UCD Phases Flashcards
Competitive Analysis
Before you do anything else, you need to understand the competitors in your space to decide how your software will compete.
Audience Definition
Making informed design decisions is impossible without first identifying the recipients of your design. We’ll dig deeper into this process in a later Exercise.
User Scenarios
By creating scenarios in which your potential users will need your software to accomplish a goal, you can identify features and functions crucial to the success of your app.
Content Survey
Surveys are a great way to learn about your audience and hone in on functions that might address their needs.
Process Flows
This is where you get into the specific paths a user can take within your software, typically via user stories and flow charts
Sitemap
This is a diagram that shows the navigation layout of a particular website or app. A sitemap details all of the pages contained within a website or app, showing how they’re connected together and their corresponding hierarchy.
Wireframes
Wireframes help you quickly lay out your designs before you begin pushing pixels around in Sketch. Balsamiq is a great tool for quickly drafting wireframes.
Design
Armed with wireframes and user flows, you can now start mocking up your actual design in Sketch (or another design program of your choice).
Prototyping
Prototypes allow you to test the functionality of your design against actual users. They can be as simple or as complicated as necessary.
User Testing
In this phase, you’ll present your finalized designs and/or prototypes to actual users and analyze the results. Where are they getting stuck? What features are they missing? This is your chance to see where your current design can be improved.
Review
Now, it’s time to take a step back and analyze everything you’ve learned. By this point, you should have some concrete data as to what was and wasn’t effective in your app.
Approval
This is the final phase, which means it’s time to make the ultimate decision about what stays and what goes. If something works, it makes its way into the development phase and, ultimately, into the product. If something doesn’t work, you start the process over again and attempt to improve it based on your findings.
