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4 CRITICAL MISTAKES IN UX DESIGN PROJECTS
HOW STAKEHOLDERS SHOULD WORK WITH UX TEAMS
AND NOT SCREW UP THE DIGITAL DESIGN PROCESS
It's your ship now, you’re the head honcho, the main point of contact for the UX Team that will design the digital experience for your audiences.
First of all, understand the value of the User Experience design – it’s the bedrock key to the success of any digital design project. Be it human nature, or the nature of the beast, UX comes with common pitfalls that, if avoided, change good projects into great projects.
The following are four of the most critical mistakes stakeholders make when dealing with User Experience – and the pathways they should take to ensure the project delivers instead of fails.
So, you find yourself the lead stakeholder in a digital design project. You’re the business owner, CEO, Creative Director, product developer, or marketing guru.
A UX Success Guide Provided by Tucker Fiscus
2 Tucker Fiscus
Supply a UX Research Plan. Gather data, metrics, insights, and success criteria, which stakeholders can use to create an informed opinion.
Do This:
Designers and developers should work together to find a faster, simpler or more powerful way to achieve the project goal.
Chuck Norris knows opinions.
IN THIS GUIDE: 1. Don’t be a user study of one 2. Don’t put design before development 3. A million monkeys can be wrong 4. Brainstorming is the leading cause of death
1. Don’t Be a User Study of One. A not so secret but rarely spoken truth is that one of the more satisfying aspects of being a stakeholder is seeing your opinion come to life as a product, application, strategy, or alteration, etc.
However, opinions can be very dangerous … and expensive.
Shoot-from-the-hip opinions by lead stakeholders cause development teams, marketing plans and design jobs to spiral out of control, muddling the quality of a product or – at the very least – generating hours of arguments.
When those opinions are dead wrong, the product fails with the priority buying audiences.
To borrow a quote from Chuck Norris in 1985’s Code of Silence, “If I wanted your opinion, I’d beat it out of you.” Turning this quip on its head a bit, this is the approach a stakeholder needs from their UX team.
Determine if user testing is appropriate for the project and follow the UX research plan to gain solid feedback from first adopters.
Stakeholders should use the UX Research plan as the roadmap to conceiving the Big Idea.
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“It turns out there really is no such thing as snozzberries and it’s going to double the development budget to create them.”
Do This: Skilled developers are often a treasure trove of ideas. Working in conjunction, designers and developers can almost always find a faster, simpler or more powerful way to achieve the project goal, potentially saving thousands of dollars in development.
And every so often, a developer pulls out a bit of functionality that revolutionizes the project, which can lead to untold profits!
2. Don’t Put Design Before Development Every stakeholder at one time or another has experienced the euphoria of sitting with the design team in a room abuzz with ideas: the whiteboard beaming with sketches, arrows and boxes, the air thick with the smell of dry-erase markers.
Suddenly someone, seemingly off in the distance says, “Do we know if the developers can even build this?”
But it’s too late. Willy Wonka has already opened the door to CandyLand. The children are already running through edible grass and smashing candy mushrooms; Augustus is on the precipice of the chocolate river….
When the idea is presented to the developers (or to strain the metaphor even further, the oompa loompas), it turns out that there really is no such thing as snozzberries and it’s going to double the development budget to create them.
Painful as it might be, this should happen just once to a stakeholder. Lesson learned. Design and development need to work in parallel. Move on. This fixes one issue but ignores potentially a more expensive issue: Once bitten by overzealous designing, there is a tendency to structure development questions to get a “Yes” answer.
For example, everybody knows bananas exist. So the question to the developers becomes, “Can you make banana flavored wallpaper?” Their answer, of course, is “Yes!”
However, if the question is reframed to: “What flavor of wallpaper can you make?” the answer might be “snozzberry!”
By asking developers unstructured questions, they are being used in conjunction with design, not just parallel.
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Resist the notion of “intelligence” in numbers when it comes to choosing
a user experience direction.
3. A Million Monkeys Can Be Wrong! There will come a time during the life of a project when it is unclear which direction to go from a user experience perspective.
Possibly the data and metrics gathered are skewing against expected results. Possibly two stakeholders are butting heads. Perhaps there’s just an intangible doubt. This can lead to an urge to poll the proverbial audience – expose your project to as many people as possible to gain a consensus of direction.
Please, resist the notion of “intelligence” in numbers. To quote Agent K from Men in Black, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”
Consider this: Looking up is contagious. If one person on a busy street looks up, everyone follows. If 30 people in a testing lab are looking at a product, invariably one leads the commentary and the rest fall in line.
If two people chime in with conflicting opinions, then the rest of the room is suddenly in an A/B test choosing to side with Dick or Jane.
Do This: Unqualified users forming opinions that may or may not be their own are of … zero value. The UX Research Plan needs to include whether or not user testing is appropriate for the project and, if so, must identify who will be the first adopters.
First adopters are users and buyers who have some stake in the product being created and therefore can add value to the UX research.
Follow the research plan to get deliberate and focused feedback from first adopters and the project will find direction and maybe a little sunshine.
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4. Brainstorming Is the Leading Cause of Death in Stakeholder Ideas At the inception of any digital design project there is a need. Possibly a stakeholder sees an opportunity in the market, or a VP identifies a problem the Creative Director should fix.
In any case, addressing that need becomes the goal. The stakeholder has to come up with an idea to address the goal.
In 1948, Alex F. Osborn published “Your Creative Power,” introducing brainstorming to the world. By 1958, Osborn himself was conducting studies that were contradicting his ideas about the productivity of brainstorming.
However, these studies did little to stem the tide of “ideation without criticism” that was washing over the corporate world.
Of course, there is a certain rush that comes with shooting from the hip. There’s excitement that comes from a jam session with the design team or free-styling ideas with the water cooler gang. It’s certainly more of a rush to adlib instead of following a structured UX Research Plan.
However, going off plan will never generate the rush of seeing a digital design project become a success story. So, to belabor the movie references one last time – stick to the script!
Do This: To avoid the inefficiency and general mediocrity of brainstorming, stakeholders should refer to the UX Research Plan. The plan is a roadmap to conceiving an idea. The plan defines how to obtain the data, metrics, interviews, success criteria to allow the stakeholder to find a solution and execute.
Which really is the best idea!
John Fiscus is Managing Partner for User Experience at Tucker Fiscus. John is a diverse problem solver with a unique blend of expertise – intuitive experience design, user experience engagement methodologies, and complex technical development. John leads a team that embraces the impossible and solves the extreme by consistently innovating.
Let us solve your complex design challenges
Tucker Fiscus provides world-class expertise in digital brand strategy, user experience and visual design services to showcase companies’ brands, products and services – and inspire conversion. Tucker Fiscus is a team of imaginative digital design and communication experts who use proven methodologies to engineer user-optimized websites, mobile applications and specialty platform experiences that inspire. Our difference as a business partner is based on how we solve your complex challenges: • Business analysis and insight • Exceptional user interface design • Insightful visual design solutions • Flawless development work
Visit us at: Tuckerfiscus.com
58 N. 2nd Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 [email protected] 610-633-0793
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