6 UX methodologies you should always run on your Digital Projects.

There are so many UX methods and techniques you can run on your projects to foster user-centricity. Indeed UX is a large field that allows many possibilities, but where we can also get easily lost. What can you do to make sure you build your product or service in your end user point of view? Besides that there are important factors to consider like the allocated time and resources you have, defining a clear UX path is not an easy thing when it comes to deciding which methods your are going to apply on your project. With this article we highlight 6 methods we think are a good first step to ensure end user satisfaction.

UX methodologies and techniques belong to a specific stage of the UX process. Today, we bring you 6 of them that you should always keep in mind and apply when working on your digital project. Either it is to make some improvement to an existing product or create and launch a new one.

Before thinking about the user experience of your project, it is important to focus on your business strategy.

• What are you going to develop and what for?
• What are your resources, time and budget to do so?

Make sure your whole team is well aligned on your objectives in order to deliver a product or service that fits your business needs! Once this brief is done, and the vision of your product is clear, you can start working on its development.

It is important to personify the needs and requirements of your target audience to better understand their using context. This method helps the project team to keep in mind user’s habits and to ideate on the best solution.
Building personas highlights needs and requirements of your target to better understand what they expect.

Persona’s represent the user types and is built by giving users a personality (including name, photo,hobbies…).

It describes their goals, values, fears and pain points. This allows you to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and think just like them.

This hierarchical diagram shows the structure of your website or app. It makes sure information organization is clear and matches the user journey. It allows you to think about the way your users will find the information they need. At this stage, there is not any plan nor design yet. It is only about the way you are going to structure your content.

Once you have decided what content you are going to put forward, it is time to think about how you are going to organize your elements (images, texts, CTA,…)

The wireframing method allows you to establish a basic structure of your pages. There is little copy and images, the focus is fully on functionalities and key messages.

It shows only how sections are articulated together.
Basically, it is the foundation of your project, without any design yet.

User Interface Design allows you to craft your wireframes. It ensures that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand and use to facilitate those actions.

UI brings together concepts from interaction design, visual design and information architecture.

There are some graphic rules to respect such as: 

• Readability
  Make sure color contrast, font size and space allow a good readability of your content. Color palette is usually made of a light and dark grey plus one or two colors. White space is not lost space in digital and it doesn’t cost more. It will make for a more readable and clearer interface. Same for margins. Space between edge and text is important to ease readability.
• Simplicity
  Don’t use too many colors, fonts or effects.
• Hierarchy
  Think about your main message and how to hierarchize your elements.
• Keep it short
  Line length doesn’t have to be bigger than 680px on desktop.
• Consistency
  It is important to stay consistent in your design and to reuse same principles, course or form.

Usability (iterative process) tests are sessions where users are invited and asked to complete tasks with a (prototype of a) product or service. Usability tests can be moderated or unmoderated, depending on the scope of the project. This can focus on a single process or be much more wide ranging. They can take place from the beginning to the end of the Design stage.

The goal is to identify problems that users may get while using your product or service. If problems are observed multiple times, changes of usability should be implemented.

This method allows you to ensure the best experience possible for users.

Usability test can be moderated or unmoderated.

• Moderated user test is a researcher meeting with a participant via screen sharing software. It allows the researcher to observe user’s interaction and get specific feedback.
• Unmoderated user test is usually must faster as it allows to collect feedback from hundreds of users simultaneously through an application providing instructions and recording users actions.

Besides the previously mentionned UX methodologies, there is an important team that has to be involved since the beginning…

Development part 

The development team plays an important role during the launch of a digital project. The sooner you involve them in your project the better. Indeed, from the discover phase, they can help you to find features and requirements. They can also support you in your tasks and functional analysis. 

The development team is there to give advice on feasibility and to solve technical issues you could encounter. At the end, this is the team that will make your project alive. 

Where to find other UX methodologies?

Those 6 methods come from our UX toolkit, gathering more than 50 UX methods and techniques, scripts and templates.
Since there is no magical formula, each project is worth involving additional methods. In this article, we developed the 6 most common ones, but there are plenty of others that deserve your interest.

If you need support to go further with UX, at World of Digits, we developed trainings and workshops to help you do so. Don’t hesitate to contact us for any further questions.

Are you ready to start implementing, following and conducting UX?