Today we’re introducing the first installment in our new Ask the Expert Series. Here you’ll find insights on everything from User Experience (UX) to ecommerce directly from our team. To kick things off, our Director of UX, David Mabury, and Creative Director, Andy Clyce, break down what it takes to design systems that solve problems.
Have you ever noticed that systems designed to provide solutions sometimes end up creating more problems? This unfortunate side effect is often caused by a lack of understanding of what users need and expect. Let’s take a look at how you can avoid creating more problems and instead, design a system that delivers the solutions your users need.
1. Identify needs and users
This is where you make hypotheses based on what you know about your customers and their needs so far. Lead with your customers to make sure your perceived business needs and goals are in alignment with what your customers really want.
2. Conduct research with your customers
Gather analytics, conduct user tests, talk to focus groups, create personas and journey maps -- whatever you need to do to test your hypotheses. For instance, the Lokion team frequently leads client teams through the creation of personas (“summary” users who represent key audience segments) and journey maps to walk those personas through their interactions with the client. Our team has also created dozens of unmoderated online tests allowing users around the world to navigate a proposed solution and give feedback.
3. Design features according to customer needs
Populate your backlog with features and success criteria, solicit user feedback early and often, evaluate features and success criteria based on feedback, update the backlog accordingly, and repeat.
4. Build feature slices
Feature slices are small, testable, freestanding pieces of functionality within a larger project -- using the same kind of feedback loop. The feature slices don’t have to be released publicly; they can be tested by small groups first.
5. Prepare for launch
When you release a set of features for user acceptance testing, keep evaluating features and either revise right away or add revisions to the backlog depending on priority and schedule.
6. Launch
After you launch, keep measuring actual performance against your success criteria and follow up with customers. Track the analytics, track customer feedback, and keep an eye on what’s working and what needs improvement. Seed your backlog with potential improvements and formulate new hypotheses for research. Then return to step 1!
Up next, in the second installment of our Ask the Expert series, we’ll dive into how to understand a new audience. In the meantime, take a closer look at Lokion's UX services.
David Mabury, Director of UX, Bio
A Lokionite since 2007, David Mabury leads the team responsible for strategy, user experience, user interface design, and QA. Prior to joining Lokion, he worked with interactive and advertising agencies in Memphis as well as an arts site in New York. David is a member of the Industrial Advisory Board for the Department of Computer Science at the University of Memphis.
Andy Clyce, Creative Director, Bio
Andy Clyce joined Lokion in 2007 and is the Creative Director. He is responsible for both internal and external projects. Internally, Andy assists with the conceptualization and design of branding efforts, collateral creation, and marketing assets. Externally, he helps clients work through potential use cases to identify effective solutions. Andy has 15 years of experience in creative and digital design. He has won multiple Addys for his work in both Memphis and San Diego.
