The inflexible waterfall approach (plan, design, development, launch) used to prevent us from swiftly shipping our products, which is critical for learning if our design solutions work in the real world: “Build, Measure, Learn” is still one of the most crucial approaches for creating meaningful, user-centred products. More flexibility and faster product development can be achieved by creating several iterations as part of a modern, dynamic, and agile process.
So, how can a person’s design process adapt to a User First design strategy? And how can the design process facilitate quick design iterations in order to properly monitor and learn about the product’s success?
Putting the user first in design
Beyond the present web design strategies of “Mobile First” and “Content First,” the User First design strategy is the next phase. It turns the attention away from gadgets and content and toward the requirements of the user. You don’t reduce complexity based on screen sizes and content, for example; you reduce complexity based on the needs of the user. As a result, the product is created around the user and his demands in real-time, resulting in a multi-device experience. The concept of designing products with your users in mind has a number of implications for the design process.
Begin with rough sketches.
Iterations are being shipped in less time than ever before. To figure out if you’re on the correct course, you need to evaluate the product early on. Sketches are a great place to start because of this. Sketching is about expressing and developing ideas so that you can describe what you’re thinking.
To begin, make quick sketches on paper, in the browser, or in Photoshop. Wireframes, on the other hand, are not. They only deal with content hierarchy. You’ll lose your sense of context and significance. You can’t communicate with them either. Wireframes make it tough to obtain a shared understanding of the end result, therefore you can’t interact with your teams and users on a similar level.
Make judgments based on user feedback.
As previously said, your initial designs should be focused on the needs of the user. These requirements could be derived via online analytics, surveys, or user tests, for example. It’s critical to comprehend your user’s issues and provide answers that make sense. Your work process should be influenced by user data, not determined by it. User data should be handled with caution, not mindlessly followed! It’s one thing to have the facts; it’s another to comprehend it. Simply because red buttons have a higher click rate in A/B tests, it is not a smart idea to colour all of your buttons red.
Construction of prototypes
After the sketching step, it’s time to turn your tried-and-true concepts into a working prototype. Everyone sees the same thing and is thinking about the same thing. Prototypes are created in the appropriate media, are interactive, changeable quickly, and ready for user testing. They can also be turned into a shippable product. After the sketching step, it’s time to turn your tried-and-true concepts into a working prototype. Everyone sees the same thing and is thinking about the same thing. Prototypes are created in the appropriate media, are interactive, changeable quickly, and ready for user testing. They can also be turned into a shippable product.
Collaboration and sharing
One of the most significant challenges in the design process is sharing. On the other hand, it is one of the most important opportunities to improve your work. You must share the prototype with your engineers, product managers, stakeholders, designers, copywriters, and test users while working on it. When produced as an HTML webpage that is accessible to all of them, one prototype can serve them all. Consider copywriters who can use the browser’s web inspector to test multiple wordings, languages, and texts right in the prototype.
It’s simple, quick, and effective
It’s a falsehood to say that pixel perfection exists.
Pixel-perfection is impossible to achieve. On different devices, browsers, and displays, layouts appear differently. Pixel-perfect is a fabrication. It’s hard to anticipate all conceivable scenarios and take into account all types of information in your product. It’s an out-of-date notion that might be replaced with Brad Frost’s Atomic Design Proposal. We must remember that we are not creating print products for final distribution.
We don’t publish books. This is why making massive Photoshop compositions of what a website could look like in pixel-perfect details and printing them to display them is a waste of time.
Working with computer code
It’s no surprise that major corporations such as Google, Facebook, and Pinterest advertise job openings for designers with coding experience. Designers must be aware of the medium in which they are working. One of the most critical abilities for developing amazing goods, aside from design talents, is realising, not just modelling, your own designs. You must create something that can be sent. Consider how quickly you can iterate and change code in a matter of seconds: In a matter of seconds, you may alter the colour of a link, the font size, and the mouse-hover effect.
With a few clicks, you may add, duplicate, and delete material.
It’s also simple to turn an HTML prototype into a style guide.
