Lessons

Lesson Info

UX Tools & Checklist

collaboration is really important. Um, you are not alone in this process. Great. So even though you're designed in this who also remember that users are a part of the process, that's why you're reading user testing. We invite the users to collaborate with us, too. Built this product together? Um, I think user experience is UX design is still, um, booming as industry there. There are obviously a lot more people who don't realize the value of talking to users. So it's important that you are the advocate and you are the evangelist to reach out and talk to your users even if you're working in like a big company. Um, also, collaboration doesn't only between doesn't only happen between you and the user. If you're working with engineers, go have a conversation with them. Um, go figure out the tech, um, constraints rate on the last day you should be doing is not talking to anyone and keeping your heads down and just building website or designing website because in that case you're pretty much ...

you pretty much Tom goes into a silo with yourself and your and I think that's just that's a bad way to um to design for user because you're not talking to them. Oh, okay. So what type of tools are out there? Um, To talk to your user, you can do survey. So, um, surveymonkey is a good one. Great. There's also a lot of different survey tools that you can do. Um, surveys is just a quick way. Take, um, reach out to a lot of people. Um, you can also do more in depth, um, interview with your users. So survey is more of like, um, quantitative feedback. And I think you need a lot of users to get the right trend. Um, interview is in depth and is more qualitative, but you might fall into bias. So depending on what type of product you're building, all of these tools have pros and cons, and then these air. Just all this. All these tools are nice to have in your toolbox. And then when you when you were working, working on a specific product, then just pull those out of your toe toolbox and they use those. Um, here's also we're framing tools. So, um, you can use, um, Omni graph. It was a great one. Pictures. A great one. um, there's also balsamic, um, our frames. If not you, can also go back to Sharpie and pen or Sharpie and paper. That's a great one. There's just a lot of tools out there, and I think we would also cover some of them in our bonus materials list. And then after you have your user insights and your, um, visual artifacts, now is the time to build a prototype and testing. So, um, always do research Or always just constantly refresh yourself about the tools out there because you might never know, like, a a better tool my pop up and come in handy one time. And then I think it's it's good to kind of just keep an eye out on all it. All the Softwares are there, even if you don't use it regularly. Um, and then I think if you are a UX designer, looking for a job is also important for you to raise the question of what type of Softwares are you using to the company that you're interviewing it, um, so that you can either say, Oh yeah, I know that software already or no, actually, don't know that software, and then maybe um, learn that software first before you go into that company, because all the companies are different. Some people like to use different Softwares, and it just varies a lot. So another great resource for you is, um, a checklist. Um, there's this resource online called You X checklist That you can look up and then it pretty much tell us, you all the not all, but like a majority a handful of methodologies available for you to use that within a project. So some of the ones that stand out to me are user feedback is very important. Um, user flows. So user flows are what I was talking about on task close and then really, really breaking down the stories into specific feature and this specific reason why we need those features, um, bring storing and sketching. It's very important as part of the project. Um prototyping. Very important. Eso these? Yeah, these air some that just stands out to me personally. So obviously everyone is different. So I encourage you to look at all the different methodologies involved. And you can also go on this website where if you don't know what a certain methodology mean there is a read more so it will link you to an article or another website that will talk to that will tell you more about that certain methodology. So moving on, um, with one is information, architecture, Um, sixes you elements. Even though, um, even though you x is different from you, I I think it's also good to keep in mind and just kind of practice your visual attention to detail. And then I think that will also help in really differentiating and setting up the hierarchy off your of the Web site or the product you're building. Um, funding color. It's just something good to kind of start thinking about when you're building up. Building out your wife frames transitions is also important, especially when you're working on mobile screen. So does this thing slide in and slide out? This is saying expand collapsed. Um, these are all the questions that a developer might ask you if when they're building the product now, So it's very important for you to keep in mind how the pages work. Um, if you don't have an idea, I mean, talk to someone to work it out together. Don't just say, oh I don't know. It just goes anywhere. If that's the case and someone will actually just build it out going to anywhere KP I set up. So, um, key performance indicator thes air the metric side you should be tracking when you launch a product. So if you want to learn more, um, search KP I or you can also search you like ux k p I. Then it will give you a specific list of what are some of the metrics that we can track him specifically towards user experience design. So stuff like fundo conversion. Um, looking at your shopping, you know? So let's say your shopping Flo has five different steps, right? So, looking at the funnel, you can also see clearly which that people are falling off. Then you can go in and look at. Maybe step three is really bad. So you can look at what is wrong with step three and do some to use on tweaks and launch it and see how it performs again. And then if it of it, if the metrics improved and you're like, great, awesome. So now maybe this time Step two is not performing well. So you can go in and look at it. Or maybe you can switch step three and step for You can reverse the order alone and see how that performs. And last one that at least testing. That's very important. Okay, cool. All right. Ah, we're really at the end of this segment. Any questions? If you could maybe talk through somebody who's just starting to enter the field, how what the best approach is for putting together a portfolio