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Enhance Your UX Chops

I've learned about my users. I learned about, um, figuring out the stories for a product, breaking down the stories into multiple tiny little tasks, figuring out the features based on the actions that the users are taking. And we also covered drawing it out. So why are framing a little bit of the basic wire framing? So where do I go from here? So in this segment, we're just gonna cover some ways to and hence your skills as a you professional UX designer. Um, I think sketching is very important. I think we all did a little bit of sketching exercise in the previous segment, and I just want to reinforce that Softwares will be ever changing. There will always be like a newer software that comes out. Um, but the important thing is, never limit your ability to convey your idea. Don't let like, if you're really self conscious about your sketching ability like don't don't let it limit your idea. Don't limit. Don't let it and limit your ability to, um, your ability to show and tell, because I t...

hink you can only improve, right If you're If you think you're at the rock bottom, you are at the rock bottom. You can't go any lower than that. So you might as well go up. Um, that the skills of sketching You can do it anywhere, any time, using any type of media array like there's always always this, saying of people at coffee shop just sketching on a napkin. And then now it's like the greatest idea, right? It's like now it's just like the next Twitter, the next Facebook. Um, so do not limit yourself, even if you don't have the nicest, um, sketching paper or the nicest later President Comp. It's fine as long as you can tell your ideas who, your engineer or your developer team. It's totally cool. Um, there is the power of collaboration. So when you're sketching because it's so low tech, everyone can do it. If you are at a client's meeting and the client is trying to convey something to you or you're trying to convey something to them, and verbal communication is just not working, why not just sit down together and then do a little sketch session right? Just draw something out and then show it to them. Then they can either say yes. That's exactly what I wanted or no, that's not really what I wanted. But let me show you what I really want it right. And then you can also invite them to do some sketching too. Um, I think a big part of be a UX designer is also being a facilitator to kind of just encourage people. Because at the end of the day, what you want is to get out, get their ideas out of their mind, right, is to externalize their thoughts and their needs, whether it's the user's needs or whether it or if it's a home the clients need in developing this product. Because if they don't tell you what they want and you don't really have a starting point like Okay, well, I can only guess so much rage. Just help me out here. Um, it's OK. Just suck it sketching. That's like no hard feelings. Um, so just practice, practice, practice. You can just sketch anywhere, right? And then some good ways to practice. Catching is also if you see if you come across a website or if he comes across an application and then and you find us some of the feature, um frustrates you. So you're thinking in your mind. Oh, I wish I could have done this better. Well, yeah. Could go ahead and sketch out how you want this product to actually function or to actually transition. Great. I think there's there's a lot of merit and just, like, do a lot of these quick exercises, especially when you're starting out. So you boat, you build your sketching skills over time. So by the time you actually have a meeting, sit down with the client that you can actually quickly sketch something out and show it to them and they will be absolutely blown away by your sketching skills. Um, there is also a concept that I want to talk about is called design studio Methodology, and that's all of it. We kind of did that a little bit when we were doing our, um, layout sketches. So basically what it is is is a collaboration tool for you for a team for a product team, too, to get on the same page in terms of an idea. So it is definitely time boxed. So by that, I mean is usually really short and quick, so it maybe three minutes five minutes or or just eight minutes. Right. We don't go over 15. Probably 15. Probably a little bit too long. So in this 10 minutes, everyone would sit down and focus on problem solving one single feature. So today we're all here designing, um, the feature page for three chocolate bars. Right? So now everyone has a clear goal. And in the eight minutes, if let's say we are doing it today in the studio with, um the seven of us in eight minutes, we have seven different composition done. And now it's time to do show and tell to everyone. So we're all sharing. Our thoughts were going to go around and then we're gonna talk about why we do things with a certain way, and then we're gonna give quick feedback and synthesize our idea. So I might say, OK, I really like that map idea and I really like that, but pulling in instagram instagram feed idea right that I'm gonna combine that and we're going to do a second round and then by this time I think everyone's composition will be closer because we all share idea. We all notice what is good and what is bad. And then after two or three rounds done, we all can walk away from this meeting with, like, a finalized version where everyone agreed upon. And I think that's very valuable. That collaboration is truly amazing when you're designing a product like this. Um, just some some more good things about design studio. It brings together a group. Um, so you can in this design studio session, we can have designer sitting in here. We can have the management level people sitting in here. We can have developer sitting here so anyone can join and sketch together. Um, let's see, design studio is iterative so it just goes running around and it will just get better over time. Um, there is a lot of critiques going on. So there is. You're trying to explain yourself. You are also getting feedback, and then all of us might be voting on Oh, yeah. Actually, that feature is better than this one, or the execution of that