While designing the UX of a website, the content is like the ‘Soap bar’ and the packaging, the UX design you come up with. Here are some of the reasons why UX designers and product owners need to start adopting a content-first approach –

1. Content helps shape the design

When it comes to designing meaningful, functional interfaces that solve the need of your user, content reigns supreme. The problem with Lorem Ipsum text is that it fills the space you allot it, but it remains meaningless. Also, the number of characters of the real-time content is not known. Therefore, when you replace the placeholder text with final content in the HTML/CSS stage, there is a high probability that the number of characters may exceed or not fit into the allotted space, and this could break the layout.

In the context of designing interfaces, content includes the text to be shown on the page as well as visuals like images and videos that need to go on the website. When you lock the content, it becomes easier to create a customized look for your website keeping the user and his/her needs in mind – the colours to be used, the design elements such as call-to-action buttons, vectors, etc. The style of the content – the tone of voice of the text, and visuals helps with the style of the UI Design as well.

2. Content helps chart out the user journey efficiently

Although, aesthetics and visuals of a site have the ability to impress a user when they first visit a website, or use a mobile application, what determines whether the user will complete the task they came for, and then become a repeated user depends upon the value he is provided, and that is decided by the messaging on the website. Charting out a customer journey with placeholder text is therefore, a near-impossible, highly flawed approach. Content is what keeps a user hooked.

3. Content-first approach helps in effective responsive design

Deciding on content prior to starting the design helps decide on break-points in text layout, while designing for various device-sizes. Using Lorem Ipsum initially, and then replacing with final content later usually, ends up in the designer having to re-structure the entire design to suit various screen sizes. This is akin to a complete re-design, in most cases! Trimming content blindly, from a desktop-design to fit into smaller screen-sizes, in the last minute results in a lot of meaningful content being scraped away. This during times when 80–90% of users visit your website through Mobile devices is a highly erroneous method.

What if finalizing content is a long and tedious task for the product owner, especially in Startups?

The agile UX practices encourage quick prototyping, testing and iterating. Even, if the content created is not the final draft decided upon by the content team, it is still meaningful. This draft will help design quick prototypes for testing out the product. Number of characters and context of the content should be finalized at this stage. The final content can then be a variation of this draft, within the stipulated character limit. This is a flexible approach and helps in quick testing of prototypes, provided it is agreed upon, before the design process starts, that the final content will not be drastically different from the draft used to design the wire-frames.

At the end of the day, how ‘beautiful’ a website looks doesn’t guarantee users, or end customers for the product or service. Decide on the business goal and conduct your initial User research based on it. Chart out user personas, decide on tone of voice of the interface, and start working on the content that helps your target user accomplish their goals, in the most efficient manner. Content really is King. The sooner designers as well as product owners understand this, the better.

Have you been given a Design brief by a client without meaningful content and want to talk about it? The best thing to do is follow me on twitter and send a DM.

Designfully yours,
Surya Pillai

The post Why you should design the content first for better experiences? appeared first on Surya Pillai - UI and UX Designer.

Here are the top 5 mistakes I have come across multiple times:

1. Not being able to provide a clear, focussed Product brief to your Designer

As the owner of the product, it is natural to feel that every feature or information about your product is vital. In some cases, there is a lack of clarity of what is to be communicated to the users. This leads to a confused brief that is modified or changed multiple times during the design process. In the end, the Website or Mobile App, has information crammed into it in a haphazard manner, with no clear end-goal. This eventually leads to negligible recurring users, and high bounce rates.

Instead, think through your product brief, identify one end-goal and communicate this clearly to your designer. This requires unbiased and focused customer research. The entire website should revolve around that end-goal. Pen your ideas down in a thoughtful and structured manner and have detailed discussions with your designer. Although, this might appear like a tedious process, it will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

2. Not providing meaningful content to your designer

Very often, Product owners are so consumed by how the finished product should ‘look and feel’ that they neglect one crucial element that will make or break the design – The content.

This is a major problem area in the UX Design process. Content includes the text and visual media (images, videos, etc.) that goes on your Website or Mobile App. Placeholder text like ‘Lorem Ipsum’ just won’t do! Providing your designer with actual, real-time content will enable them to do come up with a meaningful User journey that is specific to your Business goals. Once the design is done using place-holder text, replacing the text at the last minute with real content often breaks the layout and leads to a lot of re-work. This is a big deterrent while designing for multiple devices (Responsive Design), considering 80-90% traffic comes through Mobile devices, these days.

