User Journey & Visual Design

USER JOURNEY:-        

            We're going to look at breaking down the goals and requirements into the steps a user needs to go through to carry out certain tasks on a journey. So by now, from your goals and requirements, you should have a fairly clear idea of what tasks a user needs to carry out. The steps they do to carry out these tasks are called a user journey. This is literally the journey users go on while they interact with you.

              Now, at this stage, this isn't a design of your screen layouts. We're really just focusing on the function of each step and how they link together. The key skill for this is to really think logically and be very clear about what's necessary and in what order things happen. So now, let's look at an example of a user journey. Think about the goal of buying some new trainers. The user journey steps might be arriving at the website, type in the product name, look at the photos of the trainers, add them to your basket, try and check out, log in, make your payments, and get your confirmation email. That process is called the journey. 

                      Another journey with some offline parts might be the returns process, where you need to think about printing the returns label and physically going to the post office. Hopefully, you can see in that online journey that there might be some alternate paths. So maybe instead of typing in the product name, they might want to browse around and look at different products. Or they might not be registered with you, and instead of logging in, they need to sign up for an account. That simple online journey we talked through is what we often call the happy path. And it might be the main goal of your website. But it's not always how things go. 

                                 

                    It's really important to remember these alternate paths or how to handle it when things go wrong because that might make the difference between you keeping and losing your customer. What if they type the product name in wrong, or the thing they want is out of stock or discontinued? You don't want to lose them, so maybe you can give them a nice message to tell them when something's coming back in stock or offer them some alternatives. What if the payment fails? It might not even be their fault. As wonderful as technology is, it can go wrong. So it's really important not to frustrate them by losing all the contents of their basket or showing them a really scary error message. So make sure when designing your journeys, you think about all of these alternate paths.

Visual Design:-

                   Visual design is about implementing text, colors, and images in a way that enhances a design or interaction. As a field, it has grown out of both user interface (UI) design and graphic design. The first and foremost goal of product design is to make interfaces usable the user’s eye should be drawn to the correct information and functionality. To make it happen, visual designers prioritize content on a page through size, color, and the use of negative space.

Typography - describes what you use for writing text: body text, headlines, and buttons. This includes things such as font, text sizes, and colors.

Colors - are something you can use to draw attention or categorize items, and color schemes are also important for your branding.

Image styles - are really important for the look and feel of your page. So are you using, for example, photography or a cartoon image?

Spaces, shapes, and lines - are ways to construct and visually divide your page and can help add clarity or emphasis

Symbols - are icons you can use for menus, user actions, or content categories – these should be familiar visual cues to help a user

Impact of Visual Design:-

                          How you communicate with your users through graphics or visuals is incredibly important. This is based on your understanding of your users and knowing how you want to interact with them and how they should feel during those interactions. Graphic and visual design is a way of you telling your users how they should feel about you and your product before they even get a chance to read your content. This can make or break the experience for your users. On the one hand, it can lead to a trustful experience and delight, if you set the right expectations. But on the other hand, it can lead to mistrust (e.g. poor or inappropriate branding) and misunderstanding (e.g. if your visual design is cluttered or unclear).