5 benefits of a UX review and how to go about it

There are a multitude of ways a service, product, website or app can be reviewed or given a ‘health check’. These vary from expert reviews, heuristic evaluations, competitor analysis, contextual inquiries, usability testing, online surveys and more.

Research findings can help validate or squash internal debates or design ideas, and provide direction for long-term business roadmaps and strategic initiatives.

In this medium article I share some of the many reasons a ‘health check’ or review can help your business.

Learn from people, design for people

Testing is important. You’ve probably heard it before and I’m sure you’ll hear it again. The importance of user testing and validating design has been well documented, but it’s still surprising how many people still don’t do it. One of the best ways to validate design is to get it in the hands of end users.

In this medium article I touch on a few things I've learned from sitting down real people using real products.

Empathy through experience maps

Considerable amounts of time, money and resource is put into designing individual touchpoints for customers, yet often the experience across all touchpoints and how they interconnect is lost, resulting in key moments in the journey going unnoticed. The process of experience mapping helps uncover these key moments or pain points for customers, and provides insight into how they can be designed for.

In this medium article I talk about what an experience map is, the benefits of one and how to use it.

Effective ways of communicating research

The ability to communicate with people is one of the most important traits a person can possess. As a designer, communicating your work back to the client is one time you’ll draw on these abilities. There’s no doubt presenting is one of the hardest parts of being a designer — check out an excellent article on presenting and ‘how not to screw them up’ from Mike Monteiro.

Imagine you have just completed a piece of research and are preparing to present the work. How are you going to communicate the insights and all these nuggets of gold in a creative and engaging way? It’s a question many of us have faced and there’s no one way to do it. There are many different methods and people tend to stick to what works for them.

In this medium article I talk about some approaches I've found useful when communicating research back to clients or team members.

How scenarios help the design process

Have you ever dealt with a company and thought “how on earth are these different departments not communicating and so unaware of what each other is doing?” Chances are you have, more than you care to remember.

A useful tool to reduce these types of experiences is using scenarios during the design process. Scenarios help to understand and illustrate how people experience products and services at a deeper, more contextual level, and how their needs and expectations change over time. In this medium article I talk about how to put scenarios together and why they are such a useful tool in product design.