Design thinking Flashcards
User-centered design process
Each phase of the user-centered design process focuses on users and their needs. It’s an iterative process,
At the core of the user-centered design process is a deep empathy for the user. It’s not just about what a product does for a user, it’s about how the experience of interacting with the design makes the user feel.
Key steps in the user-centered design proces
Understand how the user experiences the product.
Specify the user’s needs.
Design solutions.
Evaluate the solutions you designed against the user’s needs.
Understand how the user experiences the product.
You want to know how users will engage with your design, as well as the environment or context in which they’ll experience the product. Understanding this requires a lot of research, like observing users in action and conducting interviews
Specify the user’s needs.
Based on your research, figure out which user problems are the most important to solve.
Design solutions.
Come up with lots of ideas for designs that can address the user problems you’ve identified. Then, start to actually design those ideas!
Evaluate the solutions you designed against the user’s needs.
Ask yourself, does the design I created solve the user’s problem? To answer this question, you should test the product you designed with real people and collect feedback.
Guiding principles for the user-centered design process
Design for users and their needs.
Make your copy conversational.
Present all information clearly.
Acknowledge user actions.
Offer support.
Acknowledge user actions.
Your product should let users know when they’ve executed a task correctly. That might be as simple as having a new window pop up when an icon is pressed, or as complex as animated tossed confetti to demonstrate that the user has accomplished a task.
The five elements of UX design
The five elements are, from bottom to top: strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface.
Strategy
The bottom layer is strategy, where you lay a foundation of your design goals. These goals are based on user needs and the business objectives for the product.
Scope:
The next layer is scope, where you determine the type of product you’re building. At this point, you will consider the kind of features and content you want to include in the product.
Structure:
The middle layer is structure. Here, you’ll figure out how to organize your design and how you want users to interact with the product.
Skeleton:
The skeleton is the layout of the product. Just like the layout of our bones shapes our skin, the skeleton layer details how your design works – and like a skeleton, users won’t directly see its inner-workings.
Surface:
The top layer, surface, represents how the product looks to the user. The surface represents the interface that users view and interact with. Think of the surface like the clothes or makeup you wear that are visible to the outside world.
Design thinking process
Design thinking is a user-centered approach to problem-solving. It helps designers create solutions that address a real user problem and are functional and affordable. There are five phases in the design thinking process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Each phase of the framework answers a specific question.
Empathize phase
During the empathize phase, the goal is to understand users’ needs and how users think and feel. This involves a lot of user research, such as conducting surveys, interviews, and observation sessions, so you can get a clear picture of who your users are and the challenges they are facing.