UXpin's Blog, page 70

UXPin Merge Changelog: Component Documentation URL Tag

Our Merge technology allows you to copy the ready JSX code of your UI code component. However, sometimes it’s hard to find the exact documentation for each component. See how you can do it quickly.

Our solution to the challenge

Design systems can have very complex, detailed, or hard-to-navigate documentation, so we wanted to reduce your struggles and frustrations of finding it. 

So, we added a very simple but effective feature for doing just that. We’ve added a new JSDocs tag to our component commentating syntax that creates a link in the Merge Preview Spec panel.

It could be used to link out to usage, prop info, Storybook, or for those without any documentation, it could link to UXPin layout examples. Adding this feature not only saves time but also helps to centralize and integrate all your current processes and toolsets into one place.

How to add the feature

It couldn’t be easier to implement too, just add a JSDocs comment before your component like the below example:

/*** @uxpindocurl https://mui.com/api/card-media/ */function CardMedia(props) {return ;}Design with code: learn more about Merge technology 

What’s different about a UXPin Merge prototype? You get to use interactive UI blocks that save you from redesigning the same things over and over again. As these blocks are coded components, developers can just copy the code straight from your design. Using such components not only increases the level of interactivity you wouldn’t be able to reach in an image-based tool but also speeds up the prototyping process.

Designers and engineers have two options for connecting code components with UXPin Merge:

Git repository—currently only supports React componentsStorybook—supports React, Vue, Angular, Ember, and many more

Read more about Merge.

Sync your Design System components with our design tool and enjoy all the perks! Request access now. 

The post UXPin Merge Changelog: Component Documentation URL Tag appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Join Our Free Webinar “Measuring DesignOps’ Impact”

Most designers are skilled craftsmen, not business people. Yet, they need to show business savviness, especially when talking with stakeholders, planning or scaling their work. Although learnable, such tasks waste a lot of time that could be used for designing. DesignOps can help with that.

Maximize Design Operations

DesignOps has a great potential to significantly decrease time to market, create a competitive edge, and smooth communication between developers and designers. It’s a growing field and there’s much to learn about it. For instance, we need effective tools to measure its impact.

We invited Patrizia Bertini from Babylon to talk to you about DesignOps and the ways it can bring efficiency to design and business. She’ll equip you with tools to quantify Design Operations.

Join us for the webinar.

The webinar is scheduled for November 30, 2021 at 10:00 AM PST / 07:00 PM CET.

About the Expert

Patrizia has 20+ years of experience in design management as well as usability, user research, accessibility, and web design. She held leadership roles for international research teams and pioneered a lot of web accessibility, design facilitation with LEGO Serious Play, and co-creation work. Patrizia developed her own approach to DesignOps, one that helps improve organizational efficiencies.

Book your spot and learn:

What DesignOps is and how it impacts an organization.What to improve in terms of DesignOps.Methods of measuring the impact of DesignOps on design teams and business.

Save your spot now.

The post Join Our Free Webinar “Measuring DesignOps’ Impact” appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

How PayPal Scaled Their Design Process with UXPin Merge

We’re always excited when we get feedback about how UXPin has improved our customer’s design experience. It’s even more special when that customer is one of the world’s largest digital payment platforms.

We had the joy of sitting down with Erica Rider, Senior Manager for UX – Developer tools and platform experience at PayPal, and Anthony Hand – Sr. UX Designer at Erica’s team.

In her own words, Erica explains the design challenge she had to solve at PayPal—bridging the gap between design, product, and development.

In most companies, the designer-developer ratio is one designer for every ten developers. At PayPal, there are five designers to over a thousand developers!

PayPal needed the tools and strategies to overcome this challenge. So, they turned to UXPin Merge and improved their DesignOps process. 

Here’s how Erica and one of PayPal’s design teams revolutionized their design and development process using UXPin Merge. 

Watch the video testimonial: 

ChallengesChallenge of scaling design:

I have a small design team of five designers, including myself. We’re responsible for somewhere between 60 and a hundred products and well over a thousand developers. 

As a small design team supporting such a large organization, we had to develop an innovative problem-solving approach. We were never going to get the budget to hire more designers, so we had to figure out how to scale design itself!

Challenge of consistency:

None of PayPal’s product teams had experienced UX people or UI developers. The result was a range of usability and design consistency issues—no two products looked the same!

So, I was assigned the challenging task of creating a cohesive and consistent user experience. With three designers and an infinite number of product teams, I knew that we couldn’t follow a traditional model to scale. And adding more designers wouldn’t solve the problem. 

We had to scale design to empower product teams to be successful.

Before The tools PayPal tried to use

To start, we knew that product teams were going to have to design products on their own. So, we looked at several different tools, starting with a traditional model, where we had design systems and standards.

Our initial idea was to adapt a traditional design approach while educating product teams about design. But, we quickly realized that with three designers trying to create documentation, providing support, and with the learning curve for design tools, the traditional model wasn’t going to work.

If product teams were going to design products successfully, we had to minimize the tools and skills they needed to learn.

The traditional way

In a traditional UX process, you have designers creating vector-based mockups, which they hand off to developers. Unfortunately, this process creates a gap between how components are supposed to work and what components are supposed to be there.

The result, lots of back and forth between designers and engineers to get design clarity and what the prototypes are supposed to do. Many times developers ask designers questions they hadn’t thought of because they were thinking purely about how the product is supposed to look and work.

Introducing UXPin Merge

For product teams to design products, we had to minimize this designer-developer gap while increasing collaboration. 

Several years before I joined PayPal, I had a theory that to scale design effectively we had to include developers and product managers in the design process. I just didn’t know how we were going to do that. I knew the what, but I didn’t know the how.

Discovering Merge and UXPin opened the door to understanding how I could bridge the gap between design and development—and formed the catalyst to PayPal’s improved design process.

A traditional DesignOps process is about scaling. The usual ratio is one designer for every ten developers. First by adding designers and then building the supporting infrastructure to accommodate a large design team. 

As an internal organization, we knew we would never get the resources to scale to the traditional one to ten designer-developer ratio. We had to find an innovative solution to solve our design challenges without adding designers.

So how does UXPin Merge work?

PayPal’s consumer-facing apps, services, Venmo, and other external services all use different technologies. We settled on Microsoft’s Fluent design system with UI controls for our internal tools development because they’re more enterprise-focused and better suited to internal user interfaces.

With UXPin Merge, we’re able to put our Microsoft Fluent Design System into a Github repo and import the components into UXPin’s design editor. Using this UXPin Merge setup, our product teams can design prototypes that leverage the exact components and UI controls our engineers use to develop these DevOps tools.

For example, a button on the canvas in UXPin’s editor renders exactly the same as it does in our developer tools, including hover/click effects, font styles, and other metrics. Designing with UXPin Merge brings significantly higher fidelity to our prototypes than we’ve ever had at PayPal.

With Merge

We knew we were going to save significant time designing with UXPin Merge during the initial rollout. 

Some of PayPal’s senior management asked us to do a time-saving comparison between using UXPin Merge and a traditional design model.

So, I had one of my designers pick a one-page design comparison test. We did a one-page vector-based design with another design tool we use at PayPal. And then the exact same prototype in UXPin using our Merge component library. How would these two tools compare against the clock?

The results: Using Merge our designer took around eight minutes while using the other design tool the same prototype took over an hour! It’s important to note that this was from an experienced designer familiar and competent with the tool we chose as a comparison.

We didn’t feel comfortable providing product teams with this vector-based design tool. They would have to maintain documentation and educate themselves about how to use the tool before they could even start designing! Even with that training (which would take a lot of time), they wouldn’t reach the competency of an experienced designer or design the same prototype in an hour.

