Learning session 18: UX Deliverables

🚁 Topic

There are numerous UX deliverables, but they all share one goal: creating a meaningful and user-friendly product. Wireframes, prototypes, and user personas are examples of common UX deliverables. Here’s what I learned from today’s session.

🤓 What I learned

A UX design is not the final product in the product design process. After UX researchers have completed their research and analyzed the results, they organize the UX deliverables.

Deliverables in web design refer to the items required to document the various stages of the design process. Deliverables differ from project to project, but they typically document the most critical steps in the web design process.

Here is a quote from Albert Einstein that for any product we start, especially for UX design, we should take it as a note.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”

Mind map

Mind maps are an excellent place to begin the creative process after the discovery phase. Mind maps represent ideas centered on a single topic or concept. They can be created independently or as part of a team session.

Mind maps are an efficient way to explore all possible ideas for solving various design problems.

User persona

UX design is focused mainly on the user. Creating user personas early in the process is essential in designing a product. User personas are archetypical users whose primary goal is to represent a larger group of users.

A user persona contains demographic details and information about users’ skills, goals, wants and needs, and frustrations. User personas are a great way to help the design team emphasize with users.

User personas should rely on data, research for user interviews, and use other research tools within your budget and time limits.

User flow diagram

A user flow diagram is a way to describe where users can navigate your product. Also, it is a way to see the actual quality and experience of the users’ path to accomplish a task.

Every product goal is to guide users to accomplish a specific goal. User flow diagrams assist you in visualizing all of the paths your users may take.

Examine user behavior data on your product to create an effective diagram. This will help determine all the possible interactions the user will go through.

Storyboards

Storyboards are a graphic representation of how your product will unfold. They are comic book-style visualizations, which give you the whole picture of the environment that users interact with a product.

It’s made up of squares with illustrations or pictures representing each shot and notes about what’s happening in the scene and what’s being said in the script during that shot.

When creating a product, a storyboard serves as your road map. Your storyboard, like a script, visually guides you through the production process.

Storyboards have three main components:

• Visuals
• Scenarios
• Captions

Involving your team in the creation process will create an accurate and realistic storyboard.

Customer journey maps

Customer journey maps are diagrams of customers’ digital and non-digital interactions with a product.These cards also include the pleasant and unpleasant moments of the user’s journey.

Unlike user flow diagrams, it focuses on the user’s emotional experience and behavior. User interviews are the best way to gain insight for building your customer journey map.

You may share these customer journey maps with other stakeholders, which may dictate the form they take. They can be created using sticky notes, spreadsheets, charting apps, and whiteboards.

Experience map

Experience maps help define a general idea of how users achieve a goal throughout your product. Experience maps, instead of customer journey maps, primarily focus on specific customer interactions and describe general user behavior.

Experience mapping is one of the methods that UX designers use to help them build empathy and understand users’ needs to improve the product’s user experience.

Empathy map

Empathy maps are an essential step while creating a product, and we never know what users think. After researching and analyzing, it’s time to understand users better and emphasize.

An empathy map is a detailed, understandable visual that captures information about a user’s behaviors and attitudes.

It is a valuable tool for assisting teams in better understanding their users. Empathy maps are a great way to understand user needs and prioritize their needs.

Empathy maps contain four sections:

• Says
• Thinks
• Does
• Feels

We should fill each section from the user’s perspective. They should have data gathered from fundamental user research.

Service blueprint

Service blueprints are diagrams that represent the entire process of service delivery visually. They include all parties involved in service delivery, including digital artifacts and people who work behind the scenes.

They provide an overview of the entire process and can identify gaps and weaknesses in the user experience and the back-end mechanisms.

Sitemap

Sitemaps are hierarchical diagrams that show the connections between a product’s components. They provide a high-level overview of the navigation structure and content groups.

Your sitemap should be based on the user journeys and personas you’ve created to best meet your users’ needs.

Wireframes

The next step is to create wireframes for the product. Wireframes are low-fidelity models of the product. Details like color palettes or typography aren’t crucial at this stage, what you need to focus on is arranging the elements of the design and planning the structure also navigation.

Wireframes are typically composed of grayscale lines and boxes that illustrate positions and visual hierarchy rather than complete functionality. They’re a quick and inexpensive way to test ideas and gather user feedback.

Prototype

A prototype is an essential part of the design process. The prototype’s primary goal is to have a tangible model of the solutions to the problems already discussed by the designers during the concept stage.

Prototypes allow designers to validate their concepts by putting an early version of the solution in front of real users and collecting feedback as quickly as possible.

When prototypes fail during testing, it reveals where the flaws are and sends the team “back to the drawing board” to refine or repeat the proposed solutions based on real user feedback.

Prototypes can save lives by avoiding the waste of energy, time, and money in implementing ineffective or inappropriate solutions.

There are two types of a prototype:

• High-fidelity
• Low-fidelity

Usability report

Usability reports are documents that contain all of the results of usability tests. They include information about the participants, tasks, tools, and any final changes recommendations.

Once you have a design that has been implemented, you can begin to test it with real users. Evaluation can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. You can have some users test your design and then interview them.

You could bring users into a workspace and ask them to complete specific tasks with your prototype while measuring the number of errors, clicks, or time required to complete the task.

You can use special equipment in the workplace, such as tracking cameras, to see where your users’ attention is focused while navigating a particular design.

You could also ask them to complete the same task using prototypes that provide alternative design implementations, allowing you to compare them and determine which design is superior.

🤺 What challenged me

One challenge I faced while learning about UX deliverables was trying to understand all the different types of documents that designers can create during a project. There are many types of UX deliverables, from wireframes to personas, and it can be difficult to know when to use each. Another challenge was understanding how to create these documents in a way that would be helpful for both designers and developers. I found it helpful to look at examples of UX deliverables online to see how others have tackled this issue.

Thank you for coming this far. Any feedback or critique is appreciated.❤️