Instead, spend considerable time working on the content and finalise it in the UX Design stage itself, before you begin the Visual Design.

3. When personal tastes overtake what’s best for the customer’s experience

The major difference between Art and Design is that Art is a representation of self, and Design keeps end-user in mind. It is natural for a Product owner to be in love with their product and have certain design ideas that reflect their personalities. However, they sometimes overlook factors such as the end-user’s behavioural patterns, their needs and the industry the product belongs to. Decisions made based on personal preferences and assumptions are often detrimental to the finished product. In their quest to design a product that represents their tastes, the journey of the user is compromised and leads to a bad User Experience, which in turn, will affect conversion.

Instead, invest in User research, get out onto the field and find out what is best for your customer. Step into their shoes, welcome constructive criticism, and create a prototype that can be tested and iterated upon, before moving on to the final UI (Visual) Design.

4. Prioritizing aesthetics over User Experience

“If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.” – Ralf Speth

I have come across multiple instances where UX design is neglected or entirely skipped and the client only wants the Visual Design (UI). What the Product owner needs to understand is that designing the User Experience, which involves Information Hierarchy, User Personas, User Journeys and Wireframes is the foundation upon which you build your User Interface. Neglecting this often leads to digital products that lack substance and have a flawed User Journey. Trust your designer, when they insist upon spending time on UX before moving to the UI design. They are professionals, who are trained in the subject and know the importance of a strong UX foundation.

‘Prototype-test-iterate’ should be the approach you follow. Investing in a low fidelity prototype at the very beginning of the design process will save a lot of time, efforts and money that will go into re-working on your product after the UI phase.

5. Asking for major changes in design flow in the Visual Design phase, after the UX is locked

When you are building a new product or adding a new feature to your existing product, ad hoc changes are possible, because you want to constantly come up with better ways to execute it. But if major changes are done after your Visual Design is built over the UX wireframe, it leads to a lot of re-work and increases the timelines considerably, not to mention, the coding efforts. Last minute increments often break the flow of a product and a significant change on one page, would mean that you have to change other pages that are dependent on the page being changed. I have witnessed a lot of Startups being struck by ‘analysis paralysis’ and not releasing even a Minimum Viable Product for long periods of time, because of these constant design changes. Instead, release an MVP as soon as you can and evaluate the performance of your product after you see some traction. These will be informed decisions based on Website or App analytics and not just based on your whim and assumptions!

To conclude, I’d like to underline what I always recommend to my clients –

• Invest in creating meaningful content and UX
• Release an MVP
• Test it out and make decisions based on data gathered from real users

Have you made these mistakes or have witnessed product owners make these mistakes? Let me know in the comments below, or reach out to me via DM on Twitter.

Designfully yours,

Surya Pillai

The post 5 common mistakes that product owners make while designing a website or mobile application appeared first on Surya Pillai - UI and UX Designer.

“How do I explain what I do at a party? The short version is that I say I humanize technology.” — Fred Beecher

Design, unlike art, is not just a representation of the designer’s own self or personal ideas. One cannot just get to work as soon as a brief is provided and then submit the design files once the work is done without any communication in between these phases.

A UX Designer has to be vocal right from the beginning –

1. Ask relevant questions to understand the design brief better

2. Communicate with users while conducting user research

3. Coordinate with other departments like the developers and product managers to execute the project successfully

4. Present your design ideas articulately

5. Conduct user tests to understand the pain-points of users while using the product

If you expect it to be a desk job, that doesn’t require much communication, then I am afraid, that is very far from the reality of what a design process entails.

2.Passion or hunger for excellence

Getting to that ‘Wow’ moment takes a considerable amount of time and effort. An innate passion for solving problems is a big plus in the field of UX.

You have to be the kind of person that thinks design can change the world. Only that level of enthusiasm will keep you going in the seemingly never-ending Create-Iterate-Test cycles involved in Product design.

A UX Designer will have test out multiple solutions to come up with the ‘Winner’ — For example — a landing page that gives you high conversions or sales.

And that leads us to our next soft skill — patience.

3. Patience

Patience is a virtue in any field, but in design, even more so!

Conducting multiple user tests, tweaking the product, constantly communicating with other teams, awaiting feedback from users until you come up with the perfect solution — all need a tremendous amount of patience.