With UXPin Merge, some of our product managers can build similar one-page prototypes in eight to ten minutes—the same time it takes our experienced designers in UXPin! 

Before, with our limited resources and designers, a one-page product would take two or three months just to design mockups. Now product teams can design and deliver a product within the same time frame. 

Impact of using UXPin Merge

One of the significant impacts of UXPin Merge is our ability to create higher fidelity prototypes. There’s a lot more confidence from everyone (including designers, C-suite, directors, and developers) about what the final product will look like, the user experience, and interactivity—giving us higher quality feedback from stakeholders. 

The C-suite people and the directors are able to give us stronger feedback about the ultimate direction because they experience the features and goals of these prototypes rather than just commenting about how, how these boxes don’t look like a text field, for example. 

Now that we’re using UXPin with Merge my design philosophy and productivity have gone way up! I’m confident that I can implement a prototype in 30 minutes or less. Whereas with the tools I was using previously, it would take me half a day.

Feedback:Our stakeholders are able to provide feedback pretty quickly using UXPin. We can send them a link to play with the prototype in their own time and UXPin allows them to provide comments directly on the prototypes. UXPin’s comments functionality is great because we can follow along and mark comments as resolved once we address them.

Quality of the product: With this new UXPin approach we’re seeing a more collaborative, integrative design process. Rather than separating design, prototyping, and development, UXPin allows us to create an integrated flow where we engage engineering and product teams throughout the process. As a result, the product’s final quality has improved dramatically.

User testing: It’s been so helpful for us to have these high-fidelity prototypes built with UXPin. We build high-fidelity prototypes much quicker, and we get immediate feedback after the session. If there’s something we can fix immediately, we make that change before the next participant and get feedback much faster than before.

UXPin gives you the tools to go from concept to high-fidelity prototyping right away! Explore UXPin Merge and discover how advanced prototyping and testing will change your design process.

PayPal’s redefined design process

PayPal’s DesignOps is an end-to-end process. 

Product teams must fully understand their usersDesign products based on the users’ needsEnable domain experts to complete designs based on their knowledge and testingValidate the design’s success

A common internal issue is that product teams often see UX design as a bottleneck. So, our strategy was to start with removing that bottleneck and enabling the product teams to do the design on their own.

We achieved this with UXPin Merge which enabled us to perform this “snap-together” type design. We provide product teams with components they can drag and drop to build user interfaces.

Product teams were able to create layouts with fixed margins and components so everything looked and worked the way it was supposed to. Designers didn’t have to police anything or step in to design products. 

Designers still help product teams when they’re not following standard design principles or when they’re stuck on challenging problems. But product teams are able to complete 90% of the work on their own, freeing designers to focus on bigger picture design problems.

Outcomes  Customer-focused

In my opinion, being customer-focused or design-driven doesn’t mean that designers are always leading. Everyone in the organization understands what it means to be design-driven.

When we do design at PayPal, it’s not focused on one little problem here or edge case there. We’re focused on solving problems at a global level, across the entire organization, and across the entire product line. 

We must provide a cohesive and consistent experience to our users across all PayPal’s products, not just little corner cases.

While PayPal’s product teams and domain experts are doing design, our UX team acts as a mentor or coach. Where a UX designer used to work with a single product or maybe a single domain, with Design Ops 2.0 our product designers now work across 10 to 15 different products at a time. 

Education in an enterprise 

When our UX designers mentor our product teams, they’re not only giving them guidance on how to design better layouts or products, they’re also teaching design thinking. 

Design thinking is not just about the UI design, but rather thinking about the complete user experience. How do API response times impact the user experience? How does latency impact the user experience? 

We want design thinking from top-level UI all the way down. We want everybody to understand their impact on the user experience so that our product teams can make good decisions for their end-user. 

Focus on what matters

My design team spends 50% of their time supporting various product teams and the other 50% is spent on larger UX initiatives that impact the organization globally.

Some of these UX initiatives include:

Do we focus on things like how do we build trust between users on a platform? How do we build an intrinsic attachment between users on a platform? How do we build user research into all of our products, so we’re not running studies, but rather understanding how users use our products, where the gaps are, how we fix them, and how do we provide that data back to our product teams?Future investment

Scaling your design process is an investment that pays off in the long run. It takes a savvy team to look at the overall design and development life cycle, what that looks like today, and try to figure out how we are going to shorten it, rather than stating, “this step is too long.”

While the initial process of building all of the technology seems like a long time, it’ll actually save you significant time in the long run—for your entire development, design, and development process.

UXPin Merge and your design process

If UXPin Merge managed to solve a complex design issue for one of the world’s biggest digital financial platforms, imagine what it could do for your business! 

PayPal used Merge to sync React components from a Git repository with UXPin but Merge also integrates with Storybook, giving you access to many more frameworks—like Vue, Angular, and many more.

Ready to increase the velocity in your design process? 

Discover Merge

The post How PayPal Scaled Their Design Process with UXPin Merge appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

How to Write an Engaging UX Case Study

Would you believe that a good user experience case study has the potential to get your job application noticed in the eyes of recruiters in case you get that job interview? If you are all set to share your portfolio with the hiring managers, why not take the final plunge and include the element that can transform your overall impression as a candidate entirely? 

Case studies lay out a quick roadmap in front of your recruiters that lets them get a sneak peek into your analytical and creative mind. Reading a UX case study is like your hiring manager taking a walk with you through the design problem at hand. You get to explain the process that you followed to curb the user pain points with your unique design thinking and thought process, which also captures the essence of what is a user-centered design.  

Why Case Studies Are A Game-Changer for Your Portfolio?

Case studies should reflect a curious and creative thinker within you. They should also let you demonstrate your ability to turn research and relevant insights into something concrete for design. When you’re interviewing for an analytical position such as a UX role, you’re showing off your problem-solving skills because UX is problem-solving first and design second. Your case study should demonstrate not just your process but also your ability to tackle complex problems.

The Anatomy Of a Great UX Case Study

A memorable UX case study explains in graphic detail the design process you follow throughout every stage of the design project. It pens out not only your research but also the reasoning for your ultimate design decisions while accentuating your design skills.  

Let’s begin with the structure you should follow to capture everything chronologically:-

Step-1: Start with “An Introduction”

Step-2: Familiarise with the “Process Followed”

Step-3: Lead with “The Research”

Step-4: Engage with “Design Iterations”

Step-5: Conclude with “Final Observations/Result”

The key here is to keep the content of the case study short, crisp and to the point for hiring managers and recruiters. No one’s going to sit there and sift through your case study for an hour. Reviewing case studies by experienced professionals means scanning them in mere minutes and knowing whether you have what it takes or not.

Also, make it a point to give each section an equal amount of attention when crafting your case study. You never know when recruiters and hiring managers might take notice of something you avoided.

The Process of Writing an Engaging UX Case Study – A Step by Step Process

Step-1: Introduction

If you don’t capture your reader’s attention in the introduction, they probably won’t continue reading. Make the introduction an engaging, concise way to set the stage for your article. Also, don’t forget to articulate the primary problem that you are aiming to solve.

Here are a few elements to include in the introduction that will make your content crisp and self-explanatory:-

i) Overview of the company: What is this company’s identity? What do they do, and what are their goals and mission statement?

ii) Challenge the company was facing: What was the pain point you decided to tackle? What was the ultimate question you were trying to answer? What difficulties do you encounter while addressing the problem at hand?

iii) How do you fit in the picture: What was your role in the project? What were the timelines? Were there any constraints that affected the project?

iv) Your Take: A methodology is a specified, systematic approach to solving problems or performing tasks. What methods did you use to comprehensively analyze your user data? What methods did you use to test your idea?

v) Conclusion: Elaborate on the conclusion for the end product and wrap up with a fully defined objective which you’ve completed and deliverables.

