Don't Just "Make It Pretty"

Why User Experience (UX) is so important: "Fidelity is not about graphic design; it's about importance. It's about all the things that make software successful and transformative. By reducing the fidelity of the Graphical User Interface (GUI), you bring a lens of high-fidelity to the only thing that truly matters: user experience." That quote from Ben Nadel captures the core distinction between UX and UI design.

Here is an analogy: UX is synonymous with the ingredients and type of a cake and its contents — the baking soda, powder, flour, sugar, butter, and eggs. If your target audience is allergic to nuts, don't make a walnut carrot cake. UI is the presentation of the cake, like the frosting and adornments. The cake you'd make for a 5-year-old boy and a 70-year-old woman probably look and taste differently.

This post is geared toward clients seeking a designer, specifically for organizations looking to build user-friendly designs on a budget. There are all sorts of designers and terms associated with design used interchangeably (and sometimes incorrectly), so it is important to understand what you'll need before you start looking. The steps below represent a designer's process when approaching a new project. If you do these yourself ahead of time — before you hire a designer — you'll save project time and money.

Step one: Before hiring a designer, compile a recent and comprehensive competitive analysis of tools similar to what you'll be producing, a clearly defined target market, and a collection of user personas with the top persona identified. The person in charge of this pre-work should be the Product Manager or whoever is responsible for the success of the tool.

Step two: Identify the most important objective of the product. Define a "critical path" or objective statement that all relevant parties agree on. For example, the critical path for a new shoe company might be: Users can easily purchase shoes from the product page.

Step three: Here's where you'll need a designer. Conduct a Sketching Session Using Design Thinking with relevant parties. If your organization wants to save money, have your PM or the most design-oriented person on your team facilitate these exercises. The intent is to understand how your users or customers approach your product or service. Once you discover how it's currently approached, the team is responsible to make that user journey as delightful and frictionless as possible.

While looking for UX designers, make sure they exhibit the suite of materials you'll need. Ask if they have experience with user testing and how they approach a test. You're looking for a designer who can test without bias and generate non-leading scripts. For example, a leading UX test question when testing a "Submit" button: "Please submit your form." A non-leading question: "Now that you have completed the form, what would you do next?" Phrasing a task that includes verbs contained within the user interface aids the user in navigation and may skew results.

A UX designer's primary goal is to fully understand users, create the optimal experience for their critical path, and subsequently test designs without an agenda. User testing with five people is adequate; beyond that number, there is a lot of redundancy and results can plateau.

At the point where you have tested and iterated on your low-fidelity mocks, they are comprehensive to users but all grayscale. You have no brand or emotional appeal. This is a great opportunity to loop in your copywriter, marketing team, or any other branding experts so there is cohesion among all facets of the brand. Think about the behavioral psychology behind what you are offering. What feeling do you want your users to have when using or consuming your product? Products with great branding and user experience define those feelings early on and think through that lens for every customer interaction.

While giving feedback, you may be tempted to say, "I don't like that." Resist the urge. Pause, think about what in the designs is working for your target audience and what seems unclear. Try to articulate why to the designer. Your designer will produce better results with specific feedback — and love you for it. Now you're ready to venture off into the UX/UI world.