and maybe some interviewing tips when interviewing for your first job? Great question. So this is something that I tell my students. Um, so I have taught at our center for a little bit over a year, and a lot of my students are under graduating students who are just who are graduating soon and who are going to their first interview. And what I recommend to them is to show something, Really? Because a lot of times student portfolio, at least from what I see is there not really realistic. So there a lot of these projects are something that cannot be realized. Toe. So there. Oh, say, Oh, yeah. This thing is going to have this this type of sensor that type of sensor and that is going to talk to this and that and then do this business strategy integrating with this ex big company, right? And I'm like, you know, that is not realistic. I don't know what you're talking about, and I see a lot of that coming out of student portfolio, and I just like to you, it's good is okay to have that type of, um, imagine nation included in your portfolio, but it's not realistic enough, so I always tell them to, um, find an app like redesign it, redesign it and go through all these methodologies. So do some user research. Um, actually go out and maybe talk to some potential users and get, um, user interview or get interviewing user into your to tool belt. And the way you can show, that is, you can have a transcript of the interview set up in your process, and then you can also just present that right, and then you can You can show it to your future employer and say, Yeah, actually, I did some user in TV on this project, and there and then they might say all, really, You did interview That's pretty impressive because some of the working professionals don't even go out and talk to the end users. So that's one the other one I always like. People didn't include. Are there sketches? I think the message area. Those are the better because it just shows your thought processes, shows you how you arrived at an end. Result. A lot of times, the portfolios are super polished, and it makes sense from a graphic designer's standpoint, because you're you're always like showing the end result. That's just super polished, um, website polished. But instead of showing the U X, I think it's showing more of the interface design, and I always like, I always encourage people to just show their process photos. So the four images I've shown before or two of them are in class photos that I've taken with my undergrad students and it's just is really messy. But it actually shows to the future employer that they are actually doing user testing, so they are actually talking to their classmate providing feedback. Um, if you have paper prototype, take a picture of the paper prototype or if you actually built a prototype in Envision or Pop or any other sort of clickable prototyping application. Maybe you can do a make a, um, Nigam walk through of a from like, using Let's see, using screen recording. Right. So you can have the screen recording software up, and then you can click record and then just walk through the clickable prototype and include that as a part of your portfolio. Also, people can say, Oh, wow, you actually build a clickable prototype. Um, and what else? I think showing wire frames is important. Um, I think it just shows your ability to digitize something. So after you have a clickable prototype walk through, um, what I have them do is, if you have, you've done user testing before on this particular product. Yeah, actually, show us what are the previous what? What does the previous results that you did or what is the previous designed that you did? And then after the user testing, what are the feedback that you got and what did you come up with after the feedback? So it actually really demonstrate your process and incorporating the user feedback. So I think these are very realistic exercise that you can use even in your own personal project. And if you're just starting out, um, go to hack a thon, Hack assigns a great way to kind of generate quick ideas. Um, obviously again, it is time boxed. You only have 24 hours to build something with a team of strangers or maybe a team of friends. Um is a great way to kind of generate some sketching, some some sketches out that you can take a photo, including your portfolio. Um, is also a great way to just practice your sketching scale of practice. How how do you go from an idea and finalize it into a product with a short amount of time? Yeah, Any other app? So you guys want to share? I just started using this. How called strata. It's, ah, running and, um, cycling. Uh, app that you used to track your your exercise basically how far you've gone, how many calories you burned, etcetera. And I think they dio a really great job with the the whole experience. In terms of the interface, it's very clean. It's very easy to read, easy to navigate and the way that the, um the data is, uh is shown and and Visualize is really easy to digest. So the whole experience I was using another app that I don't think was designed as well. And so I'm transitioning over to strategy just really have that experience. But that's one that I'm using right now, right? I think whenever I come across a good AB, I would try to just remember that interaction. So if I'm working on another project, run like Oh, yeah, I remember that in direction. Maybe I'll just use it here to see if that fits even if there ever, even if they come from two different industry, it's OK if the if the interaction works thing works. Yeah, none of whenever I come across a bad a nap with a bad experience. Um, I think this is also a really good exercise for ah ux. Designers who are starting out is you can just think from the in the back of your mind. How can I make this better? Right? How can I change this? If there's an opportunity for me to actually work on this ab, how would I How would I make it better? Joy, any final thoughts that you'd like to leave our audience with before we wrap for this particular course? Yeah, I think, obviously, um, what we've been doing today, at least for this course, is kind of short and sweet. And then it just gives you just of what UX design. And it's about. So I do encourage people to kind of just go out to the community. Um, keep on learning. There's a lot of amazing resource is out there. There's a lot of other UX courses out there that would further and further and hens your skills as a UX designer. So definitely go to those get out there. That's great advice. Thank you. Really appreciate that joy joy has been It's been a joy having you here with us, that creative life, your first course of this for the first life course of this. But I have the first of very many as many more as well. So thank you very much for putting this joy. Look