… many acronyms that we all like to use when talking about modern ways of delivering products or services and more broadly modern ways of working.
Even if we are right in using them almost interchangeably, what they mean is more than just “user-friendly interfaces”, which are sometimes the result of the UX process. UX, User-Centered Design, Design Thinking… It is an approach, a process, a way of working, supported by methods and tools. It helps deliver a “user-centered” outcome which answers real needs and more than that – it can influence behaviors.
All these terms focus on one thing:
How do we design solutions with the user in mind?
What does it mean to be user-centered?
Let’s look at it from a “People – Problem – Solution” perspective.
In a given context (our project’s context) there is a Need (or Problem) that is expressed by a group of People and that requires a Solution. This is what we are set to do – design a Solution.
How do we ensure that we know enough about the Problem to solve so we can design a good Solution for it if we don’t work with the People who have it? This is what the Design thinking process helps to do – understand who our users are, uncover their primary and secondary needs, test assumptions, iterate, improve solutions,…
We are “designers” in a broad sense – we design and develop solutions. If we don’t know enough about People and Problem, how do we know that the Solution we design is fit for purpose? How do we know if it will be successful?
The more we know about the People and the Problem, the closer we get to a good Solution.
What people see is the end result
A website, a tool, a product, a service. They conclude that it’s “nice” and “user-friendly”.
The path towards “user-friendly” is a process that has many variations but it usually includes the following phases:
Research
Understand the users and their behavior in relation to the product / service. Enables the design team to empathize with the people they create a solution for, including them in the following phases of ideation, prototyping and testing.
Ideation
Based on the results of the Research phase (visualised through personas, user journeys, statistics, benchmarking etc.), the design team defines the concept and brainstorms potential solutions, selects and develops further.
Prototyping
In this phase the team designs prototypes to test all or parts of the solution. Prototypes are used mainly to explore, evaluate and communicate how users might experience the future service. They allow the team to identify important aspects of a new concept, explore alternatives and evaluate which one might actually work in the business reality.
Implementation
Piloting the solution, remaining still in the context of learning and experimentation (some parts of the service might be still fake or including workarounds). The design team is still very present in this phase to explain the “how” and the “why”.
Each step of this process is supported by a set of methods and tools (e.g. user interviews, workshops, user journeys, personas, storyboards…).
It’s not all about methods
As the authors of “This is Service Design Methods” book put it:
- Methods might be the building bricks of your service design process, but owning a pile of bricks does not make you an architect or even a bricklayer.
- UX design is about understanding how to combine the methods in a way that it fits the context and the needs of a project and how to facilitate people through these new ways of working.
- Even if the UX methods are pretty standard, there is no copy-paste shortcuts because the People or the Problem or both will be different in every project.
- Every Solution is a unique response to the combination of People and Problem in a given context, shaped by the UX process cycle and set for continuous improvement.