Before starting any of the design processes, we need to comprehend the website’s purpose. We also need to do our own investigation. Certainly in close collaboration with the client.
Understanding these questions to kickstart the design process is necessary:
Who is the product for?
What exactly audience expect or look for?
Is this product’s primary aim to inform, sell, or amuse?
How do you want to stand out from the competitors’ products?
What is the problem that this product is trying to solve?
***
1. UX research
In the very first step, we need to gather a lot of information about our target audience, competitors, and the product we want to create. Additionally, UX research typically involves 10 distinct steps.Here are all steps to establish seamless UX research
Timeline - to organize and demonstrates all design processes in specific detail
User Interview - to gain insights into users’ needs, behaviors, and attitudes towards a product or service
Empathy Map - to understand and empathize with users by organizing their thoughts and observations around the user’s experience
Identify User Pain Points - to involve identifying and understanding the challenges and frustrations that users face while interacting with a product or service
User Journey Map - helping UX designers understand the user’s experience and identify pain points and opportunities for improvement
2. Define & Ideation
In this step, we have a clear understanding of what the audience is looking for, as well as what competitors are offering. Therefore, we need to define and organize what we have gathered so far. Now that we have defined the problem, it’s time to generate some ideas through ideation techniques. Since we need a space to implement our brainstorming, let’s find a suitable location or platform for our ideation session. FIGJAM is the best platform to expand your ideation even with your project members.
3. Information Architecture
After generating ideas and identifying potential solutions, it’s important to organize and structure them using Information Architecture principles. When we talk about IA, we are referring to two crucial parts: the Sitemap and User Flow, each of which plays an important role in UX design.
4. Wireframe
A wireframe is a 2D visualization of a digital product, ranging from very basic pencil sketches to fully interactive digital designs. Wireframing can be classified into three types: low-fidelity, mid-fidelity, and high-fidelity wireframes.
5. Prototype
In the prototyping stage, high-fidelity wireframes are transformed into interactive demonstrations that closely simulate the look and behavior of a product. Designers utilize prototypes to conduct user testing and gather valuable feedback on the product’s usability.
6. Inspiration
Getting inspiration in UI design involves exploring and analyzing various design sources. so, we always need to be creative and trendy but it might be so difficult to have new ideas for each project without getting inspired by the other trendy websites’ designs. We need to collect an organized list of related websites that we’ve chosen, It helps us to accelerate the getting inspiration process. In this stage, we need to see many samples to be aware of the path we have ahead.
7. Design system
A design system is a collection of design elements, such as buttons, forms, and other interface components, that are pre-designed and packaged together to help designers and developers create user interfaces more efficiently.
8. Mockup
A mockup takes the fundamental layouts from the high-fidelity wireframe and adds content, branding, and styling. It’s also here that designers will receive feedback from stakeholders and iterate on their mockup designs before continuing to prototypes.
9. User Test
Now, it’s time to gather feedback from users. We need to test our high-fidelity prototype with various user groups, conduct usability tests, and create user stories. User testing is a process of verifying that a solution works for the user. Also, we can take user tests among each process step to get better and ideal results.
Some of the user testing tools:
Invision Studio
Google Forms
Marvelapp
10. Go live
Now it’s time to launch. There may be still some elements that need fixing but don’t worry, product design is an ongoing process that requires constant maintenance. The beauty of the UX/UI design is that it’s never finished.
