UX Design Documentation is easily misunderstood as paperwork for the sake of deliverables. Whether you choose a Lean UX process with light documentation or a more detailed approach, you need to make sure that the documentation moves the design forward instead of just being a paper trail. Documentation is much more than a pile of papers for occasional browsing. It is product narration, a formalized vision, and a compass for when things become unpredictable. Smart documentation brings people together and gives form to ideas. Documentation should inspire, not dictate.
- UXPin's 'The Guide to UX Design Process & Documentation'
As mentioned, I’ve been working with Dennis (uxtime.tumblr.com) and Evelyn (shadowofanepiphany.tumblr.com) to implement a subscription model feature for Kickstarter. We spent the first week of the project researching.
We began by focusing on people who give money to crowdfunding projects and people who have subscriptions. By sending out surveys and interviewing people, we gathered valuable information that revealed a few patterns. For example, people tend to give money to a project if they have a previous relationship or knowledge of the creator of a project and they hear about projects mainly through friends and family. People are also more likely to give money to a project if they like the rewards or incentives being offered for giving.
Here I am interviewing Angelique (angelique-uxdi) about her experience with crowdfunding and subscriptions
My group and I then synthesized our research data which allowed us to piece together personas that could represent people who would give money to Kickstarter projects. We prioritized features that these personas would want to see in our new subscription model design.
People want to be able to easily find and share projects, learn about the project’s details, communicate with the project’s creator, and feel secure about/in control of their payments.
The group realized that we also needed to capture data about content creators, themselves, so we managed to interview a couple of youtubers and people who created crowdfunding projects. Insights that we gained from these interviews included- they wanted to be able to communicate with their subscribers/viewers/supporters (yes.. we ARE struggling with the terminology that should be used in our design haha) and they wanted to be able to easily manage their content.
With the completion of researching and synthesizing, the weekend was already upon us! We decided to break up and individually come up with some initial sketches. I tested a comparable site, called Patreon, that uses a subscription model to fund creators. I wanted to see if there were any huge pain points before using it as inspiration for my own design. I got some nice insight from the test and then began mapping a basic flow and sketching.
Tomorrow, the group will gather to compare sketches so that we can come up with a solid design to begin testing! I’m stoked… I absolutely love this stuff!
We spent the morning going over the basics of Sketch 3. If you’ve read my blog you’ll know that I explored Sketch a few months ago and have been in love with it ever since. I used it to mock up the design for my new portfolio website. I spent most of the lecture downloading more free icons and resources and even stumbled across a few more tips and tricks. To put our new skills to the test, we were challenged to create a few screen mockups for “CoolApp”, which is pretty much just Instagram.
A prioritization of features is necessary because we have limited time, money, and people. Prioritizing also helps to avoid “feature-itis”. Without any restraints, a project would basically become a chaotic mess. People get stressed and anxious when a product is needlessly complex. That’s the opposite of what we, as designers, should be trying to accomplish! Also, conducting user tests on a product with too many features is also more difficult because it’s harder to determine what is working and what isn’t.
It’s a challenge to decipher which features are the most important because everything feels important! So how do you do it? Start off with understanding various goals including business goals (what’s the KPI?) and user goals (what’s the most important use case of the primary persona?). Then, ask yourself what is the simplest way to satisfy the business need and the user need. Create an affinity map of essential vs non-essential features and low effort/cost vs. high effort/cost and start with the most essential/lowest effort/cost feature(s).
“A persona is a user archetype you can use to help guide decisions about product features, navigation, interactions, and even visual design.” - Kim Goodwin
Personas can include: A name/photo/quote, demographic information, goals and needs, preferences, scenarios, contexts/behaviors/pains/pleasures, and how tech savvy they are. [CBPP: Context, Behavior, Pleasures, Pains]
Potential Shortcomings: can be too abstract, can’t give feedback/opinions, are they even the right people in the first place (do you have weak/strong research)?
However, personas ARE (or they should be... unless you’re a shitty researcher) made of real people. They are based on real research with real people. Personas encapsulate the research to make it more digestible and poignant.
So, how do you create a persona?
Affinity map
key points on post-its
should be specific/relevant/universal
Create a persona for each group
what are the groups that are forming?
what are their shared goals?
these not just based on demographics
Prioritize your personas
in relation to what you are addressing
primary, secondary, special
types of users
Validate them
recheck to make sure they’re based on research
do i personally know anyone like this?
are they useful?
can you role-play them and it still makes sense?
continually refine them
Keep them alive/keep them in mind
display them prominently
refer them
bring them up in casual discussions with colleagues and in presentations
Scenarios
Scenarios create a context for an interaction. What are the motivations, expectations, context of use? Context (where are they, what’s their state of mind) + behavior.
Use Case
Used to refer to scenarios and specific instances of a scenario. Written list of a task analysis. (Step 1 = “The use case begins when...” Last Step = “The use case ends successfully”)
User Story
Shorthand way of describing features. Specifies the who/what/why.
“As a role or persona, I want to task/goal, so that way I benefit.”
or
“1. As a (persona) 2. I want to (action) 3. So that (expected outcome).”
or
1. When (situation) 2. I want to (motivation) 3. So I can (expected outcome)”
Contextual inquiries are often able to reveal more information (or more accurate information) about a situation than an interview in a separate location. Contextual inquiries are useful especially when trying to change an existing behavior (or redesigning an existing system), or when there are a finite number of potential users (an intranet or administrative feature). As user experience designers our focus is on the people experiencing our designs, right? So, our work should reflect that by supporting and extending their behaviors. And we aren’t the experts in their day-to-day; they are! That’s why contextual inquiry (and user research, in general) is so important.
User interviews tend to gather more attitudes than behaviors. They’re personal and increase user empathy. These are great to help develop personas for a project. Another benefit is that they allow room for follow-up questions. To conduct a successful interview, listen actively and avoid asking leading/dead end/compound questions. Make the interviewee feel comfortable (ask permission to record, explain what they’re doing and why, and explain that their answers are confidential/anonymous) and allow them room to expand on their thoughts, but know when to bring the focus back to revealing their behaviors rather than letting them go on about their opinions for too long. Ask about the past or what they’ve already done and not the future or what they imagine they’ll do. It’s also helpful to consider the types of responses users may give to be able to craft some follow-up questions.
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