would close the app once we got there from there you will take that information and start inputting it into user flows make sure to think through what the system will have to process as well for example in between logging in and the map loading the system would have to authorize the user and then load their location based on where they currently are you might have to do it multiple times to get the hang of it and
• 202:30 - 203:00 to think through all the connections and processes let's move on to the more visual user flow to create this one gather all the wireframe you've created if you've been following along you should have most of your screens wireframed start with the first screen the user interacts with then add the next screens that Branch from that first screen showing how they connect to one another in this case pressing more info would open up the model on the second screen providing more details about the
• 203:00 - 203:30 show and on the second screen pressing the x or anywhere outside of the model would close and take you back to the first screen then you keep adding more and more screens showing the connection between each until you have a complete picture and that's it to recap we talked about flowcharts which are diagrams of a sequence of actions involved in a system or activity user flows out type of a flowchart that keep the user at the
• 203:30 - 204:00 center of the flow user flows are created using wireframes or High Fidelity mockups to show how a user completes a task from beginning to end now it's your turn go to the user flow tab in the figma workbook to create your user flows if you don't have your workbook yet go download it at kickass ux.com under the free ux course page you got this if you're building a new product how do
• 204:00 - 204:30 you ensure that customers have the best experience similarly how would you discover usability issues and find areas where customers are struggling so you can fix those problems before the product is released the answer usability testing but you have to have something to test so unless you're testing an existing product you'll be testing a prototype so let's dive into the world of prototyping and usability testing in this video we'll cover what usability testing is the six reasons why it's essential what prototyping is and prototyping tools before getting into
• 204:30 - 205:00 the meat of this lesson we have two questions for you first have you ever been in a situation where you didn't know what to decide you weighed all of your options but didn't feel like you could make a decision this sort of situation happens all of the time in design that's where usability testing comes in it allows us to check in with our users to make sure that what we designed is useful relevant and meaningful here's another question for you have you ever been caught in an argument with someone that was going nowhere you both likely made good points
• 205:00 - 205:30 and at the end of the day neither of you had the evidence at hand to support your claims it's like talking at a wall usability testing is one of the best ways to avoid those arguments because it gives you evidence to back up your design decisions we have been questioned many times during our careers about our design choices on most occasions we can easily back up our decisions with evidence because we base our designs on research and usability testing without evidence the only supporting Arguments for your design choices are your
• 205:30 - 206:00 opinions which can be quickly challenged by someone else that's not a situation you want to be in as a ux designer so with all of that in mind it's important to know how to prepare for and run usability tests on your own to validate your designs and while not every project needs usability testing your decision should to the extent possible be based on Research so now let's answer the question what is usability testing usability.gov defines it this way usability testing refers to evaluating a
• 206:00 - 206:30 product or service by testing it with representative users during a test participants will try to complete typical tasks while observers watch listen and take notes the goal is to identify any usability problems collect qualitative and quantitative data and to determine the participant satisfaction with the product remember the definition of ux is the process of making a product or service useful relevant and meaningful for people that's what you're testing for you're testing to assess if your product is useful and easy to understand and navigate you're also
• 206:30 - 207:00 testing if it's valuable and desirable think of usability tests like experiments that scientists run that's precisely what we're doing here but instead of testing chemical reactions we're examining how well our interface meets user needs and just as a scientist conducts experiments to answer certain questions ux designers do the same through usability testing this is how a usability test session goes first is the introduction where you welcome the participant then you provide a quick overview of the study and explain what
• 207:00 - 207:30 to expect you then reassure your participant that you are not testing them but you are testing the product that there are no right or wrong answers and that any feedback is welcome positive or negative next you ask their permission to record the session and before you start the study ask them if they have any questions second are the pre-study questions ask about your participants background and any other demographic or psychographic questions that you find relevant for your study next send them the Prototype link and ask your participant to share