Reminder- Don’t go overboard with details in this section, we will get to it later.

Step-2: Process

When highlighting your process, make sure to be explicit about which UX research methods you used and how they helped influence your design decisions.

You should:
i) identify the UX design problems that you faced with a problem statement,
ii) show how you approached the project in terms of information architecture,
iii) show how you interacted with your users in order to gather relevant metrics and understand their needs through good ux
iv) show what research methods did you implement etc.

Explaining the methodology you used to accomplish a specific task is crucial for recruiters and hiring managers to know. 

Step-3: User Research

Now is the time to walk everyone through your UX design case study process. It works like a hypothesis that can get approved or rejected based on your findings. So there’s no right or wrong answer to it. This gives you an opportunity to elaborate on the methods you came up with the former stage and bring action-oriented improvements to the process.  

The way to go about it is to briefly explain the design research techniques you used (card sorting, user persona, usability testing, etc.), why you chose these specific techniques, and what outcome you hoped to achieve. Ultimately, your research ends with how effective your UX design solution proved for the users.

Step-4: UX Design Decisions

When you start the design phase, you look back at your research and start thinking about how you could design to accommodate your findings. Use the results of your research to inform your design decisions. This is an important part of user-centered design. Take the findings from your user research and apply them to your designs.

If your project is to build a new site or landing page, make sure each iteration includes visual design mockups. You can include steps such as:

i) Sitemaps
ii) User Flows
iii) User Journeys
iv) Paper wireframes
v) Medium/High fidelity wireframes
v) Prototypes

Step-5: Result

Employers should be able to quickly and easily find the content that’s most relevant to what they want to know about. To show your final UX design, you can use any tool that suits your needs. It can be a wireframe, high-fidelity mockup, or even something more sophisticated like an interactive prototype. Don’t forget to link to the source and voila! You’re done! If you want to show off your skills and use an intuitive tool for that, try out UXPin. Take your interactive prototyping to a higher level.

Summary

By following these steps, you can turn a good case study into a relevant design portfolio piece that showcases your problem-solving skills while bringing your creative side to the table to achieve maximum harmony between functionality and aesthetically fine design work. At the end of the day, the whole point behind a case study is to establish expertise in the area of UX research and design and be perceived as a UX professional in the eyes of potential prospects. Use an intuitive design tool that will help you show your skills – sign up for a 14-day trial.

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Improve Your Design with This Calming App Design Template

Are you looking for an app design template to inspire your next project? Our design team has put together a calming app design template to showcase the possibilities of designing with UXPin.

The complete mobile app UI kit is suitable for iOS and Android devices, providing you with the foundation to build a beautiful product for yoga, meditation, or sleep aid – complete with audio files and soothing interactions.

Here’s what you’re going to learn in this article for the Calming app mobile template:

Components: reusable components to edit the current app or build new featuresInteractivity: breathe life into your app with States, Interactions, and Page TransitionsAudio/Media: uploading audio and adding controls for play, stop, pause, looping, autoplay, and mutingUXPin Features That Make App Design Easy!

Before we get into the calming mobile app UI kit, let’s explore UXPin’s app design features.

Components

UXPin’s Components let you create reusable building blocks to maintain consistency and scale designs quickly. A Component could be a simple button comprising a rectangle and text, or a navigation bar complete with colors, states, and interactions.

UXPin components comprise of two aspects:

Master Component – defines the Component’s propertiesInstance Component – a mirror of the Master Component

Any changes to the Master Component will immediately copy to its Instances. You can unlink any Instance so that it becomes an independent group of elements for you to edit.

UXPin makes it easy to edit Master Components. Instead of searching for the master, select any Instance, click the purple Edit Master button, make your changes, and click Back to complete.

You’ll find all of your Components in the Design System Libraries to the left of UXPin’s Canvas. If you have an extensive design system, you can sort Components by category or use the built-in search feature.

Check out our documentation to learn more about using Components in UXPin.

Interactivity

Without interactions, mobile app design appears dull and lifeless! We have a long list of triggers, actions, and animations to create immersive experiences for your users.

There are several ways to create interactivity in UXPin, but we’ll touch on two foundational elements, States and Interactions.

States let you create several different properties and interactions for a single element or Component, triggered by various user actions. Setting States for elements and Components is the first step to making your high-fidelity prototypes mirror the final product’s functionality.

For example, a button can have a default, hover, active, and disabled state and switch between each according to the user or system’s actions. You can set a button’s state to disabled, shaded grey, and unclickable until a user completes a form. When the required fields are complete, the button changes color, and the user can click submit.

Interactions allow you to create an immersive user experience with Actions and Animations through two types of Triggers:

Element triggers: user interactions—click/tap, hover, swipe, focusCanvas triggers: a change in the canvas state (engineers will refer to this as a system trigger)

Interactions occur through a Trigger-Action sequence and can include a simultaneous Action/Animation:

Trigger—user taps/clicks a buttonAction/Animation—opens a new page (Action) with a Slide up page transition animation (Animation)

UXPin also allows designers to create “if-then” and “if-else” Conditional Interactions to execute different Actions or Animations, precisely as you would in a Javascript function. This powerful feature lets designers test high-fidelity prototypes accurately to get meaningful feedback from usability participants and stakeholders.

Designers can take interactivity beyond what’s possible in most design tools using UXPin’s Variables and Expressions.

Variables: store user inputs and take actions based on the provided data inside the prototype.Expressions: form validation, computational components like shopping carts, or checking if a password meets specific criteria.

You can read more about Variables and Expressions in our documentation.

Media: Images, Audio & Video

UXPin lets you upload images and other static assets to your designs. You can also store these assets (like logos and custom icons) in your Design System Library for other team members to use.

Video and audio are often missing from high-fidelity prototypes because design tools lack the functionality to store and interact with this media. UXPin lets you link Audio and Video to your high-fidelity prototypes with interactions like Play, Stop, and Pause.

Now that you have an introduction to UXPin’s core features, it’s time to take a quick walk through our calming mobile app template.

Calming App Template Walk Through

The Calming App is one of four free app templates available from UXPin’s App Examples library. Our Calming app lets you explore five UXPin features in action:

ComponentsStatesInteractionsPage TransitionsAudioDownload and Import the Calming App Template

If you’d like to follow along, sign up for a 14-day free UXPin trial. 

Download our free Calming App design templateUnzip the fileCreate a new project in UXPinDrag and drop the Calming App.uxp file from the unzipped fileOnce the file uploads, you’re ready to go!How to Preview

You can preview a prototype in the browser to test navigation and interactions. Click the dark triangle icon above the right sidebar or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + P to open the preview in a new browser tab.

You can also use UXPin Mirror to preview your prototypes on iOS and Android devices. Here how:

Download the Mirror app—Android, iOSClick the mobile icon above the right sidebar to reveal a unique QR codeOpen the Mirror app and follow the instructions to scan your project’s bar code

We have used Foundation for our Calming app, one of UXPin’s five built-in Design Libraries. You can use Foundation to build new pages or features for your app. You can also create your own design system in UXPin.

The Calming app template features four pages (app screens):

HomeBreatheRelaxSleep

You can view and switch between these pages by clicking the Pages & Layers icon in the bottom left or using the keyboard shortcut Alt + 1—get a complete list of UXPin’s keyboard shortcuts here. 

In Pages & Layers, you can also add new pages or click the overview icon to see all of your project’s pages.

