How do you plan a successful UX project? You need to include activities to answer each of the following questions: 1. What are the business requirements? 2. What are the user requirements? 3. What is the best design solution that meets both the business and user requirements?

1. UX MethodsBy Maria Alejandra Marulanda

2. Planning UX
Projects
The important thing when planning a user
experience project is to put the user front and
center of your activities.

3. So, how do you plan a successful UX project?
You need to include activities to answer each of
the following questions:
1. What are the business requirements?
2. What are the user requirements?
3. What is the best design solution that meets
both the business and user requirements?

4. What are
the business
requirements?
What would make your client feel that the
project is a success?
Make sure you understand the reasoning
behind the project’s existence by considering
one or more of the following methods.
01

5. Project Brief
Is there a formal project brief?
If so, read it and ensure you
understand it by asking questions
if necessary.
A good brief will clarify the
reasons for the project and
outline expected outcomes.
Project brief template
A useful brief will generally contain
information on these subjects:
1. Description of the project
2. Business goals, objectives, and
expected outcomes.
3. Target audience
4. Brand guidelines
5. Key stakeholders
6. Expected timings
7. Technological constraints
8. Related activities

6. Kick-Off Meetings
Schedule a kick-off meeting to
get the project started. This is
your chance to make sure you’ve
fully understood the brief.
Team canvas template
A kick-off meeting is the perfect
time to discuss a project plan with
main people involved (Product
owner, Stakeholders)
1. Which activities will you be doing,
when?
2. Can everyone make the required
dates for delivery and feedback?

7. Requirements
Workshops
The purpose is:
•Make the project team meet the
stakeholders of the project.
•Gather a comprehensive "wish list"
from stakeholders of the project.
•Prioritize the collected requirements
based on stakeholders attending the
workshop.
Before the Workshop prepare an agenda:
1. On-Boarding
– Welcome and introduction round (ice
breaker)
– Vision, goals
– «Rules & behaviour» to be applied
during the workshop
2. Key workshop topics
– Listing of your main workshop topics
3. Off-Boarding
– Recap of the workshop, goals and
achievements
– Definition of next steps and tasks
– Reflection & feedback round and
positive ending

9. Use ice breakers & energisers
Ice breakers and energisers involve people and
keep them in a good mood. This is especially
beneficial if you are dealing with topics, not
everyone is familiar with or if people need to get
to know one another. There are countless ways to
apply ice-breakers and energisers.
Here: http://toolbox.hyperisland.com/

10. The 5 Whys

11. What are
the user
requirements?
For great user experiences, understand your
user’s needs before you design for them.
Use a selection of the following techniques to
understand user requirements. Try to ensure
you use at least one technique that involves
real users.
02

12. Competitor
Benchmarking
Competitor benchmarking allows
you to understand the features
that are present in competitor
products. This is often a good
way of understanding users’
expectations and needs.
Benchmark example
1. Select 3 or more direct competitors.
2. Identify out of sector or indirect
competitors to gain ideas from
beyond sector.
3. Create a table or document
comparing competitors based on
criteria you select relevant to your
business or assignment.
Tools for comparing your visitor
numbers against competitors:
https://trends.google.com/trends/
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/

13. Experience Maps
Experience Map is an important
design tool to understand your
product/service interactions from
users’ point of view.
Experience Map method
User journey
Besides Experience Maps, different
names are used to refer to similar
representations, some of them are:
Customer Journey, User Journey
and Blueprint or Service Ecology.

15. Personas
A persona is a short, vivid
description of a fictional
character that represents a group
of the product’s users.
It typically includes details such as:
·Age
·Sex
·Occupation
·Hobbies
·Likes/dislikes
·Expertise
·Must Does / Must Never ·Referents
& Influences ·Devices & Platforms
·Used product/service ·Key Quotes
·Experience Goals
·Brand-Relationship

17. What is the
best design
solution?
What is the best design solution that meets
both the business and user requirements?
To be sure about this, you need to evaluate.
Both to know if it works correctly or not, if it
meets expectations or not, or simply to know
how a certain tool works.
03

18. Inquiry techniques: "Try, find out, search"
They are research techniques that allow
collecting information about user preferences,
habits, behaviors, tastes and needs, for this
reason it is recommended to be used in the stage
of product design.

19. Inquiry techniques
The types of inquiry
evaluation are:
The Usability Methods Toolbox
•Contextual Inquiry
•Ethnographic Study / Field
•Observation
•Interviews and Focus Groups
•Surveys
•Questionnaires
•Journaled Sessions
•Self-reporting Logs
•Screen Snapshots

20. Inspection techniques:
Usability inspection is the generic name for a set of
methods that are all based on having evaluators
inspect a user interface. Typically, usability
inspection is aimed at finding usability problems in
the design, though some methods also address
issues like the severity of the usability problems
and the overall usability of an entire system.

21. Inspection techniques
Many inspection methods lend
themselves to the inspection of user
interface specifications that have
not necessarily been implemented
yet, meaning that inspection can be
performed early in the usability
engineering lifecycle.
Summary of Usability Inspection Methods
•Heuristic evaluation
•Cognitive Walkthroughs
•Formal Usability Inspections
•Pluralistic Walkthroughs
•Feature Inspection
•Consistency Inspection
•Standards Inspection here
•Guideline checklists

22. Testing
Usability testing refers to evaluating a product or
service by testing it with representative users.
Typically, during a test, participants will try to
complete typical tasks while observers watch,
listen and takes notes.

23. Testing
“What people say, what
people do, and what they say
they do are entirely different
things.”
- Margaret Meade
Usability Testing Basics
•Thinking Aloud protocol
•Co-discovery method
•Question asking protocol
•Performance measurement

24. Related Techniques
•Prototyping
-Low-fidelity
-High-fidelity
-Horizontal
-Vertical
•Affinity Diagrams
•Archetype Research
•Card-Sorting…
More information here