User Experience

The importance of UX...

Over the past 7 years I have worked as the design lead on many projects. For the first couple of years, no matter what was being designed, I would always encounter the same problem which was lack of planning. 

A business or client is always eager to see what their new website is going to look like and the time pressure to do this always meant that I would have to jump straight into a high fidelity mockup. This mockup would then inevitably go through numerous time consuming changes and what one person thought would be right wouldn't always be what the next person thought should be right. 

This is when I started introducing UX patterns into my work. I would explain to all future clients that the most important aspect of building a new site is in the planning phase. As soon as you explained that the project would now be data driven, and as a result you would get a better final product, most would be on board. 

My UX toolkit

Sitemaps and wireframes

Balsamiq, Axure, Draw.io

Design

Photoshop, Illustrator

Languages

HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby on Rails

Usability Testing

InVision, Usability Hub

Analytics

Google Analytics

UX Workflow

My typical UX workflow would usually be as follows...

Research

Explore the problem and gain the experience to provide an effective solution. This would include stake holder interviews, user interviews, surveys and third party research. 

Analysis

Using data to come up with the right approach from the start. This would include looking through analytics, surveys, content and competitor websites.

Design

Start off low fidelity, constantly getting feedback from the client or business. This would include sketches, wireframes, mood boards and prototypes.

Evaluate

It is important to collect feedback throughout the process and this stops feature creep and last minute requests.