Calming App Template – Home Page

The home page features a text block and three large button Components, which link to the app’s other three pages. 

Remember, to edit a Component, you must first select it and click the Edit Master button top left of the canvas or right sidebar under Instance .

Calming App Template – Breathe Page

The Breathe page features a text box, a hidden Breathe Component, and a circular Start button Component, that triggers multiple Actions and Animations and changes States.

Make sure you’re in Pages & Layers in the left sidebar and click the Start layer. Click Interactions in the right sidebar, and you’ll see the following Interactions:

Hide 2 elements: hides the Start button and text boxShow breathe: shows the hidden Breathe ComponentSet State Breathe to Breathe In: changes the Start button’s State

You can also check out the Breathe layer’s Interactions by selecting it in the left sidebar and clicking Interactions.

The Breathe page would work nicely with audio, like adding a guided meditation. 

Calming App Template – Relax Page

The Relax page of our Calming app is where things get interesting! We have a text block with eight audio Components.

To find the audio make sure you’re in the Pages & Layers window in the left sidebar, expand the Sound Component, and then the Button layer. You’ll see four layers, including one labeled Audio. When you click the Audio layer, its settings will appear in the right sidebar. Under AUDIO, you’ll see a URL for the audio file, including four options—the Calming app is set to Loop.

You can change the audio by pasting the URL to a hosted file. 

Calming App Template – Sleep Page

Lastly, the Sleep Page features a text block, CTA, and setting moon animation. You can explore each of these layers using the Pages & Layers window in the left sidebar.

Have fun playing with the Calming app template. Check out our documentation to learn more about UXPin’s features and how to use the design editor.

More Design Templates

UXPin has three other app templates you can copy for inspiration or familiarize yourself with our design editor.

Smart Home : a mobile app template for controlling smart electronics in your home. Exhibition : a modern web design template for an event. Auction : an auction/eCommerce app template with scrollable content, product page, and inputs.Get Started With a UXPin Trial

Ready to dive in and start designing with UXPin? Sign up for a 14-day free trial to the versatility and creativity of creating apps, websites, and digital products with the world’s most advanced design tool!

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UX Audit – All You Need to Know, Benefits, and Checklist

In today’s fast-paced tech industry, it’s challenging to maintain perfect design consistency, especially when you have multiple teams working on the same digital product!

Periodic UX design audits allow designers to evaluate a product to identify continuity, consistency, accessibility, and usability issues.

Reduce errors while increasing fidelity, functionality, and collaboration with UXPin’s code-based design tool. Sign up for a free trial today!

What is a UX Audit

A UX audit (sometimes called a UX review) is a quality assurance (QA) process that reviews an existing digital product to ensure it meets business, user experience, and accessibility requirements.

A design audit allows UX designers to identify user pain points and business value opportunities using valuable real-world data. Testing during the design process is limited in revealing how a product will perform in the real world –especially if you have thousands or millions of daily users. 

An auditor will measure, test, and analyze the following during a UX audit:

Broken linksDesign system inconsistencies—fonts, colors, patterns, etc.Layout and hierarchy inconsistenciesOutdated contentCustomer journey bottlenecks and roadblocksUsability and accessibilityUsability heuristicsBranding and messagingReview product design against business and user experience goalsTraffic, engagement, conversion rates, retention, and sales analyticsLegal compliance (GDPR, CCPA, etc.)

At the end of a design audit, auditors generate a UX audit report with actionable recommendations to fix any issues or optimize the product.

When to Conduct a UX Design Audit?

Teams typically conduct a UX audit as part of the QA process whenever they release a significant product update or product redesign. Organizations may also schedule periodic UX audits to ensure a product meets business and user experience objectives.

Who Conducts a UX Audit?

Who conducts a UX audit will depend on the size of the company and available resources. Many small companies and startups will likely use in-house design teams to perform UX audits.

To get an objective, non-bias UX audit, some organizations use external auditors to evaluate their products and deliver a report. Large companies might use a UX design agency, which can be expensive but produce thorough audits with meaningful feedback and insights. Smaller businesses and startups might consider hiring a freelancer to get similar results.

How to Prepare for a UX Audit

A UX audit requires several benchmarks to evaluate a digital product. Without these benchmarks, auditors have no way to determine whether the product is meeting its KPIs, goals, and objectives.

If your company doesn’t have a UX strategy, you probably want to start by defining this before you conduct a UX audit. You can download our Free UX Process & Documentation Templates and read this article to outline your company’s UX strategy before your first design audit.

To prepare for a UX audit, you will need:

User personasClearly defined business goalsProduct data and analyticsPrevious UX audit results & changesAudit constraints, deliverables, deadline, and stakeholdersUser Personas

Identifying your customers and their personas before you conduct a UX audit will help determine if your current users (from analytics data) match your target users (from previous user and market research).

Suppose the UX audit reveals a change in user demographics. In that case, UX designers might need to apply the design thinking process to determine if the product adequately caters to this new group.

Clearly Defined Business Goals

Understanding the company’s business goals is another essential factor auditors must know in preparation for a UX audit. Auditors will need to assess whether the product meets the company’s business expectations and the design’s impact, whether negative or positive.

Product Data and Analytics

Auditors must gather relevant product analytics and information like heatmaps, click tracking, and other interaction data. Companies might acquire this data through Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Hotjar, and CrazyEgg, to name a few.

This data is crucial to understanding how users navigate a digital product and whether designers need to consider changes to match this behavior.

Analytics can also provide auditors with conversion and revenue data to measure the product’s success metrics and KPIs.

Previous UX Audit Results & Changes

Auditors can use reports from previous UX audits to check if any of the same problems still exist. If there were any design changes after the last UX audit, auditors can determine whether the changes solved the problem and impacted user experience.

Audit Constraints, Deliverables, Deadline, and Stakeholders

Lastly, auditors must understand the audit’s budget/resource constraints, deliverables, deadline, and stakeholders for reporting. This information is as important as the audit itself because it will determine how auditors conduct the review to meet constraints and expectations.

Conducting a UX Design Audit

Once you have completed your preparation, it’s time to conduct a UX design audit. Auditors will examine four key elements of a digital product, including:

Usability heuristicsUser experienceDesign system evaluationAccessibilityUsability Heuristics

Jakob Nielsen’s 10 general principles for interaction design form the basis for many UX design audits. Developed in the early 90s, Nielsen’s list of ten heuristics outlines a broad “rule of thumb” rather than specific usability guidelines auditors must follow.

Visibility of system status—ensure users know the current system status to understand the impact of their interactions and next steps.Match between system and the real world—designs must speak users’ language with familiar words, phrases, and concepts. Products must feel logical and intuitive so users can achieve tasks and goals effortlessly.User control and freedom—designs should give users complete control to change their minds, exit, or redo tasks and flows. For example, providing a “back” button during user flows or a way to update/delete shopping cart items.Consistency and standards—design inconsistency can increase users’ cognitive load resulting in a poor product experience. Minimize what users must learn to use your product by following industry standards and maintaining design consistency.Error prevention—designers must do everything they can to prevent or eliminate error-prone conditions. Recognition rather than recall—users should not have to remember what buttons, actions, and elements do. User interfaces must promote recognition (explicit labels & instructions) to reduce users’ cognitive load.Flexibility and efficiency of use—a digital product should provide users with the flexibility to customize their preferred workflow. For example, allowing users to create easily retrievable “favorite” links to their most-used features.Aesthetic and minimalist design—avoid redundant content and UI elements that don’t serve users. A minimalist screen layout will help users find what they need with minimal effort.Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors—error messages should guide users with straightforward steps to solve the problem. Avoid meaningless error codes and instead provide links to product documentation or customer support.Help and documentation—product documentation must help users understand the product’s features and complete desired tasks.

