User Experience design based on Design Thinking

Frameworks in UX design provide guidance on how to solve problems and build solutions that address real people's needs. There are several frameworks that are particularly popular among UX designers. These include the design thinking process, the double diamond model, the hooked model, lean UX, agile UX, the BASIC framework, the UX honeycomb, and the Fogg behavior model. Through frameworks, the design process is structured and collaboration can be fostered, leading to innovation. As a UX designer, you might follow a specific process or framework when approaching your work. This might be from the beginning of an idea up to the final launch of a product.

Research, prototyping, and testing are all part of the Design Thinking framework, helping you better understand your users, what their problems are, and how you can design for them.

In the Design Thinking framework, empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing are the phases.

As you refine your designs, you will repeat certain phases of the Design Thinking framework, which may seem linear at first. This is similar to the way a sculptor works - chipping away excess material to gradually shape the piece until the desired form is achieved. You may need to conduct additional research, generate creative ideas, or develop redesigned prototypes based on the feedback you receive during testing.?

Let’s look at the five phases of the Design Thinking framework to learn more about which activities you’ll perform during each one. In different companies, teams, or projects, you might see some variation in the implementation of the Design Thinking framework as presented here.

Empathize

When empathizing, you're trying to understand the user and their needs, wants, and problems, as well as the environment or context in which the design will be used. Stepping away from assumptions and guesswork and letting your research findings inform your later design phases is the most critical part of empathizing.

Research on competitors' products can be conducted using user surveys, interviews, and observation sessions. You will need to find out how users perceive competitors' products in their daily lives.

Define

Analyzing your empathizing findings, you'll determine which user problems need to be solved, and why. This will help you decide what the product should look like.

A clear problem statement describes the user's need that your designs will address, which is the most significant result of this phase. Alternatively, you can develop a value proposition, a brief explanation of why your users should use your product or service.

Ideate

Having identified a user problem and understood its importance, it is time to start brainstorming. Ideation is the process of coming up with as many design solutions as you can. Don't settle for the first option because the most obvious solution isn't always the most effective.

As much as possible, brainstorming with your team involves finding solutions to problems. You should explore all possible solutions during brainstorming sessions, regardless of whether they are "correct" or "wrong." The key is to keep this process judgment-free, and not focus on whether an idea is "right" or "wrong". For instance, during a brainstorming session to solve a customer service issue, a team member may propose an idea to respond to customers within an hour. Even if the team knows it is not feasible, they should not reject it, but look at it as a possibility to work towards.

Your potential solutions will be analyzed and you'll make a decision about which ones to prototype. To narrow down your ideas, you might conduct user or competitive research, and you may also develop user flows to illustrate how your solution will work. The process of narrowing down your potential solutions is similar to that of a gold miner sifting through gravel for flecks of precious metal. This process involves quickly discarding pieces that are not valuable, and carefully examining those that could turn out to be valuable.

Prototype and test.

Your next step is to develop a prototype of the solution, which demonstrates its functionality and can be used to test the product. An organized approach to testing can help you create exceptional user experiences. Testing is critical to developing the right solution to address your users' problems.

The process of prototyping and testing is intertwined. Therefore, you can test your designs from the very beginning of the project rather than waiting until the final prototype is ready. You might not get as much feedback from users if your design is too polished the first time.

During the design process, include testing to ensure your designs are iterated based on user feedback, rather than other factors. By running tests at the start of the project, you can make sure that user feedback is the main factor driving design decisions, as opposed to other elements.?

Using a sketch, wireframe, or sitemap, you can demonstrate the concepts behind your design. Based on what you've discovered, you may proceed to a more detailed design (known as a low-fidelity prototype) and conduct another round of user testing. In order to test your model, you'll need a software program (also called a high-fidelity prototype) to create a working, interactive model. A prototype can also be tested on multiple platforms at the same time for feedback, such as a laptop, tablet, and smartphone at the same time. For instance, you can use a high-fidelity prototype to evaluate the usability of a website across mobile and desktop devices and measure how user interactions change in different contexts.

It is imperative to test prototypes as you gain insight into whether they solve the user's problem and are easy to use. You will eventually finish a prototype, and then developers will turn it into a product.

Conclusions

There are many frameworks UX designers use to organize their approach to their design work, often based on the products they're designing and the organizations they're working for. There are a few common principles for all frameworks:

• User-focused.
• Solve problems for users.
• Ensure cross-departmental collaboration.
• Design validation.
• The user experience should be iterated as needed

Further resources

Check out these resources to learn more about Design Thinking:

• Design Thinking 101 by Nielsen Norman Group
• The Design Thinking Process - An Introduction (2021) by CareerFoundry
• UX Design Process: Everything You Need to Know by Adobe
• What is Design Thinking? by The Interaction Design Foundation

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