UX Design Process – An Actionable 7-Step Guide

UX design process is systematic, iterative, and structured series of actions that is necessary for designing a product’s user experience. It helps teams to follow easy-to-replicate protocols to deliver products while meeting the organization’s quality standards.

Speed up your design process by building prototypes with the same UI components that devs build apps with. Meet tight deadlines and release quality products.?

What is UX Design?

UX design (user experience design) is a digital product design methodology to solve a human problem. This?human-centered design approach?ensures design teams?make decisions?based on users’ needs rather than assumptions.

Empathy?is at the core of this human-centered approach. UX designers must understand what a user wants to achieve using a digital product and the?pain points?they might encounter along the way.

What is a UX Design Process?

A UX design process is an iterative step-by-step methodology?UX design teams?use to complete projects. It is derivative from a?design thinking process. As in design thinking process, UX designers spend time empathizing with the user, learning about the business, context, defining problem scope.

UX Design Process vs. Design Thinking Process

The?design thinking process?is a five-step process for developing user-centered solutions to human problems. A?UX design process?is a multi-stage, end-to-end methodology that incorporates design thinking for delivering UX projects.

While companies base their UX design process on?design thinking principles, the steps and methods might differ slightly.

Importance of a UX Design Process

Here are some reasons why companies standardize a UX design process:

• Ensures projects meet quality and?consistency?standards
• Ensures designers design solutions without bias and?assumptions
• Enables designers to?test and iterate on many ideas?to find the best solution
• Promotes?collaboration?between teams and departments
• Reduces the risk of rework by following set protocols
• Allows stakeholders to?track a project’s progress?
• Identifies hidden risks and opportunities

7 Steps of UX Design Process

A typical UX design process has 8 UX design process steps, from defining the product’s goal to?design handoff?and making sure everything works as intended.?

Step 1: Define project & scope

The first step of a UX design process defines the project’s goal and scope with team members and?stakeholders?from multiple departments–usually consisting of representatives from:

• Business?– explains?business requirements and goals?for the project.
• Design?– communicate what they need to do?prior to design and manage expectations.
• Product?– shares context, help?plan the timeline and resources needed for design.
• Technical?– define?feasibility and technical constraints of a UX design.

This early design phase aims to identify the problem the new product or feature must solve. The product team will also outline the project’s scope, plan, deliverables, and delivery date.

Step 2: Run research

Next, designers?research the problem?to find possible solutions. During the research phase, UX designers conduct several types of research, including:

• User research:?Studies the target user to understand who they are,?what they need, and what context they operate; the outcome of this research are?user personas,?journey maps, and so on.
• Market research:?Analyzes the market to determine market segmentation and product differentiation.
• Competitive research:?A?competitive analysis?to understand how competitors solve similar problems and identify opportunities.
• Product research:?Analyzing insights and analytics from an existing product?to understand user behavior.

Step 3: Create rough draft of a solution

With a clear understanding of their users, market, and competitive landscape, designers can create a rough draft of what a solution would look like, which is often referred to as the?ideation phase. Designers use paper and pen during early ideation to iterate on many ideas fast.

Some of these low-fidelity techniques include:

• Sketching:?Hand-drawn sketches of user interfaces
• Paper prototyping:?Paper versions of a prototype
• Wireframing:?Digital versions of paper prototypes featuring basic lines and shapes
• Low-fidelity prototypes:?Digital prototypes using wireframes to?test user flows?and?information architecture

The team might also use a?design sprint?to solve a specific problem fast.

Step 4: Design high-fidelity mockups and prototypes

Next, the UI design team converts wireframes into mockups to build?high-fidelity prototypes?that look and function like the final product. If the company has a?design system, designers will use the?UI component library?to build interactive prototypes.

Step 5: Conduct usability testing

The primary purpose of high-fidelity prototypes is?usability testing. UX designers test these prototypes with real users to:

• Validate ideas
• Identify usability issues
• Test?accessibility

Steps 2 to 5 are?iterable. Using test results, designers return to stage two or three to iterate on ideas until they find a solution that meets?desirability, viability, and feasibility?criteria.

It’s important to note that even though user testing is the fifth stage, design teams conduct multiple tests throughout the UX design process to validate ideas and hypotheses. These tests include internal testing with team members or sharing ideas and prototypes with stakeholders for feedback.

Step 6: Perform design Handoff

The second to last stage of the UX design process is the?design handoff, where the?design team?hands over prototypes and documentation to the development team to start the engineering process.

Although the design handoff is near the end of the UX process, designers and engineers start collaborating during ideation to streamline the transition from design to development while ensuring designs meet technical constraints. Their collaboration is?facilitated through different tools?that make communication easier.

Step 7: Launch your product

The final stage of the UX design process is a launch and a clear inspection of the new release. It’s time to ensure that the new release meets the project’s?business goals, user experience, and?accessibility?requirements.

Best Practices for a Great UX Design Process

While the UX design process might not be the same for all organizations, projects, or teams, there are some best practices designers can follow to streamline the process.

Apply User-Centric Thinking

Designers must keep end-users at the center of design decisions to ensure designs meet users’ needs. This human-centered mindset delivers products that users want while reducing costs on irrelevant UI components and features.

Practice Empathy

One of the ways to maintain a user-centered mindset is by empathizing with users. As designers progress through the UX design process, they can drift from focusing on users to designing features that look great but don’t serve a specific?user need.

By practicing empathy throughout the UX design process, designers stay focused on?solving users’ pain points.

Build a Design System

Design systems can significantly reduce time to market while enhancing consistency and coherency across the organization. If you can’t afford to?build a design system from scratch, consider using a themeable open-source component library like?MUI?or Bootstrap.

UXPin?has?built-in design libraries, including Material Design UI, Bootstrap, iOS, and Foundation so that design teams can build mockups and prototypes quickly.

Take prototyping to the next level using?UXPin Merge–a tool that connects UXPin’s design editor to a component library, so designers can build fully functioning prototypes their dev’s components.

Communicate and Collaborate with Devs

Communication and collaboration are vital for a successful UX design process. Designers must connect with other design teams and open communication with engineers, business managers, product teams, and stakeholders.

DesignOps?can help facilitate better communication and collaboration while streamlining other time-consuming operational and administrative tasks.

Enhancing the UX Design Process With UXPin

A successful UX process relies on tools that allow design teams to make changes and iterate fast.?UXPin is an end-to-end design solution, providing designers with features for every stage of the UX design process.

Fully Interactive Prototypes

Designers can use one of UXPin’s built-in design libraries or?import their dev’s component library?to start prototyping immediately. Because UXPin is code-based, prototypes feature higher fidelity and?more functionality?than image-based design tools.

Quality User Testing

With code-based prototypes, UX designers can conduct accurate, more comprehensive tests. Better quality testing means fewer errors and usability issues make it into the final product.

Insightful Stakeholder Feedback

Stakeholder feedback is crucial during the UX design process. If prototypes aren’t intuitive, stakeholders battle to understand design concepts that could impact buy-in and funding.

Whether you’re using UXPin, prototypes have significantly higher fidelity and interactivity than other popular design tools. In turn, designers enjoy meaningful, actionable feedback from stakeholders.

Level up Your UX Design Process

UXPin Merge allows designers to get better results during testing while streamlining the design handoff, thus reducing time to market and costs.?

Instead of designing from scratch, designers drag and drop components to build fully functioning code-based prototypes that look and work like the final product.?

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