Auditors might need to evaluate a mix of user testing and product analytics to audit these ten usability heuristics.

User Experience

As UX design follows a human-centered approach, auditing your product’s user experience is probably the most critical part of a design audit.

Auditors will examine analytics and interaction data to determine the design’s impact on user flows, navigation, and the overall user experience. If something stands out in analytics data, auditors may conduct or recommend usability testing to fully understand the problem.

Design System Evaluation

A company’s design system is vital for maintaining continuity and consistency. Auditors must examine the product’s design system to ensure UI components and design patterns meet user experience goals and branding guidelines.

Accessibility

Accessibility is a vital factor in ensuring a product is inclusive for all users. Auditors need to consider whether the color palette, fonts, and components serve users with visual impairments. They may also look at whether the product allows users to switch between light/dark modes to accommodate users with sensitive eyesight.

UXPin’s built-in accessibility features help designers follow best practices, so products pass WCAG standards before the design handoff. Sign up for a 14-day free trial to discover more of UXPin’s built-in features to help optimize your UX workflow.

UX Audit Checklist

A UX audit checklist must take auditors through the necessary preparation through to the final audit report. 

UXPin’s 23-Point UX Checklist will help you avoid common design issues before reaching your final product to improve the overall user experience. You can also use this 23-point checklist as a guideline for creating your audit checklist.

5 Tips to Perform a Successful UX AuditRecord everything: take notes, screenshots, and provide links to every flagged issue. These records will ensure you don’t forget anything and provide thorough, actionable feedback to stakeholders.Stay organized: depending on the scale of the product, you’re likely to collect a lot of data, including notes, images, metrics, etc. Use a spreadsheet to organize and analyze analytics data, and use cloud storage to save corresponding assets, like screenshots.Actionable recommendations: provide stakeholders with actions they can take to fix the problems you identify. These actions must align with real insights rather than guesses or assumptions.Be exact: when reporting, tell stakeholders the specific problem, where to find it, and recommendations to fix.Prioritize findings: let stakeholders know the importance of issues you identify—for example, low, medium, and high. You would typically prioritize these based on the severity of the problem and how it impacts the user experience.Summary

Regular design audits are vital to determine how products align with user experience and business goals. If you are conducting your first UX audit, you must have a clear UX strategy, so auditors have benchmarks, objectives, and KPIs to measure against.

Jakob Nielsen’s ten usability heuristics provide a fantastic foundation for auditors to test a product’s components and features. Auditors should use these usability heuristics to look at a product objectively and ask questions from a user’s perspective.

Improve Your UX Audit UXPin

Here are three ways to improve your UX audits with UXPin:

Code-based prototypes: UXPin’s code-based design editor allows teams to create high-fidelity prototypes that look and feel like the final product. Auditors can use these prototypes for usability studies to test assumptions based on data and analytics.Comments: UXPin’s Comments feature lets auditors describe problems and assign tasks directly on user interfaces.Built-in accessibility: auditors can use UXPin’s built-in accessibility features like our contrast checker and blindness simulator to quickly evaluate the product’s accessibility.

Ready to get started with the world’s best user experience design tool? Sign up for a 14-day free trial and discover how UXPin’s code-based design tool can improve UX workflows and produce better user experiences for your customers.

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Who Is a 10x Designer and How to Become One?

10x what? You might find yourself scratching your head if you’ve come across this buzzword for the very first time, even if you are a part of the UX/UI  industry & community for some time. We don’t blame you because it’s a relatively new concept, but it’s becoming more and more prominent! Big companies are also starting to include 10x designers into their ranks! 

You will be surprised to know that there are product designers who race against time to design applications faster than the ideal turnaround time. But not for the sake of beating time and delivering a bad product. Instead, because they are capable and up to the task, all while using the proper tools that allow them to move at an incredible rate even when collaborating with other design teams and departments. Their project organization and established workflow allow a 10xer to be lightyears ahead of an average designer. 

In plain terms, a product designer who has mastery over UX, UI, and graphic design, is often referred to as a “10x designer” because they are considered to be 10 times more effective than an average designer. That’s due to their work ethic, productivity, and performance.

Also, outsourced software development companies use the same principle to build mobile apps and websites faster than the usual time is taken, allowing companies to focus on innovation and creativity. Is this technique widely known? If yes, what does it take to become one of those? 

Let’s find out! 

Who is a 10x Designer?

They are the generalists in your company.

They are not just 10 times more productive than the rest of your in-house designers but also thought leaders in their field of expertise. They lead a project from the back seat helping project managers with data-driven choices and impeccable user experience design that keeps everything moving forward smoothly. 

If you can design each of the touchpoints of your product to create value, you will be able to grow exponentially. A great user experience involves designing with empathy that a quality every product designer should possess. You should also be able to design an experience that is unique, and tailored for each visitor to your product.

With all the information available, 10x designers are capable enough to make design decisions without being constrained by a conventional way of thinking. 

For example – when a 10x designer is asked to do a redesign or implement a new feature, they will run every inch of their analytical and creative thinking to draw conclusions from all inputs and arrive at a decision. 

The Origins

Recall a time when you came across a nerve-wracking problem! Who did you look for in a hurry to give you the most optimal solution at that very moment? Probably that one person who you think has solved a similar problem before. Or the one with the most experience. Why? Because this is an expert who will probably solve your problem much faster than you would. When it comes to problem-solving capabilities, we need to give credit where credit’s due – the developers.

Before there was a 10x designer, there was a 10x developer. A 10x engineer.

A 10x developer is someone who can write one line of code to solve ten lines of code worth of complexities. And that’s why you see a $10000 bill after the project completion.  

This was the concept of 10x developer, originally. But apparently, the formula was practical enough to be implemented to the rest of the departments of a certain software development company as well. And thus, the 10x product designer was born. 

That’s how the super-soldiers in the dev and design industry were born. But let’s move on to more hands-on information and actually advice on how to become a 10x designer.

How to Become a 10x Product Designer?

You need to take your UX design skills to the next level, leveraging technology that will enable you to create 10x better user experiences. It all boils down to tying every design decision via following a stringent UX process and getting your horses running at the speed of 10x times. 

Starting from user research, empathy mapping, creating personas, designing user flows, and ultimately getting down to sketching wireframes and designing high-end clickable prototypes, there’s absolutely nothing that can go unnoticed. There should be no stone unturned.

A unique trait of 10x product designers is that they understand and absorb the principles of user-centered design. They pull an all-nighter to focus on the user more than the product. It takes responsibility, empathy, and deep expertise to come up with a product that’s exhilarating to use, in terms of user satisfaction.

The UX process is to be taken into account with due diligence when a company is trying to move at a fast pace. A lot of the time and effort we put into designing software is spent on creating usable components and functionality that other people have already built, yet we still start from scratch. That’s because UX to the average user means all the familiarity of previous products with a brand new flavor. Using parts of a design that already exists is the fastest way to do things, and keeps you from having to reinvent the wheel. Merge Technology enhances efficiency by reducing redundancy and integrating workflows. It lets designers take fully interactive components from devs’ coded design system (in Git repo or Storybook), and use them in their design! That’s how PayPal’s design team streamlined their design process. 

A 10x product designer must be able to do a lot of things at once. Can you imagine how much work it would take to keep everybody involved coordinated? Well, they face a lot of criticisms, unsolicited opinions, and feedback from a 360-degree perspective to keep everything moving. This is from the inception stage to the deployment stage of an application! 