You will, at all times, be thinking about ways to make a product better. And that requires constantly analyzing test results, and keeping an open mind about the fact that there is no such thing as a ‘perfect product’.

Even the best of the products in the market need to be repeatedly modified to make them better and relevant to the changing times.

4. Curiosity or an inquisitive mind

The field of User experience is always evolving. New concepts, ideas are always hitting the market. In order to keep up with these changes and incorporating them into your Design process, you need to have a sense of curiosity, and a hunger to keep learning.

Only a curious mind can constantly ask insightful questions to stakeholders, and engage in a more in-depth manner with users to understand various problems that crop up in the product design.

5. Being a Team player

Product Design can never be a one-man show.

It involves collaboration between multiple stakeholders — designers, developers, product owners, marketing team and the users. You will have to engage with each one of these stakeholders at various points of the design process.

For this, you will have to be a collaborator who engages in respectful, insightful discussions with various teams.

Need to code your product a certain way? Talk to the developer. Require feedback on how your product is making life easier for your users? Engage your user through Users tests.

And these discussions will happen on a daily basis, during the design process, and one needs to be a collaborator to keep up.

6. Flexibility

A great UX Leader is someone who can adapt to changing times. This involves keeping up with the ever-evolving technology trends, new design tools, changing user behavior and repeated iterations to the product based on analyzing user data.

Every Design project brings with it, new challenges. No two design processes can ever be identical.

The industry the product is based in, the user demographics, user’s interests, needs, aspirations and pain points are all factors that affect the design process. The UX designer has to be flexible enough to adapt to these changes.

7. Open-Mindedness

What differentiates a UX Designer from a Marketer or an Artist is that they cannot be added to the left brain or right brain club. It has to be a combination of the two — creativity accompanied by rationality.

Unlike an artist, a designer cannot only think about self-fulfillment, or unlike a Marketer — cannot only make decisions based on numbers. There has to be a middle ground — one that involves a lot of ambiguity.

This is because UX, at the end of the day, is human-centered — and designing for humans cannot be an approach where everything can be predicted beforehand. This requires open-mindedness to try out new ideas and perspectives.

8. Assertiveness

This quality is essential for most leadership roles. Assertiveness and standing up for oneself is something everyone could benefit from.

With respect to UX Designers, assertiveness becomes all the more important because of the sheer number of people you are dealing with — Product owners, development teams, marketers, etc. Imagine the amount of feedback and ideas that will be thrown at you to consider.

The UX person is like the advocate of the users and their needs. For a great product to be designed, a Designer has to be heard. And to be heard, they need to have a voice and be assertive.

9. Humility

Humility is a highly underrated virtue for a UX Designer.

It is very easy to fall in love with the product that you designed. It’s not always easy to welcome criticism. In such instances, humility is key.

Being a human-centered discipline, it is important that a Designer doesn’t come across as pushy during User tests. Humility makes users more comfortable to open up and point out problem areas in the product design. And this is vital in improving your product.

10. Empathy

In today’s times, when the focus is shifting from Intelligent quotient(IQ) to Emotional quotient (EQ) of digital products, empathy has become a key skill for a UX designer, up there on the list with technical skills.

To create a product that makes the life of your user easier, you need to first, step into their shoes and think and feel like them.

Simply put, empathy allows a designer to understand target users better. And that is the foundation upon which your the design process should be based on.

Here is a bonus skill that is a personal favorite –

11. Storytelling

Great User experiences tell great stories. It is an essential part of the design process — especially at the stage when you are creating User personas. The more detailed these character sketches and their back-stories are, the better.

Detailed narratives provide that much needed human touch to an otherwise technology-driven field.

Stories help document the needs, motivations and key pain-points or potential design flaws, and make you better equipped to design a solution keeping users at the center of the design process.

Conclusion

The key to being an effective UX Designer is not only about how skilled you are at Adobe XD, Balsamic or Sketch.

It’s about how you interact with various stakeholders, how involved and keen you are at trying out new ideas and concepts, how you react to feedback and how much of a human touch you can bring to an otherwise technical product design process.

These qualities will be instrumental in defining your position as a UX Leader among a multitude of designers crowding the market.

As designers, can you think of any other soft-skills that have been instrumental in your growth? Please enlighten our design community by commenting below or discuss with me over Twitter.

Designfully yours,

Surya Ravindran Pillai

The post Top 10 soft skills that a UX leader must possess appeared first on Surya Pillai - UI and UX Designer.