• 207:30 - 208:00 their screen third are the scenarios and tasks read a quick scenario to provide them with the context and state of mind that they are supposed to be in while taking that test next you provide your participants with tasks to complete using the Prototype then watch them go about completing each task at the end of the last task you wrap up the Prototype portion of the usability test finally you ask post study questions to get their overall thoughts and satisfaction levels it's one more chance to gather insightful data and that's it similar to
• 208:00 - 208:30 user interviews you really only need four to eight participants to get a solid picture of the usability of your product and as always what's important is that you are talking with the actual Target user of the product not just some random person so once you've conducted at least four to five usability tests you would then analyz your test results looking for commonalities across each participant analyzing usability test data is all about going back over the notes transcripts and videos from testing to find emerging themes and usability problems for example if four
• 208:30 - 209:00 of five participants struggled to complete a task that's a significant finding that you'd record and report in your analysis by the way for analysis tools we recommend using a program like dovetail to analyze your test results here are five objective metrics you can use to monitor task completion one successful task completion two critical errors three non-critical errors four error-free rate and five time on task so
• 209:00 - 209:30 for example after completing five usability tests four of the five or eighty percent successfully completed task one five of five completed tasks two on Task 1 only one participant had critical errors along the way meaning they wouldn't have been able to figure it out on their own with without your help on task 2 two participants had critical errors on Task 1 3 out of five had non-critical errors non-critical errors are where the participant is able to recover and don't affect the
• 209:30 - 210:00 participants ability to successfully complete the task on task 2 zero participants had non-critical errors on Task 1 only two of the five had no errors whatsoever on task 2 three of five were error free and the average time to complete Task 1 was 3 minutes and 20 seconds the maximum time to complete Task 1 for one of the participants was 5 minutes and 15 seconds the minimum for another participant was two minutes for task 2 the average was 2 minutes and 15 seconds
• 210:00 - 210:30 and so on you may also use more subjective metrics that you ask your participants such as how difficult each task was their level of satisfaction with each task what they liked the most what they liked the least ease of use and their overall satisfaction when you're employed as a ux designer many times you'll compile all of your insights from your usability testing into an analysis document that shows your findings to stakeholders this helps you justify the design Direction and gain support for your solution so what
• 210:30 - 211:00 are the elements to include in your analysis there are four things first the objective and subjective metrics that we just talked about second other themes or patterns that show up across multiple participants for example the word on the button didn't fit the mental model of three out of five participants another example could be four out of five participants easily added a profile picture to their account the third thing you'll want to include are important quotes such as an issue with the functionality love of an interaction or
• 211:00 - 211:30 another insightful quote for example a participant may have shared something like this I usually struggled with tech but I have to say this was actually quite easy to use this is a great quote to use in your analysis because this shows that even non-tech Savvy users can understand it it's a testament to the quality of the product and your designs the last thing to include in your analysis are videos and audio clips of your participants this shows stakeholders directly how easy or difficult it was for participants to complete each task for example from 2
• 211:30 - 212:00 minutes and 45 seconds to 4 minutes participant number one was struggling to find the share button and needed to be prompted to get to the next step that's a really awkward thing for stakeholders to watch and it really helps them build empathy for the user there are several ways to package your usability test report depending on the size and importance of the project some companies will expect you to make a slide deck and present your results others want a document that outlines the findings as a ux generalist because research isn't your number one job we believe a
• 212:00 - 212:30 document of your findings is more than sufficient a document is faster to create and helps you highlight the most important analytics without wasting time on how best to present the data plus you can use an app like dovetail to really make your testing report shine usability testing is an indispensable practice in ux because it provides real world data on how users interact with your product it's not something that you do to check a box saying that you did it it's a critical part of the process and remember you're testing the product not
• 212:30 - 213:00 the user you want to understand to what extent your product helps the user reach their goals let's dig into that a bit more and talk through the six main reasons we can conduct usability testing first to learn how well your product or service actually helps users complete the specified task and how long it takes to finish those tasks second to understand your users goals and motivations by observing them as they go about a task you learn why they do what they do and can probe further into the problems you see them facing third to