A 10x product designer must be able to:

thoroughly plan a product’s structureevaluate its designfind the appropriate feedback for each featurebuild a relationship with users, andunderstand their needs

Back and forth of verbal and written communication, endless meetings to address every loophole in the software designing process, and curbing the day-in and out challenges is what their routine day looks like. And we bet they have lost count of how many times a discussion goes through a dip to only come back to what was decided earlier. 

A ten-fold improvement in the user experience design is meant to be paid off. Why? Because every step in the UX design process brings a product closer to satisfying its users’ needs.

Everything In a Nutshell

There are very few product designers who are able to make tangible progress in their field. And then they are ten times better than the typical designer (which is what we call them, even though they’re much more than this), these designers are much faster and able to create full-on user interfaces for customers in a fraction of the time. The 10x product designers give concrete feedback and suggestions to designers, developers, and startups. 

“Everybody has opinions. The opinions that get implemented are backed by data and process.” 10x product designers are the kind of people whose ideas are implemented. They’re the ones who put in plenty of thoughts and use meaningful data to back their validations! 

Are you one of those people? If yes, there’s no way you cannot be ten times better than what you already are! You can request access to our Merge technology to ease the pain of designing from scratch and spending too much time on adding interactions. It all can be just resolved with integration with devs’ repo!

 

Discover Merge

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UX vs. UI Design – The Differences You Need to Know

One of the most common debates in the UX world is UX vs. UI design—where are the differences and similarities? Do you need a UX designer and a UI designer? Who does what? Should they be separated? How do they work together?

The confusion arises because most institutions teach user interface design as part of the UX design curriculum. UI is part of the user experience so, why are they separated?

In small businesses and startups, UI falls under the UX umbrella. But, as organizations and products scale, the user experience department splits into UX designers, UI designers, researchers, writers, UX architects, ResearchOps, DesignOps, and other UX specialists.

While these roles are separated, they all focus on user-centered design to create a fantastic customer experience. To do this, UX teams must work together to solve user problems within budget, product, and technical constraints.

UXPin is a collaborative design tool that cultivates strong communication between your entire organization, including UX teams, product designers, engineers, and other stakeholders.

Teams can communicate through UXPin using our Comments feature to create private or public comments, tag people and assign tasks. Try UXPin for 14 days to discover a collaborative design tool built to enhance user experience design.

What is User-Centered Design?

User-centered design is the glue that holds UX and UI together. To do their jobs effectively, UX and UI designers must use a user-centered design approach.

User-centered design is the process of designing a digital product with the customer as the central focus. Don Norman, former Apple employee and founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, coined the term in his 1986 book, User-Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-computer Interaction. 

In it, he writes: People are so adaptable that they are capable of shouldering the entire burden of accommodation to an artifact, but skillful designers make large parts of this burden vanish by adapting the artifact to the users.

What Don is saying is that it’s the job of user experience designers (UX & UI) to A) solve a human problem and B) adapt the product to eliminate the user’s limitations.

What is UX Design?

UX design encompasses the broader user experience and how people feel when interacting with a product—including user interfaces. UX designers also focus more on navigation and user flows to optimize the product’s experience and make it more enjoyable and user-friendly.

UX Designer ResponsibilitiesProduct structure: navigation, user journey, flowsResearch: user, competitor, market analysisTesting: low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypingDesign: wireframes, hierarchy, content layoutUX Designer Qualities & SkillsetCritical thinkerProblem-solvingLooks at data and analyticsInterested in structureFunctional designProject managementWhat is UI Design?

User interface designers create the visual elements users interact with in a digital product or website—buttons, color, icons, typography, images, forms, and other elements and components.

Additionally, UI design is concerned with interactivity like animations and microinteractions.

Essentially, UI design is a specialist position within user experience design.

UI Designer ResponsibilitiesProduct aesthetics: branding, visual designResearch: design research, user analysisTesting: UI prototyping (high-fidelity prototyping)Design: mockups, interaction design, animations, viewport layouts (responsive design)UI Designer Qualities & SkillsetVisually creativeGraphic designInterested in visual designAestheticsBalances form with functionLooks at user interaction and behaviorTask orientatedDifferences Between UX & UI Design

As you can see from the responsibilities, UI designers focus on aesthetics and interactivity, where UX designers look at the overall experience, structure, and navigation. 

UX designers have a broad view of the product experience, while UI designers focus on what’s happening within each screen.

UX designers usually delve deeper into research and look beyond the user to competitors and market analysis. UI designers will also study users while researching visual design trends.

Here are some key differences between UX vs. UI design through the design thinking process.

EmpathizeUX designer: focuses on user pain points, needs, and emotionsUI designer: focuses on the user’s environment, movements, and actionsDefineUX designer: defines the user’s problems and the goals they’re trying to achieveUI designer: focuses on each step users need to take to achieve their goalsIdeateUX designer: looks at the information architecture and navigation to solve users’ problemsUI designer: looks at the elements and components users will need to navigate a productPrototypeUX designer: designs page hierarchy and user flows using wireframes—low-fidelity and high fidelity prototypingUI designer: designs mockups and interactivity for high-fidelity prototypesTestUX designer: tests the overall user experience and wants to know how users think and feel while using the productUI designer: tests how users interact with the product and asks practical questionsSimilarities Between UX & UI Design

UX designers and UI designers both focus on user-centered design and follow UX design thinking principles. UX designers define users’ goals, and UI helps them achieve those goals. They both seek to optimize the user experience and solve usability issues.

It’s important to see UI and UX as one entity rather than two separate departments. Both are user experience designers—they’re just focused on different tasks within UX design.

If designers execute either of these tasks poorly, the entire user experience and product will fail—no matter how strong the other might be!

UX and UI designers must both consider accessibility. The UX designer focuses on product usability, such as layout, hierarchy, and placement, while the UI designer looks at user interface accessibility, including colors, fonts, sizing, and interactions.

UX & UI in the Product Design Process

Here is a typical product design scenario and the split between UX and UI responsibilities.

UX designer/UX researcher conducts user, market, and competitor research.UX designers work with the product manager and stakeholders to develop an idea within product and budget constraints.UX designers create the information architecture, initial sketches, wireframes, and low-fidelity prototypes.UX designers/researchers conduct early testing to refine navigation and user flows.UI designers convert wireframes to mockups using color, icons, buttons, and typography.The UI designer adds interactivity to create high-fidelity prototypes.UX researchers test high-fidelity prototypes, send to UX/UI designers for changes, and iterate.Design teams collaborate with engineers during design handoff for the development process to begin.

This example is by no means an “industry standard” approach. UX and UI designers will work closely throughout the design process.

UX design always precedes user interface design. You cannot design a product’s interface without the supporting structure and architecture.

The UX designer lays the foundation while the UI designer focuses on interaction and aesthetics. To achieve these tasks, both designers must be aware of the user’s needs to create a delightful user experience.

UX and UI Design Tools

UX and UI designers will usually use the same design tool but for different tasks and objectives.

The UX designer will create wireframes and link each screen with basic click/tap interactions to create low-fidelity prototypes. They’ll build the structure of each page using a grid system and include navigation. 

Once wireframing is complete, the UI designer will add color, interactivity, page transitions, animations typography, and more to create high-fidelity prototypes.

How UXPin Helps UX & UI Designers Increase Speed and Consistency

UXPin is an end-to-end user experience design tool UX and UI designers can collaborate on to build incredible products for their customers—from wireframing to prototypes to the final design handoff.

