I love user experience research. Why you should too.

UX approach is all about getting it right before you develop. The heart of this approach is UX research. It’s like doing your homework before buying your significant other a present. Do your research first and when you surprise your love bug with that gift, instead of disappointment you’ll end up getting the desired response you want.

What kind of UX research to do
Good UX research is all about gaining a better understanding of what your end users want. Best practices suggest a few proven methods to employ:

1) User interviews and surveys: the main objective here is to gain an understanding of your users’ goals, what motivates them, their pain points and the different tasks, dependencies and opportunities in the task flow.

2) User persona development: remember to base your personas on “real users” that will actually be using the product. Your personas should capture the users’:

• motivations for using your product
• technical abilities
• environmental profile
• actions that they want to achieve

Lastly, persona development should clarify assumptions about users and their tasks in order to help create a realistic user journey.

3) Customer journey maps: with this step the goal is to understand the users’ stories. Customer journey maps illustrate the interactions that users go through when engaging with an interface/product. In other words, they give you the ability to visualize the outcome of the design solution allowing you to explore and design for the users' task needs and wants.

Other methods include: card sorting, site analytics, heuristic evaluation, and focus groups.

The UX bottom line
There’s nothing romantic about it. If you want to increase the rate of acceptance and adoption of your project and reduce re-development time by as much as 50%, you need to invest in your UX research.

Check out this great article: “UX, Without User Research, Is Not UX” -http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-without-user-research/

Whitepaper: “UX Research and Market Research” - A Conversation with Apala Lahiri Chavan, Human Factors International -http://info.humanfactors.com/acton/attachment/4167/4167:f-0045/1/

About UXD Group: Our goal is to collect and analyze data, to understand the user’s expectations of the breadth and depth of their end tasks. uxdgroup.com 

The Sweet Spots to Successful UX

UX design can produce a greater rate of adoption and acceptance; it reduces re-development time by as much as 50% and greatly enhances ROI. But in order to accomplish these milestones, your UX design process must incorporate three key elements: 

1. Focus on the user, really!

Plans usually start off with good intentions to understand and know the users; however, the execution process lacks involvement of users and their input. Smart companies have figured it out – go out and find out what users are actually using. Develop user-tasks, personas, and conduct user research so you can gain a deep understanding of the user requirements. Focus on real people and what activities they need to accomplish and the context of those activities. Remember, when you design without really knowing your users, you can lose out on potentially four times the ROI.

2. Produce prototype wireframes before building

Tremendous savings are realized when you map out each page of the user experience before you begin building. Estimates will be 50% more accurate. Requests for clarification by your design team will be reduced by 80%. Reworks and bug fixes will be reduced by 25%. Isn’t achieving all this worth producing prototype wireframes?

3. Validate through usability testing

There’s a 90% reduction in support costs when you employ usability testing with real users. By validating the user experience before you go live, you get to understand where the gaps are, modify your user flow and redefine your design if required, all of which mitigates risk before launch.

The UX method includes many other elements; however knowing your users, applying an effective wireframe process and testing with actual end users are the foundational steps to building online platforms that will be successful.

About UXD Group 

UXD Group brings together specialized usability experts who are passionate about what users really want and are trying to achieve, with a focus on user-centred design through various research and analytics methods. uxdgroup.com

Why UX design equals greater ROI

Does taking a user-experience approach to the development of a digital project result in greater ROI? The answer is a resounding “yes”. In fact, some studies have shown that for every dollar invested in UX, you will experience a $100 return. 

Guessing costs you
When UX design is not employed you’re basing design decisions on assumptions and guesses, which means you’re going to get some things wrong. When things are wrong you end up with a bad user experience and the rate of adoption and acceptance by users drops dramatically. Statistics show that 70% of projects fail when the user experience disappoints. That’s why a UX approach to design can have such a dramatic impact on ROI.

Get it right at the beginning with UX
UX defines user requirements upfront through user involvement at the beginning of the process allowing you to get the user interface right before you build. On average this reduces re-development time by 50% which naturally translates into substantial savings. Couple this with lower costs for customer acquisition, lower support costs, increased retention and increased market share and, thanks to UX, you have the makings of a much healthier bottom line.

About UXD Group 

UXD Group brings together specialized usability experts who are passionate about what users really want and are trying to achieve, with a focus on user-centred design through various research and analytics methods. uxdgroup.com