• 213:00 - 213:30 diagnose issues with your interface and figure out the changes needed to increase efficiency and performance fourth to learn how satisfied users are with your product or service which is crucial to the overall success and longevity of your product fifth to help designers product managers developers and other stakeholders build empathy for the user and sixth to provide you with a clear idea of how to make the best functional designs for your users this means that your study participants are co-creators of the design outcome it
• 213:30 - 214:00 puts less pressure on you as the designer to come up with the perfect answer with all this talk about usability testing let's switch gears and talk about one of the primary things you actually test a prototype with that in mind let's go over what a prototype is a prototype is an early sample model or release of a product built to test a concept this is the perfect definition for two reasons first off prototypes are built early in the process that way not much time and money have been invested in the project if you discover what you
• 214:00 - 214:30 designed doesn't work and second and most importantly a pro prototype is a sample you create to test a concept it's not the full product with everything figured out prototypes are all about getting your ideas out as early as possible in a manner that will allow you to learn and iterate on them they're created so you can put it in front of people and see if the idea has any value they can be anywhere on the spectrum between low to High Fidelity because there aren't any detailed interactions low Fidelity prototypes are typically
• 214:30 - 215:00 used to help validate navigation and the journey a user would go through when using the product High Fidelity prototypes are more detailed have a more involved experience and feel much more like the final product High Fidelity prototypes focus on the exact interactions of the product they typically include things like animations visuals or conditional logic where based on your actions with the Prototype you'll get a different result all in all you can sum up what a prototype is with these three statements a prototype is anywhere on the spectrum
• 215:00 - 215:30 of fidelity cheaper to build than the final product because software development is expensive and a prototype is made to test the usability of the product and validate Concepts moving on in the digital world there are three basic categories of prototypes first there are coded prototypes these are prototypes that model the final product using real code these are really time consuming to create and require a high skill level because you need to have coding and development knowledge unless you're a developer or someone who's
• 215:30 - 216:00 really interested in code don't worry about creating this type of prototype we just wanted you to be aware of them second are paper prototypes these are the sketched versions of the website feature or product that you're creating they're made up of multiple sketches that are linked together either by a software program or by you during a usability test the purpose of a paper prototype is to validate a concept early on to get feedback before you start creating the design on your computer paper prototypes are valuable because they get your ideas out of your head and into a semi-functional form that you can
• 216:00 - 216:30 get feedback on super quickly you only need two things to create paper prototypes pen and paper once you've created all of your drawings all you have to do is link them together there are a few choices you can make first you can manually link them yourself this would mean you leave your sketches in paper form and have folks click or tap using their finger or pen you would then show them the corresponding sketch depending on their decisions unfortunately this can really only be done well in person the second option is to use an app like pop by Marvel or
• 216:30 - 217:00 figma to take photos and Link the screens together to create an interactive experience the last type of prototype are digital prototypes digital prototypes have both the interactions and appearance of the intended design they're created using software that links together wireframes or mock-ups they don't have to to be High Fidelity to be useful wireframe prototypes can be just as helpful for Gathering feedback as High Fidelity prototypes that said sometimes you need to prototype highly detailed interactions to make sure that everything works together and makes
• 217:00 - 217:30 sense to the user here's an example of a digital prototype this is a parity company called capflix built-in figma now that we've covered an overview of prototyping let's cover some tools that you can use to create digital prototypes for more basic prototypes there is stigma sketch and vision Adobe XD and balsamic we personally recommend figma for prototyping it offers the most features and dynamic interactions for more advanced prototypes with more interactions and transitions there's
• 217:30 - 218:00 protopi action and many more be sure the tool you use allows you to send a link of your prototype to your participants so you can conduct remote and unmoderated usability tests all the tools we listed have this ability also always use the software that allows you to create a prototype in the least amount of time and still get the results you are hoping for usually this means you use the prototyping software that you feel the most comfortable using well that's it for this lesson on prototyping and usability testing to recap usability
• 218:00 - 218:30 testing is the evaluation of a product or service by testing it with representative users we talked through the six reasons to conduct usability testing which are to learn what extent your product or service truly helps users to understand your users goals and motivations to diagnose issues with your interface to learn how satisfied users are with your product or service to truly understand what matters to users and to gain Clarity on how to make the most functional designs best of all your participants are co-creators of the