UX designers can design high-fidelity wireframes using built-in design libraries, so UI designers and stakeholders better understand screen layouts and flows.By using tried and tested built-in design libraries, UX designers can get meaningful feedback from usability studies and stakeholders during early testing.With most of the work complete, UI designers can refine design elements to meet branding and product requirements and immediately begin testing. UXPin’s code-based design tool means UI designers can breathe life into the product with advanced interactions and animations. They can also use Conditional interactions to mimic final-product functionality for better results and feedback during usability testing.Better Communication and Collaboration

Invite product teams, developers, and other stakeholders to preview prototypes in the browser. They can leave feedback via UXPin’s Comments functionality and even assign UX and UI designers tasks to action.

Why not try UXPin for yourself? Sign up for a 14-day free trial to discover a collaborative, code-based design tool built to enhance the user experience.

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UX Design Psychology Tricks for Design Excellence

User experience design is a process of understanding human psychology. It’s why terms like user-centered design and user experience govern the design thinking process.

UX design psychology is about understanding the behaviors of the people whose problems you’re trying to solve and designing the user experience to align with those human behaviors.

UXPin provides designers with ready-to-use prototype examples that follow UX psychology and the Gestalt principles of visual perception. 

Sign up for a 14-day free trial to explore UXPin’s innovative design editor and advanced prototyping features to create a better user experience for your customers.

Understanding Cognitive Psychology in UX Design

Cognitive psychology studies human mental processes, including attention and perception, memory, problem-solving and creative thinking—the foundation for user experience design.

Great UX designers understand these human mental processes and how cognitive psychology can help overcome the mental barriers to improve:

UsabilityNavigationReadabilityAccessibility

The human brain constantly searches for patterns and recognizable objects to make sense of the surrounding environment, including digital products.

Cognitive Load and UX Design

Cognitive load is the mental effort required to process and learn new information – human processing power.

Good UX design understands the limits of cognitive load to optimize user interfaces and present content so users can absorb and process information fast.

If the processing power required to absorb and process information in a digital product exceeds the user’s cognitive load, they’re unlikely to continue using it.

Three Types of Cognitive Load

Here are the three types of cognitive load and how they affect UX design.

Intrinsic cognitive load is the inherent difficulty of a task. How do users absorb information while staying focused on the task at hand? A good example is an eCommerce checkout. Designers remove all navigation and only provide the content necessary for the user to complete a purchase. By reducing the intrinsic cognitive load, designers increase the likelihood that a user will complete the task at hand. Extraneous cognitive load is how the brain processes the task’s non-essential problems—for example, fonts, microinteractions, or instructions. A user struggling to read a font or understanding instructions are examples of exceeding extraneous cognitive load in UX. Germane cognitive load is the processing, construction, and automation of schemas. How users organize categories and relationships of information. When learning something new, the human brain will look for familiarities in the content to build schemas.Gestalt principles and Visual Design

Gestalt principles describe how the human brain perceives visuals to create familiar structures.

A famous example of Gestalt psychology is the Young Woman or Old Woman illustration by a British cartoonist in the late 19th century. This “Gestalt switch” provides a fascinating insight into how the mind interprets elements on a canvas and the impact this can have on visual design.

These are the six primary Gestalt principles that apply to visual design:

Figure-Ground – how the brain differentiates the foreground from the background. UX designers must clearly distinguish the foreground and background to minimize cognitive load.

2. Law of Proximity – grouped objects appear to be more related than objects spaced further apart. If you have several categories of information, creating space between these categories will allow users to differentiate the content faster.

3. Law of Similarity – similar objects appear related—for example, objects with similar shape, color, shading, size, and other qualities.

4. Law of Closure – the brain’s ability to see a complete shape by filling in the missing information. 

5. Law of Continuity – the human eye naturally follows paths, lines, or curves of a design. Like proximity, continuity can help users identify related content.

6. Law of Symmetry – the brain’s preference for dividing objects into an even number of symmetrical parts.

6 UX Design Psychology Principles Every Designer Must Know1 – Von Restorff effect

The Von Restorff effect predicts that in a group of objects, the one that differs stands out or is most likely to be remembered. The Von Restorff effect is one of the most critical principles in UX design psychology because it helps provide the user with clarity and direction.

UX designers apply the Von Restorff effect whenever they’re trying to highlight a prominent call to action button—for example, enlarging the CTA or making it a different color.

The Von Restorff effect is also helpful in other parts of a user interface. For example, if you have a series of tabs, you might indicate which tab the user is currently on by making it a different color. The same is true for highlighting the current page in navigation or the current step in a user flow.

2 – Hick’s Law

Hick’s Law estimates that the more choices you give someone, the longer it’ll take them to make a decision—because you’re increasing their cognitive load.

Hick’s Law is a crucial psychological principle for eCommerce design. Firstly, if shoppers have too much choice, they may take multiple visits before deciding what to buy. The experience might be too overwhelming, meaning they never purchase anything!

UX designers must also pay attention to Hick’s Law during the checkout process. The steps it takes to complete a sale, and the number of form input fields can severely impact a store’s conversion rate.

UX teams must continually evaluate designs to ensure they only provide users with the least number of choices to complete a task or goal.

3 – The Principle of Least Effort

The principle of least effort states that users will make choices or take action requiring the least amount of energy. If a product is too complicated or there’s a steep learning curve, users are less likely to use it.

The principle of least effort is also critical when making layout or user interface changes. Changing how users interact with your product might annoy them to learn a new process—do this too many times, and you’re likely to lose users.

The principle of least effort is not something that designers consider once to solve the problem. It’s an ongoing process of user testing and iterating to look for improvements continually.

4 – The Serial Positioning Effect

The serial positioning effect states that people are most likely to remember the first (primacy effect) and last (recency effect) items in a list, sentence, or piece of content. 

Psychologists suspect the serial position effect occurs because people expect the most meaningful information to appear at the beginning and end.

UX designers can use the serial position effect to create better user experiences. For example, placing the most important or most-used navigational links first and last.

The serial position effect is also effective for screen layouts by displaying critical information at the top and bottom.

5 – The Principle of Perpetual Habit

The principle of perpetual habit states that people rely on familiar routines and habits. If you design a new car, you don’t put the steering wheel in the trunk because you want a clean, minimalist dash. 

There are areas where you can exercise creativity and innovation, but there are some universal standards you should never change.

For example, users expect to find navigational links in the header and footer. The hamburger icon indicates where to find the navigation for mobile users. If you change this structure, users will have trouble with basic navigation resulting in a poor user experience.

Good product design goes as far as recognizing the different user habits across devices, from mobile devices to desktop, iOS to Android—and tweaking the product to align with the user needs.

6 – The Principle of Emotional Contagion

The principle of emotional contagion or chameleon effect states that humans will mimic or empathize with the emotions and behaviors of others, including animals and animations.

UX designers can use the principle of emotional contagion to create engaging and immersive user experiences. 

A good example is how Duolingo uses the Language Bird to encourage users to return to the app. If a user misses a lesson, Language Bird is upset and crying. But when you complete a class, Language Bird is cheerful and excited.

UX designers have an obligation not to abuse the principle of emotional contagion by shaming or manipulating users into taking actions that could harm them.

Summary

By understanding UX psychology, you can build better products for your users. Design psychology also helps us understand the why behind product and interaction design. 

We derive many UX design principles from human behavior to enhance the user experience. But these are powerful psychological tools that can do as much harm as good.

A good example is how social media companies use design psychology to manipulate people and compete for users’ attention in the name of profits.

Familiarize yourself with design psychology so you can learn to recognize these principles in participants during usability testing. There may be non-verbal cues you observe, allowing you to engage with users to get more meaningful feedback.