sort of feature is better than this one. So the next round, everyone won't be focusing on using that feature, right? So at the end of the day, only surviving ideas are synthesize. So we all walk away with the same thing and kind of just kind of redeeming my Salva Loeb about my sketching the ability. Um, as you can see, it's messy. You can do it on anything, right? And then it's also it's okay to be messy. I like. I like it when he's the night. Sessions are super messy. There's like paper flying around because that means you're working like don't get too Don't get don't be too clean about it because at the end of the day, if you're to clean about it, then you are spending a lot of time or you're actually wasting a lot of times saying clean. So just like, make a mess, it's OK. And then by the end of day, when you have a great idea that you can do look clean up later, Um, another thing is about user testing. So after we have all these, um, after we have all these war frames after we created personas, um, it's time to validate are our assumptions, right? Like all these are still are us assuming what are users want? We don't really have a we don't We haven't gotten any feedback yet, So you can actually, if you are still in the sketching mode, you can actually just cut out your cut out your website sketch, right and then create a paper prototype. So what that means is you can actually cut out all the screens but itself. And then you can grab someone, grab someone over, and then just have them sit down, present them with the first screen and say, OK, this is the home page that I'm building. Where would you click on and what do you click on next? And as a soon as they click on something, you swap that paper out and then you put in the second screen and then that kind of just get them, um, testing a website us if they're viewing the real thing. But it's just all made of paper is it can be super low tech, right? And then if they click on something that has a pop up that maybe you do a little tiny piece of the pop up window and then you just put it on top of the of the existing paper sketch and say Okay, now you actually encounter a pop of what do you do next, and then they're like, Oh, I want to close it so they close it. So you just pull that piece of Pero away, Um, this is a great way to add extra screens or find out if you are missing any screens. So, for example, in mobile app development or in mobile app design, a lot of times I would be missing screens, so I actually have, um, a set up blank paper ready to Theo. So whenever someone click on something that I had I haven't designed yet, I would do a really quick sketch and just, like, slide it into the flow. So by the end of the day, I will have a complete set of screens and need to be digitized, and it doesn't take that much effort. You don't really need to learn any Softwares to do this. So the next thing is clickable prototypes. So this is something that, um, a software such has, um, envision or pop will help. You do so. Pop is a, um, mobile. Abda helps you build clickable prototype. So you just take picture of all the all the sketches. Are you done? And you can link the using hot spot. Um, you can also use Envision where you upload all your static images and then you just link them together and then you can populated. You can view your clickable prototype on your actual phone so it and then click through it as it isn't the real thing. Um, there's also, um, a B testing. So if you if you designed two sets of home page layout, for example, and you don't really know which one to use or which one to choose from, you can do some quick A B testing, which is you just walk up to people and say, Hey, which late? Which one do you like the most? Do you like version A version? Be great And then people say, OK, I like a or like Be, um, there's other ways to, um, optimize it. So, for example, um, optimize Lee is a great way to a B test your header right? Or you a campaign message. So whenever someone goes to the website, um is going to show either version A or Version B than the user, it will track the user's actions, according to the message being showed right or you can also, you know, you can also do a B testing on images as well. Um, there's also, um, usability hub dot com, which also lets you do these really quick a B testing. So there are a lot of great resource is out there, and then I just really encourage everyone to, um, just look it up, like type it into the search engine and just say a B test resource. And I'm sure there's a lot of great tools out there. Maybe they might come up with the without, like, a really cool one tomorrow. Who knows? Um, the next one is eye tracking. I mentioned this in previous segment. So again, I tracking is pretty much just is a software that allows the computer to track where the users eyeballs are falling or where, where they're looking on your website. So the the end of the day you will get a heat map of where the users are looking at till the red sections or other places that their eyes fall falls upon the most, and then the blue ones are the places that they really go. So a lot a lot of time zone the ATS ad section is usually like the blue area, for obvious reasons, because they don't look at it. If it's tube like blatantly obvious, that isn't ad. They won't look at it. Um, there is also, um, usability audit or what we call, um, you're Ristic evaluation. So what it is, it is pretty much a checklist that you go through when you are measuring usability. I on, um, usability efficiency and the effectiveness based on pre established, uh, list. So this is pretty. This is very formal and scientific. So I encourage people to come up with their own list of of questions to Chuck, check off and make sure your site is user friendly. Here is also a really funny one. If you guys look up drunk user testing, it's pretty much someone built this plug in and what it does, it is actually blurs your website so you can install that extension to your website and blurt a website and starts like shifting around. So is just give me, um but I think it's really funny, and what it does is it just moves around, and then you can test whether or not a potentially drunk person can navigate through your website.