User Research offers an understanding of how users behave online, and is a solid foundation on which to build a design. Knowing your users means that you’ll spend money on what users really need, NOT on what you suppose they would need or like.
How to do user research?
Method: User Observation / Interviews
A combination of observation and one-on-one interviews is the most effective and efficient tool in a designer’s arsenal for gathering qualitative data about users and their goals.
Interviews are a good method for gaining insights into users�opinions, thoughts, and ideas. In terms of research styles, asking potential or current audience members a series of open or closed questions sits partway between surveys and ethnographic studies.
Information we can learn from users includes:
1. Goals and motivations for using their product
2. Current tasks and activities: both those the current product is required to accomplish
and those it doesn’t support
3. Mental model: how users think about their jobs and activities, as well as what
expectations users have about the product
4. Problems and frustrations with current products (or an analogous system if no
current product exists)
5. The context of how the product (or analogous system, if no current product
exists)fits into their lives or workflow: when, why, and how the product is or will be used
Personas
Personas are user models that are represented as specific, individual human beings. They are not actual people but are synthesized directly from observations of real people. Personas describe user characteristics that lead to different collections of needs and behaviors. We build up each archetype where the characteristics of users overlap.
The persona is a powerful, multipurpose design tool that helps overcome several problems that currently plague the development of digital products.
Personas help designers:
- Determine what a product should do and how it should behave.
- Communicate with stakeholders, developers, and other designers.
- Build consensus and commitment to the design.
- Measure the design’s effectiveness.
- Contribute to other product-related efforts such as marketing and sales plans.
Interaction Design is a key to developing products and brands with a soul. Interaction Design is a narrative structure, combined with the support of fast and flexible visualization tools. The narratives are quite similar to the comic-book-like sequences called storyboards, because it is created and rendered to follow a plot �a story.
The interaction framework defines not only the high-level structure of screen layouts but also the flow, behavior, and organization of the product.
The following six steps describe the process of defining the interaction framework:
1. Define form factor, posture, and input methods
2. Define functional and data elements
3. Determine functional groups and hierarchy
4. Sketch the interaction framework
5. Construct key path scenarios
6. Check designs with validation scenarios
Storyboarding
By using a sequence of low-fidelity sketches accompanied by the narrative of the key path scenario, you can richly portray how a proposed design solution helps personas accomplish their goals. This technique of storyboarding is borrowed from filmmaking and cartooning. Each interaction between the user and the product can be portrayed on one or more frames or slides. Advancing through them provides a reality check for the coherence and flow of the interactions.
Visual interface design is a critical and unique discipline, and it must be conducted in concert with interaction design and industrial design.
Visual interface designers use visual properties to group elements and create a clear hierarchy Provide visual structure and flow at each level of organization Use cohesive, consistent, and contextually appropriate imagery Integrate style and function comprehensively and purposefully Avoid visual noise and clutter.
When crafting a user interface, consider the following visual properties for each element and group of elements. Each property must be applied with care to create a useful and engaging user interface.
- Shape, is it round, square, or amoeba-like?
- Size, how big or small is it in relation to other items on the screen?
- Value, how light or dark is it?
- Hue, is it yellow, red, or orange?
- Orientation, is it pointing up, down, or sideways?
- Texture is it rough or smooth, regular or uneven?
- Position, where is it relative to other elements?
Usability tests determine how well a design allows users to accomplish their tasks. If the scope of a test is sufficiently broad, it can also tell you how well the design helps users reach their end goals.
To be clear, usability testing is, at its core, a means to evaluate, not to create. It is not an alternative to interaction design, and it will never be the source of that great idea that makes a compelling product. Rather, it is a method to assess the effectiveness of ideas you’ve already had and to smooth over the rough edges.
User feedback sessions and usability tests are good at identifying major problems with the interaction framework and at refining things like button labels and activity order and priority.
Part of contents taken from About Face 3.0.
