by Christina Vila Boa

Designing a clear and cohesive user experience can be the difference between success and failure. In fact, if a user is unable to understand your product and the value it brings to them, they will not use it. This is why the user experience has to be carefully studied, designed, and built. 

In this article, you will learn four steps to help you build a great experience for your users.

Step 1: Persona—who are you designing for and how will you solve their problem?

The first step is to research who your customer persona is, which problems they are facing, and how your product is the solution.

Start by making a list of ways that your product will solve these problems and share your thoughts with your team. Not only will this allow you to have a more coherent idea of what you are trying to solve, but it will also ensure that the team is aligned and moving in the same direction.

Step 2: Storyboarding and Paper Prototypes

Now that you have identified the ways in which you will solve your customers’ problems, start drawing the user journey in the form of a storyboard. The idea is to imagine the user in each step and every interaction they have with your product.

Prototype: examples

Once you’ve completed your storyboard, you can start to build the user journey into paper prototypes. This will help you get a better understanding of which actions can be taken on each page and test if your users are able to understand each step to reach the main goal.

Step 3: Creating a Digital Prototype and Adding Visual Design

Now that you have built your paper prototypes, the next step is to design this into a digital prototype so that you can start testing it with real users.

In this phase, you should take into account your design, brand, logo, and marketing messages. There are plenty of digital prototyping tools—two free ones are Adobe XD and Marvel. 

Digital Prototyping - EIA Italy

If you would like to get some inspiration, take a look at some designs sites like Dribbble and Behance.

Step 4: User Testing

In the user testing phase, your main objective is to see if the user is able to accomplish their goal. A great way to ensure this is to watch them use your digital prototype. Analyse where they stumble and avoid the temptation to step in and guide them, as you won’t be able to do that with all the future users.

By the end of your testing session, you should aim to have an answer to the following questions:

 

  • Useful—Does the experience solve the user’s problems and needs in a way that creates value for them?
  • Usable—Was the user able to reach the core parts of your product without assistance?
  • Desirable—Was the user’s first impression of your product positive? Were they excited to see your solution to their problem?
  • Memorable—At the end of the session, were they able to go back and find specific areas of the product with ease? Were they able to recall all the core features?
  • Credible—Does the user feel confident that your product will solve their problem? 

 

Bonus tip: You can use Webcams and https://obsproject.com/ to record the user’s interaction so that you can go back and see their behaviours.

Now that you have read all the steps, it’s time to go build an awesome product with a great user experience!