In software development, be it a mobile app or a website, creating design in not less important (sometimes even more) than the process of coding. UX design holds a special place in mobile app design chain. To make the way how users feel the app perfect, a number of experienced designers share their knowledge and best practices. Let’s take a look at the most widely used designed techniques they offer.
1. Personas
The first you should know before getting to UX design creatio is the audience your product is aimed at. The idea of the method is pretty simple: you create characters, so-called Personas, on the basis of data received from analyzing your typical users and define their common needs and expectations.
How to create Personas? The process of creating personas starts with interviewing. Don’t try to find out everything and analyse every single feature, all you need is the most valuable information about customers in your business field. Then comes analyzing. It’s a much more complicated task as you will have to deal with multiple attitude and behavior variables. After a thorough process of analyzing and synthesizing, you are ready to create a persona document that summarizes the research data.
2. User stories, scenarios, and storyboards
The next approach is great for describing specific cases of user’s interaction with an app. User stories provide general description of the value that your app feature can deliver to users. Scenarios are more detailed descriptions of what users do and why they do it. Storyboards serve to depict scenarios for better understanding.
3. Writing-first design
The best way to arrange the information about an app is to sketch it on paper. Don’t forget to dress your sketch with the hand-written descriptions.
4. Mind-mapping
Anywhere it is required to think something over and generate working ideas, mind-mapping is the best solution. Creating UX design for the app that can be filled with various interaction models, may be a challenge. Mind-mapping will help to highlight key points and leave no details to chance.
5. Wireframing and paper prototyping
If you feel ready to create design, stop for a moment and create wireframes — digital illustrations of your app screens with all elements they contain. Wireframes are a good sketch for designers. But unlike paper sketches, everything is in proportion, so you’ll have opportunity to see how everything will look like. If there’s a need to see how everything works, apply paper prototyping. This method imitates real interactions with users. You can scroll, tap, and drag, and the prototype will respond.
Wireframing and paper prototyping are complex approaches to creating UX design, so you may need some additional tools to make things work. However, the result is worth all the efforts as you may face some issues at this early stage of designing and fix them.
6. User testing
The best way to know whether you are creating the effective UX is to ask users to test your product. The idea is simple: take ‘volunteers’ to play around your app and leave feedback. Even if you think your app is perfect, users in real conditions will have some comments and improvement suggestions. However, don’t hurry to change everything immediately, but critical bugs and majority opinion is worth consideration.
User testing can be performed with your participation (Moderated testing) or without it (Unmoderated testing). The number of participants and testing parameters highly depend on your budget.
Are these UX techniques essential?
Designer’s work is measured by the final result. If you can achieve the best result without applying any techniques, good for you! However, it’s never bad idea to consider the experience of professionals in your areas. It’s up to you whether it is or not to follow advice and to what an extend.
About author
Nataliia Kharchenko is a Marketing Copywriter at CleveroadMobile and Web development company. We are focused on helping startups, small, and medium businesses create competitive and winning software.