How To Approach UI/UX Design?
UI/UX Design is a part and parcel of the product development process. It is what decides the future or success of our product. The best approach for a successful UI UX design is by combining the structure, content, and the user experience in a certain way, so that it enables your business to accomplish the goals. Follow a user-centric approach, in the UI UX Design process. Adopting the strategy enables you to develop simple, intuitive, and engaging micro-moments which thrills the end-users. Thus, creates a push factor that makes you stand out from the crowd!.
Steps of UI/UX Design Process
The UI/UX Design Process is a methodology that, if followed, allows you to polish your user interfaces to be the best one possible for your business. If this process is not followed, then it may end up in a situation where you need to keep redesigning ourselves every time! The entire UI/UX design process can be divided into 5 phases.
Product Definition Product Definition is the first phase involved in the user design process. The team responsible for this will collect the user requirements based on their business environment. It’s very much essential because understanding about the real scope of the product and their existence happens in this phase.
Research The research is the most crucial element for a designer. The designing team studies how the present system works for the current client proposal. The three main functions at this stage are:
- Have an understanding of the competition.
- Making a thorough study of your existing domain.
- Going through competitor strategy to test outcomes.
The Research process should also involve an understanding of the latest UI/UX trends, design principles, and guidelines.
Analysis In this phase, make use of the things collected in the Research phase. With the help of the information received, create hypothetical personas, and experience maps. Hypothetical Personas: Creating hypothetical scenarios help the designers to know about the various persons who will be the users of your product. It allows depicting the realistic representation of the ultimate product. The design team can figure out how it is going to look like after delivery. Experience Maps: Experience maps show the user flow within your final product. All these are done using visual representations through proper interactions with the client in the product definition phase.
Design In the design process, we finally end up giving life to ideas that we have collected in the above three steps. It’s time to work on the final graphics now. The design team will execute the final design in this phase.
The significant outcomes of the designing phase are:
Sketching: The designing phase begins with sketching. The designers usually make hand made sketches to visualize the concept with simple terms. The UX/UI designers can stick to a particular option after the sketching process.
Creating wireframes: A wireframe is a visual structure that depicts the page hierarchy and the elements in the product. A wireframe is a low-fidelity way of showing a design. It’s the graphic representation of an app or a website containing the most essential elements and the content. A wireframe is considered as the backbone of the product. It’s also called the skeleton of the design. It’s mostly about the overall look of the final product.
Creating Mockups: A mockup is a visual way of representing a product. While a wireframe mostly represents a product’s structure, a mockup shows how the product is going to look like. As opposed to a wireframe, a mockup is either a mid or high-fidelity display of design. A mockup helps you make final decisions regarding a product’s color schemes, visual style, typography. With a mockup, you can allow yourself to experiment with the visual side of the product to see what looks the best. Here again, you can ask your potential users for feedback and make the necessary changes right away. This will save you way more time than getting back and making adjustments to the UI after you have launched the product.
Creating Prototypes: Prototypes concentrate on the feel of the UI/UX product that one is designing. It’s more about the interaction experience. Prototypes give you the effect of a simulator.
Creating Design Specifications: Design specification includes user flow and task flow diagrams. It depicts the overall working and the style requirements of the UI/UX product. It describes the processes and graphical elements to create amazing user experiences.
Validation (Testing)
Testing is the phase that determines the overall quality of the end- product. The testers make notes of the things that have to be improved and send them back to the respected team for correcting the errors.
Key testing questions:
User Testing: Do users need my app? Usability Testing: Can users use my app?
While evaluating your final product, there are certain factors that one needs to keep in mind. They are as follows:
- Is the system user-friendly?
- Is it flexible and easy to operate?
- Does it solve the customer’s issue?
- Is it credible and attracts the users to come back every time they need our service?
Conclusion
For creating amazing UX/UI interfaces, one requires to follow a systematic and organized approach. A UI/UX design process strategy will help you in achieving the same. The entire design team will be playing their part in the process. This is one of the best ways to retain our existing customers and attract new ones in this highly competitive world.