Question about UX.

What are the first steps you follow when you start a UX project? Let's say I get a UX project online- what should I do before the sketching phase? Should I first do research? If yes, how am I supposed to do it online?

mood board.

Personally, I copy every little design idea I can find. Ot isn't how it should be done, but it works perfectly for me.

P.s. copying idea isn't copying design. They are different things.

Gogol said:

Personally, I copy every little design idea I can find. Ot isn't how it should be done, but it works perfectly for me.

P.s. copying idea isn't copying design. They are different things.

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Okay. Let's say I find this client on Upwork and they look for a UX designer. How am I supposed to do the research? I mean I know I can ask them different questions but what about the users? Can I skip user research?

Pinky123 said:

Okay. Let's say I find this client on Upwork and they look for a UX designer. How am I supposed to do the research? I mean I know I can ask them different questions but what about the users? Can I skip user research?

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Well, I am a developer; and not a designer. So, I won't get those projects to begin with. If Absolutely have to, then I will research his competition first. Let's say he wants a pharma app. I will first go through all other pharma apps in the same market. I will see what works for me, and what does not. I will then make wireframes with the widgets/screens that work.

i had now the same case, have hired a UX Designer for 10usd per hour for our project. Result= The guy wasnt very eperienced about marketing, CTR, ect..., so the design which he have made, needed to be reworked. So he speend together with me around one week more (of course for free) to reworke all.

When you want to be a good designer you should know about marketing, psycholigy, ect. As there are no "junior" designers, like for example junior devs.

Pinky123 said:

What are the first steps you follow when you start a UX project? Let's say I get a UX project online- what should I do before the sketching phase? Should I first do research? If yes, how am I supposed to do it online?

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The first step is usually "research". Now if it's a startup or simple site; the client might not have willingness to conduct user research because of time or budget constraints. So you need to discuss it with them first and try to create their "ideal customer" personas. If they got the budget; you may still ask some simple questions and then brainstorm to figure out where those customers hang out online. Is it forums? subreddits? fb groups or slack workspaces? and get some users to interview with you (you may offer them some monetary compensation etc).

That's the usual research I do and mostly it's the first option to just set a meeting for half or one hour and get as much data as possible. After than some low fidelity wireframes with balsamiq to get a direction to go.

One more thing, do not try to do everything for pennies; honestly, if the pay is in single digit per hour... this isn't even worth it. Client just wants some quick wireframe and mockup to give to dev at that point.

M0n3y. said:

The first step is usually "research". Now if it's a startup or simple site; the client might not have willingness to conduct user research because of time or budget constraints. So you need to discuss it with them first and try to create their "ideal customer" personas. If they got the budget; you may still ask some simple questions and then brainstorm to figure out where those customers hang out online. Is it forums? subreddits? fb groups or slack workspaces? and get some users to interview with you (you may offer them some monetary compensation etc).

That's the usual research I do and mostly it's the first option to just set a meeting for half or one hour and get as much data as possible. After than some low fidelity wireframes with balsamiq to get a direction to go.

One more thing, do not try to do everything for pennies; honestly, if the pay is in single digit per hour... this isn't even worth it. Client just wants some quick wireframe and mockup to give to dev at that point.

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Thanks a lot.

1. Can I use a survey tool so that I get feedback from different users? (in case there is a research phase)

2. Do you do sitemaps, userflows and customer journeys after the persona?

Pinky123 said:

What are the first steps you follow when you start a UX project? Let's say I get a UX project online- what should I do before the sketching phase? Should I first do research? If yes, how am I supposed to do it online?

Click to expand...

Pinky123 said:

Okay. Let's say I find this client on Upwork and they look for a UX designer. How am I supposed to do the research? I mean I know I can ask them different questions but what about the users? Can I skip user research?

Click to expand...

No.

Normally when a client is looking for a UX designer they have an understanding of what they want (If it's someone just throwing that "buzz word" around just avoid them) So you want to establish the following things:

- As client what is the product, sector or niche, target audience and user age group (also ask if they have spent any money on market research IF so and they have ask if you can have a copy of the data)

- As the client do they know who IF any are competitors and indirect competitor ask them if they provide or offer anything similar and what IF any they like about competitor and what they dont like.

- Also ask client for any brand guidelines if they have any (i.e colours, logos, fonts, spacings etc) this is rare but it depends on the type of client who wants the UX stuff from my own experience they tend to have this information

Now you have some data you want to go off and conduct your own research.

- You want to look at competitors

- Similar apps marketed towards the same age group or audience i.e if its for women look at women apps, if its male only look for male only.

- Next you want to look at "popular" apps / websites or whatever by searching "best navigation" or "navigation trends 2020" or whatever it maybe and you want to start collecting off a bunch of ideas.