Improving Usability Testing with UXPin

Another way to get meaningful feedback is by creating high-fidelity prototypes that look and function like the final product. UXPin lets you turn ideas into experiences with sophisticated yet intuitive all-in-one prototyping software.

Take the UX principles from this article and apply them to your next project in UXPin. Sign up for a 14-day free trial and start designing better customer experiences today!

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UX Workflow – How to Create and Improve Yours

Developing and refining a UX workflow will ensure you follow UX design principles to delight your users and stakeholders.

An optimized design workflow reduces errors, improves collaboration, acknowledges the business value, and reduces time to market to save the organization time and money.

Does your design tool optimize UX workflows with features to enhance collaboration and digital product design? Why not try UXPin! The world’s most advanced design, prototyping, testing tool. Sign up for a 14-day free trial to experience the power of code-based design.

What is a UX Workflow

A UX workflow is a step-by-step process designers must follow from conceptualization to design handoff. A typical UX workflow loosely follows the five stages of the design thinking process, but there is no specific workflow method.

How designers and organizations develop a UX workflow is a matter of preference, depending on multiple factors, including the product, organizational structure, policies, and tools, to name a few. Some workflows will include a few steps, while others might have ten or more.

Steps of a Typical UX Workflow

The following is a typical design workflow most UX teams use:

Defining the business needConducting research and gaining insightsAnalyze research and ideateCreating information architecture & user flowsLo-fi prototypingHi-fi prototypingTestingDesign handoff1 – Defining the Business Need

Defining the business need or project scope is a crucial first step. UX is about solving users’ problems but within the context of the company and product.

UX designers will meet with the project manager and other stakeholders to discuss the business need and scope. This phase of the workflow might take several meetings and workshops to get input from all stakeholders.

The business need will include the following:

Project scopeProject roadmapTimeframe and deadlinesTasks and objectivesUser data and analyticsFinancial and technical constraintsStakeholders, roles, and responsibilities2 – Conducting Research and Gaining Insights

With a clear goal and purpose in mind, UX teams begin the research phase. Research methods will include:

General user researchConducting interviewsUser focus groupsSurveysCompetitor researchMarket research

If it’s an established digital product, UX researchers might review old research or conduct usability studies relating to the new project scope.

3 – Analyze Research & Ideate

UX teams will analyze research insights to define:

User personasEmpathy and journey mapsUser problems and pain pointsWhere competitors win and failBusiness value opportunities

Teams can ideate to develop solutions with a clear picture of the users, market, problems, and business value opportunities. It’s a collaborative brainstorming exercise often involving stakeholders from several departments like product, marketing, and engineering to get diverse ideas and perspectives.

4 – Creating Information Architecture & User Flows

Using research results, UX designers begin listing and organizing the screens they’ll need to design. Using these lists, they can create the information architecture or sitemap to define user flows and navigation.

5 – Lo-Fi Prototyping

With information architecture and user flows defined, UX designers begin hand sketching wireframes to create low-fidelity paper prototypes. Paper prototyping is a collaborative effort where UX designers gather to simulate different user flows and identify the elements and components the product will need.

Once design teams have exhausted paper prototyping, they create digital wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes using a design tool. These lo-fi digital prototypes use simple click/tap interactions to test navigation and user flows.

6 – Hi-Fi Prototyping

UI designers convert wireframes to mockups that resemble the final product’s aesthetics before adding interactivity to create functioning high-fidelity prototypes.

With UXPin, designers can build fully functioning high-fidelity prototypes with advanced interactions, animations, conditional formatting, variables, data capture and validation, expressions, and even give elements (like buttons) states – features you cannot get from other leading design tools. 

Sign up for a 14-day free trial and to see how quickly you can build fully functioning prototypes with UXPin’s built-in design libraries.

7 – Testing

We’ve put testing at step seven in this UX workflow, but ultimately, designers begin testing from the very beginning. They might not always test with participants, but designers will constantly experiment to validate ideas and concepts.

But the most critical testing happens once design teams have working prototypes. Late usability testing with end-users produces meaningful feedback for designers to make changes, test, and iterate until the product is error-free and working as intended.

8 – Design Handoff

The final design handoff to the development team is a critical and often tense part of any designer’s UX workflow. If designers forget deliverables or the testing isn’t thorough enough, it could cost the organization time and money to fix it!

Like testing, the design handoff starts early in the design process. Product designers, UX teams, and engineers meet periodically throughout the project to ensure designs meet technical constraints and designers document their work correctly.

UXPin allows designers to create documentation in the design editor to keep all project details and assets in one place. Designers can also share a link to the final prototype where developers can use Spec Mode.

Spec Mode lets developers inspect element/component properties (size, grid, colors, typography), measure distances, and view the project’s style guide.

5 Tips to Improve & Optimize Your UX Workflow1) Collaborate

As creatives, it’s easy to get stuck in a design bubble, switching off the world as you attempt to solve design challenges. But UX is about collaboration and communication.

Your ideas and collaborative input should be as diverse as your end-users. Designers should invite stakeholders and other departments to provide feedback from early paper prototypes to final high-fidelity prototypes.

Researchers should also connect with industry experts to solve complex issues or increase business value through design.

2) Leverage Your Design System to Improve UX Workflows

A good design system is a vital ingredient to optimizing a UX workflow. Design systems help maintain product consistency while giving designers the building blocks to build user interfaces and prototypes quickly!

Merge is UXPin’s advanced proprietary technology that allows you to sync code components from a repository (via Git or Storybook) where your design system is, to the design editor. 

Syncing your design system this way allows teams to maintain a single source of truth because everyone uses the same code components. The best part, designers don’t need to know any code! They use UXPin’s editor the same way as any other popular design tool—but using components with much higher fidelity.

The result? 

Prototypes look and function exactly like the final productMeaningful feedback from stakeholders and user testingFewer errorsQuicker time to marketSmoother design handoffs

Read this article to learn more about design system governance and how it can optimize UX workflows.

3) Enhance Prototypes with Interactions

Ensure your prototypes include interactions that resemble those of the final product. Well designed interactions:

Improve user testingInvite better feedback from stakeholdersProvide helpful references for developers at design handoffs

With UXPin’s code-based design tool, interactions are limited only by code! You can even set “if-then” then and “if-else” conditions to provide participants and stakeholders with an authentic, unique user experience.

4) Conduct Reliable Tests

Testing is a critical part of the UX design process. UX design aims to ensure the final product is optimized to the user’s needs. To do this, UX designers must ensure they conduct reliable usability tests with participants that represent the end-users.

5) Use the Right Tools

The UX design process relies heavily on many tools to complete tasks and objectives. The most important of which is, of course, the design tool! 

Modern design tools must be accessible to non-designers (product teams) with the capability to design high-fidelity prototypes that mirror the final product for accurate testing. Unfortunately, most design tools have a steep learning curve, making them inaccessible to teams outside of the UX department.

UXPin is unique in this regard because using Merge, UX designers and developers can create a code-based design environment for non-designers to build user interfaces and products.

PayPal’s product uses Merge technology to build products for their internal teams. These non-designers drag-and-drop components to build user interfaces eight times faster than experienced UX designers with traditional vector-based design tools!

Summary

Optimizing your UX workflow relies heavily on effective collaboration. Organizations must find ways to facilitate communication to ensure designers, product teams, and engineers work together throughout the design process. 

Testing is another crucial element to a robust UX workflow. Teams must test early and test often! Make sure your tests and participants are reliable so that you get meaningful feedback and iron out as many usability issues as possible.

Lastly, use the right tools! UXPin is an end-to-end design tool built to optimize UX processes and workflows, especially with Merge technology. Scale your design workflow with – try Merge.

Discover Merge

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