• 218:30 - 219:00 design literally telling you exactly what they need then we covered prototypes a prototype is an early sample model or release of a product built to test a concept there are three basic categories of prototyping in ux first HTML coded prototypes but don't worry about these second paper prototypes these are sketched versions of the website feature or product that you're creating they're made up of multiple sketches that are strung together either by a software program or by you during a usability test and finally we talked about digital prototypes which we recommend during
• 219:00 - 219:30 this stage of the process these have both the interactions and appearance of the intended design they're created using software that links together wireframes and mockups and finally when choosing what software to prototype with choose the one that allows you to create a prototype in the least amount of time and still get the results you are hoping for thanks for sticking with us we'll see in the next one hey what's up kickass film in this video we'll talk about the final stage of the
• 219:30 - 220:00 ux process visual design and handoff this is the stage of the ux process where your designs truly come to life and hopefully not like Frankenstein in this phase you make your designs Pixel Perfect by finalizing typography colors Shadows layout iconography illustrations and ux writing to also ensure that your designs are visually accessible and for some projects if you
• 220:00 - 220:30 have the time and more importantly still have questions about your solution you'll also conduct a final round of usability testing once your designs are finalized then you will start handing off your designs to developers that's it it's pretty simple it's almost like baking a cake if the other three phases of the ux process were gathering the ingredients mixing baking and assembling the cake then this phase is adding the frosting and other decorations to make
• 220:30 - 221:00 it look amazing if you currently not comfortable with designing High Fidelity UI then here is what we recommend first get comfortable with the eight point grid system it will change the way you look at designing once you're up to speed on the 8-point grid system go to your favorite website and apps that you believe that are the most beautiful and have the best user experience take screenshots of multiple screens on each side and paste those into figma from
• 221:00 - 221:30 there use the screenshots like templates or stencils try to recreate the screens exactly in figma notice the spacing between the elements and the color choices do your best to absorb everything then when you've done that enough try to recreate those same screens without using the screenshots as a stencil then keep repeating over and over and over sooner or later if you keep doing this you'll be able to design UI like a pro once you're confident with
• 221:30 - 222:00 UI design the next thing to master will be Design Systems this enables you to create consistent harmonious designs all of the companies you can think of rely on Design Systems to make the digital product look excellent while also being highly usable creating your own design system will take your design approach to the next level and challenge you to think about your designs as a system while it can be slower to set everything up it will make your life so much easier in the future when you're building new
• 222:00 - 222:30 designs or if you want to change anything if you ever need to change something in your designs you will change it in one place and it will update across all your screens this will save you a ton of time and headaches in the long run one last thing we included a list of resources below this video to help you better understand and learn about this entire phase of the ux process Hells to the yes if you followed along
• 222:30 - 223:00 then you just completed our free ux course this is cause for celebration by completing this course you've put in actual time to learn in the ux fundamentals that's the first step on the path to getting into ux we are so excited to see what you do with your newly gained skills and knowledge at this point the main question to ask yourself is do I want to continue on my ux journey if you answered no to that question then we wish you the best of luck we'll always be here if you change your mind if you answered yes then it's
• 223:00 - 223:30 up to you to figure out to what extent you want to pursue ux do you just want to add ux to your skill set but not transition to ux or do you want to transition and become a ux designer there are many paths you can take for either option you can attend a university program go through a boot camp teach yourself or you can join one of our programs each path has its pros and cons some people might do better in University programs some might do better in boot camps and others might do better on their own it's really up to you and
• 223:30 - 224:00 your learning style we wrote an article about each of the four Paths of getting into ux that you can read on our website the link is in the description if you are interested in joining us we have two programs first is ux intensive which is meant for folks who want to add ux to their skill set but not necessarily transition it's also for folks who aren't quite sure if ux is for them our Flagship program ux UI expert is intended for graphic web UI and other types of designers who want to fully transition to ux if that sounds like you
• 224:00 - 224:30 we'd love to have you join us regardless whatever path you choose we're psyched that we got to be part of your ux journey congratulations again we truly hope you enjoyed our free ux course foreign [Music]