User Experience Design is the thoughtful, process-oriented approach to figuring out the best way to help a user accomplish his or her goals while using your product. During user experience design there is no time spent on graphical details. Instead, all energy is spent making sure the user's objective is clearly understood and that a proposed solution can help the user accomplish it.
User Interface Design builds upon user experience design and begins to put positioning and placement into the solution. During this phase a UI designer will commonly employ "wire frames" to portray the proposed solution.
At Objective we consult with our clients to plan an appropriate UX/UI design process for the available budget, and work to design, test, and iterate until the end user's needs are met.
UX/UI Design Process
Done right, UX/UI design can be quite involved. Most people (designers included) think that doing UX design simply means doing some sketching and wireframing prior to the actual visual design. Not so. Proper UX/UI development involves a whole lot of information gathering in order to properly understand the user and then begin to design an experience that will allow the user to accomplish his/her goal while using the product.
- Initial Discovery: Through several working sessions we'll develop a project plan and a foundational understanding of who you believe your customers and are what their needs are.
- Persona Development: The degree to which we can define the various personas who will use your product will directly affect the success of your product. A good user experience is heavily dependent upon understanding those users and what it is they hope to accomplish using your product.
- Wireframing/Prototyping: This step may involve paper sketching and prototyping, low-fidelity wireframing, clickable prototypes, or other tools that are designed to quickly (and cheaply) figure out what the user needs and how to best provide it.
- User Testing: Depending on your budget and timeline this step might be fairly simplistic or it might be more thorough. The earlier we can involve real customers in the UX process, the more confident we can be in the deliverables we produce.
- User Interface Design: Once we're reasonably sure our prototyping and wireframing has uncovered any issues in the proposed user experience, we begin designing the actual user interface.
- Iteration: Throughout the UX and UI design processes, we'll iterate as many times as budget and timeline allows so that we can come as close to possible to guaranteeing success when the actual product is developed.
UX/UI Design Tools
Our UX/UI designers make use of many different tools in the pursuit of creating the best possible product for your customers.
- User research
- Personas
- Paper sketching
- Paper prototyping
- Wireframing
- Clickable prototyping
- High fidelity user interface design
We're located in Salt Lake City, Utah, but our UX/UI developers work for companies located all across America. Contact us to discuss your project.
