Hey guys!... Have ever wondered why people always collect feedback at the end of every class, speeches, performance, and bla..bla...That's what we are going to look for in this post. It is important to interact with your users during the design process,
different ways of doing it, and how to represent different user groups with personas. The parts we're going to the cover are the importance of user feedback, user research methods, and creating personas.
User Feedback:-
Let's start with the importance of user feedback. The first step in the discovery phase is to understand who your
users are going to be. It is a common trap to design for yourself, which may work well if the user is similar to you,
but it is more likely to miss out on a huge portion of needs or fail to address problems that you haven't seen
because you are too close to the issue.
So research to try and find out what needs you are filling for them, what are their pain points right now? Are they
familiar or brand new to the concept? Have they tried this technology before? What age, nationality, hobbies, or
activities do they have?
Remember, your users may vary. Try to understand any commonalities or differences that they may have so
that you can cater to them.
Input from representatives of real users is by far the easiest and safest way to ensure that, before you build
anything, you're are on the right track.
Note:- According to a study carried out by Deloitte, customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those not focused on the customer
Research Methods:-
Moving on to user research methods. There are many ways you can learn about your users. First, try to
decide what's important, and then choose which approach is best. Interviews or focus groups with typical users
are a great way to start.
Now, this can be with a variety of members of the public, staff from a company, or even your friends. It completely
depends on your project. Surveys and questionnaires about what they do right now and how they feel about it.
Market research,
using reports and statistics, or anything else that is available.
Watching them use existing sites or apps can also give you a lot of information. Often what people say they do
and what they actually do is very different.
Formal lab-based usability studies can track people's eye gaze and emotions as they interact if you need some
serious numerical data.
Remember not to try and lead the user into answers with your questions. Try and stay away from things like,
wouldn't it be great if the product did this? And go more towards questions that don't lead them anywhere, such
as, what are your frustrations? What would you like the product to do?
Okay. Let's get into the methods.
- Observation
- Understanding
- Analysis
Observation:-
The first step to conducting research is learning to observe the world around us. Much like beginning photographers, beginning researchers need to learn how to see. Observation may seem like a simple skill, but it can be clouded by unconscious biases that everyone has. Design researchers train themselves to observe and take notes so that they can later find patterns across seemingly diverse groups of people.
Understanding:-
Much like observation, understanding is something we do all the time in our daily lives. We strive to understand our coworkers, our families, and our friends, often trying to grasp a point of contention or an unfamiliar concept. But for UX researchers, understanding has less to do with disagreements and more to do with the mental models.
Analysis:-
Research on its own can be valuable, but to use the insights to inform design, it needs to be analyzed and ultimately presented to a larger team. The analysis is the process by which the researcher identifies patterns in the research, proposes possible rationale or solutions, and makes recommendations. Some analysis techniques include creating personas or scenarios, describing mental models, or providing charts and graphs that represent statistics and user behaviors. Remember all these researches are valuable only if it is shared. It is not going to do any good if it is locked in the cabinet or in the drawer.
Creating Personas:-
You can't have all of your users give input, especially if you're marketing
to a huge audience base. But there are ways of describing different types of users, so you can make sure your
design works for them. These are called personas.
Essentially, they're a profile of an example user, a story about who they are, what motivates them, what brands
they like or preferences they have, what are their pain points, or any other information to help you characterize
them. Now, you can have anywhere between one to a dozen personas, depending on your project. But the more
flavor and life you give to your personas, the more you can tailor your design to them.
Skeleton for a Persona:-
Know the users: who are they? Why would they want to use your product? What do they want to achieve by using it? How can they find out about your product?
Identify common factors: look for specific and repeatable metrics to discover common factors and then separate all possible groups.
Narrow your search: Filter the groups. You don’t need too many UX personas. The research process will only distract you from your goal.
Make it specific: Select a suitable person to represent your group and give this person a name. Choose an appropriate image of a person to represent a named group. Describe their character, their likes, dislikes (even the name of their dog). Make this UX Persona seem like a real person.
If you do have less time to research, it is still worth having a high-level summary of different types of users. Mobile
phones, for example, you may want to break into business, casual, and devoted users, who all have very different
characteristics and motivations. And although this example is far less detailed than the previous one, personas
are still useful.
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