Original article appearing on Medium

DO…

1. User research

To create an effective UX design, you must conduct research to determine what the target audience requires, and desires, and what causes pain or friction. This can be done through user research like interviews, surveys, usability testing, and other methods.

2. Personas and user stories

Creating personas and user stories can help you figure out who your target audience is and what their goals are, which can help guide the design process

3. Wireframing and prototyping

With wireframes and prototypes, the design can be shown visually and its functionality can be tested before it is built

4. Iterative design

Many successful companies use an iterative design process, which lets the design be tested and changed based on user feedback

5. Testing

Testing with users to make sure the design works, get feedback and make improvements

6. Accessibility

One important part of user experience design is making sure that people with disabilities, older people, and other groups that are often left out can use the product.

7. Continual improvement

Keeping an eye on, analyzing, and testing the design so that it can be made better over time.

8. Create a design system

A Design system allows for different teams and individuals to leverage a single source of truth (more than a static style guide) so that the design of your product is consistent across the different areas. Front-end development can work more efficiently and save considerable time as they can quickly reference it for what components and patterns should look and act like with real code snippets.

DON’T…

1. Perform user research by committee (squeaky wheel gets the grease or the HIPPO will overrule all) or have it facilitated by someone with little experience in understanding the difference between what users say and how they behave.

2. Use fake personas use real personas that are your user base and leverage archetypes vs. individual personas.

3. Make high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes right away, many stakeholders reviewing them will get hung up on small details that aren’t necessary.

4. Just try to make the perfect design or continuously try to improve as your product should be evolving along with technology, your company, and your users.

5. Just test one time before launching. – Always test before, during, and afterward.

6. Forget about it since it’s just too much additional work for the design and dev teams. Accessibility will help you fundamentally create more usable products. If you are consumer-facing there are many examples of companies getting sued for not having accessible products.

7. Think that the product is good enough. I’ve actually heard a product manager tell us there’s no need to change the design because that will just be more work for our devs and it’s good enough for users

8. Keep a large file of designs in non-shareable tools, like Powerpoint where changes/updates are not leveraging a collaborative tool to save time and create a consistent design

 

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