- Also if the client is after data heavy presentation you want to look at that to get some ideas to handle a mass amount of data for example.

ONCE you got all of that in place you want to start doing some rapid wireframes.

Send over wireframes with a bunch of into to the client explaining what's going on and where possible show basic animations or swipe actions etc. Use that with evidence and what other info client has given you to back up your wireframe layouts.

Hopefully you get them approved and once thats does you can move on to start to visualise the final layouts i.e turning shapes to objects, text boxes to text and so on and then provide the final designs for approval to the client.

At least thats how I would do it.

Pinky123 said:

Thanks a lot.

1. Can I use a survey tool so that I get feedback from different users? (in case there is a research phase)

2. Do you do sitemaps, userflows and customer journeys after the persona?

Click to expand...

1. Yes, of course you can. Not every user is comfortable for calls especially if we're not paying them money directly. Google forms should be good enough. Make sure to design good questions and answers inclusive of all communities ( e.g. the question is "What's your gender?" so give more options than just "male/female"; at least option to skip); you can't also change or rearrange the question in the moment as we can do on direct conversation so yeah ask better questions.

2. My usual UX workflows can be described as ( I don't do much UX nowadays, in freelance web dev work mostly; it might not be "industry best practice though" ):-
start with research ( create 2-3 personas -> some journey maps; i don't do any empathy etc maps unless i have good amount of data and time -> get a sense of copy/content client is gonna fill in website )
after than i create a sitemap ( or "information architecture" as people call it ) and rough golden user flow with the info i have available from client, content and journey maps.
then i get to wireframes ( i really like google's '8 Crazy minutes' technique in early phase. )

M0n3y. said:

1. Yes, of course you can. Not every user is comfortable for calls especially if we're not paying them money directly. Google forms should be good enough. Make sure to design good questions and answers inclusive of all communities ( e.g. the question is "What's your gender?" so give more options than just "male/female"; at least option to skip); you can't also change or rearrange the question in the moment as we can do on direct conversation so yeah ask better questions.

2. My usual UX workflows can be described as ( I don't do much UX nowadays, in freelance web dev work mostly; it might not be "industry best practice though" ):-
start with research ( create 2-3 personas -> some journey maps; i don't do any empathy etc maps unless i have good amount of data and time -> get a sense of copy/content client is gonna fill in website )
after than i create a sitemap ( or "information architecture" as people call it ) and rough golden user flow with the info i have available from client, content and journey maps.
then i get to wireframes ( i really like google's '8 Crazy minutes' technique in early phase. )

Click to expand...

Thank you so much.

M0n3y. said:

1. Yes, of course you can. Not every user is comfortable for calls especially if we're not paying them money directly. Google forms should be good enough. Make sure to design good questions and answers inclusive of all communities ( e.g. the question is "What's your gender?" so give more options than just "male/female"; at least option to skip); you can't also change or rearrange the question in the moment as we can do on direct conversation so yeah ask better questions.

2. My usual UX workflows can be described as ( I don't do much UX nowadays, in freelance web dev work mostly; it might not be "industry best practice though" ):-
start with research ( create 2-3 personas -> some journey maps; i don't do any empathy etc maps unless i have good amount of data and time -> get a sense of copy/content client is gonna fill in website )
after than i create a sitemap ( or "information architecture" as people call it ) and rough golden user flow with the info i have available from client, content and journey maps.
then i get to wireframes ( i really like google's '8 Crazy minutes' technique in early phase. )

Click to expand...

I'm sorry for the late reply but 2 more questions - Should I ask the client if he wants me to do user research? Should I explain him that I'm using google forms so that I gain user feedback? I think all clients are totally different - maybe I should discuss the goals and deliverables first? Or just tell the client what steps I follow?

And by the way - do you deliver everything at once?

I'm sorry but I'm new to this.

Pinky123 said:

I'm sorry for the late reply but 2 more questions - Should I ask the client if he wants me to do user research? Should I explain him that I'm using google forms so that I gain user feedback? I think all clients are totally different - maybe I should discuss the goals and deliverables first? Or just tell the client what steps I follow?

And by the way - do you deliver everything at once?

I'm sorry but I'm new to this.

Click to expand...

I would propose a plan to the client for their feedback, something like, and give a brief description of how you're going to do each stage of the plan:

Resarch Phase
- Understand project objectives
- Understand users
- Understand competitors

Design Phase
- Brainstorming
- Sketching
- Create user flows and wireframes

Feedback Phase
- Present results of previous phases for feedback and iteration

Certainly understanding the clients expectations at the beginning is very important - without a good interaction it's easy to end up delivering something different then they expect, which generally results in disappointment.