[HN Gopher] A comprehensive list of UX design methods and delive...
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A comprehensive list of UX design methods and deliverables
Author : davesailer
Score : 112 points
Date : 2021-01-25 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (uxdesign.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (uxdesign.cc)
| intrepidhero wrote:
| I am disturbed by the number of times "user" is replaced with
| "consumer" and "computer program" with "company" or "brand".
| Language is important for keeping the goal in sight.
|
| There is a science to designing human computer interactions. But
| there is a subtle difference between wielding that science in the
| service of the humans in those interactions (users) and wielding
| it solely in the name of increasing the company's bottom line.
| The former will lead to a better product, will improve customer
| satisfaction and lead to sales. The later leads to a dystopian,
| exploitative relationship, even when it increases revenue. The
| difference is the goal: Serving users or serving shareholders.
| The language of UX design needs to be carefully crafted to keep a
| the focus on empathy with users.
| asoneth wrote:
| I definitely agree with the sentiment.
|
| Note that there has been debate in the field about the term
| "user" for decades. Some people object because it is ambiguous,
| some because it reduces people to their interaction with your
| software, others due to the connotation with drug use. (For
| example: https://medium.com/microsoft-design/we-have-customers-
| not-us...)
|
| I've had people replace instances of one with the other in my
| documents, so I don't read too much into it these days.
| buckminster wrote:
| Surely you're thinking of UI design. The term UX design was
| coined because it's not the same thing. You're right that UX
| design is not principally intended to benefit the user. That's
| by design.
| asoneth wrote:
| I haven't heard that perspective before; the 'U' in "UX"
| stands for "User".
|
| I think the term "User Experience" picked up in the late 90s
| (e.g. Don Norman et al's CHI95 paper) when folks felt that
| the term "interface" had become too narrow and implied a
| focus on screens and controls and excluded people and what
| they do with those screens & controls.
|
| The "human-computer interface" originally referred to the
| boundary where those two systems interfaced and included
| hardware, software, and wetware. But nowadays if you ask
| someone to point to the "user interface" they'll probably
| point at the screen.
|
| If you're interested, there seem to be a cottage industry of
| blog posts and infographics about the "difference between UI
| and UX" but in practice it seems that most people use them
| somewhat interchangeably and I'm not sure how much benefit
| the semantics debate provides in practice.
| erydo wrote:
| This view is over-simplistic. Many--perhaps most--products are
| designed to serve more than one kind of user.
|
| Obvious example: building an e-commerce platform. The merchant
| is a kind of user. The customer is a different kind of user on
| that same platform. Yes, they're humans, but they're not doing
| the same thing.
|
| _Any_ B2B or B2C type product will have at least two very
| distinct roles like that. And in those cases, arguing that
| everyone is just a person as a sort of moral position is
| destructively vague. It 's more difficult to serve someone's
| needs if you can't start to narrow down what they're trying to
| accomplish.
|
| While I totally agree with the sentiment that we shouldn't
| conflate personhood identically with their role in a product,
| solving useful problems _does_ require that you de-scope and
| discretize the interactions a bit.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Every time the term "UX" is dropped, what follows is
| incomprehensible vagueness dressed in bizarre jargon that would
| make postmodern grievance studies quiver in awe.
|
| > _Value Proposition Canvas:_
|
| > _A reductive process in the early stages of product definition
| that maps out the key aspects of it: what it is, who it is for,
| and when /where it will be used. Helps the team narrow down and
| create consensus around what the product will be._
|
| Is this perhaps a transformative critical framework that
| investigates a reductive analysis of social cohesion factors that
| lead to an embedded matrix of exploratory identity formation?
| heyn05tradamu5 wrote:
| I like how the example you used actually uses plain language
| "what it is, who it is for, and when/where it will be used",
| but because you approached this with the mindset that you're
| right and UX people dumb, you failed to see that and disproved
| your own assertion.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| There is always plain language in between terms such as
| "reductive process", "value proposition canvas", and "product
| definition", of which I have no idea what they mean.
| mvuijlst wrote:
| A value proposition canvas is a canvas (could be a poster,
| could be a whiteboard, whatever) on which you put what
| value you propose to deliver.
|
| A reductive process is a process where you take many ideas
| and boil them down to fewer ideas. The opposite would be
| something like a brainstorm, where you try to get more
| ideas.
|
| And I don't really think you _actually_ have no idea what
| "product definition" may mean. :)
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| And then it doesn't make sense.
|
| In your interpretation, a proposal of a value one
| attempts to deliver is a process wherein one takes many
| ideas, and boils them down to fewer ideas.
|
| That is not what the meaning of the term "proposal" is;
| no one uses it to mean a process wherein many ideas are
| reduced to fewer. A proposal is simply stating one's
| plans, not a discourse.
|
| > _And I don 't really think you actually have no idea
| what "product definition" may mean. :)_
|
| I normally have an idea, but not in this context, as it
| speaks of stages of a product definition. A definition
| does not have "stages"
| asoneth wrote:
| Technically it would have been more precise to define
| "Value Proposition" as "(The result of) a reductive
| process in the early stages of product definition
| that...".
|
| Having said that, this kind of syndoche where a process
| is described by its output doesn't seem particularly
| unusual or UX-specific. When a coworker says it'll take
| an hour to do requirements I know what they mean.
|
| I'm not sure why you think "definition" (1: the act of
| defining https://www.dictionary.com/browse/definition)
| cannot have stages.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Very well, so your interpretation now is that, contrary
| to what the page itself says, the definition of "value
| proposition" is rather to be taken the process that leads
| to a final "value proposition"?
|
| So essentially, your interpretation can be reduced to the
| advice "It is best to think about what one's product is,
| and whom it targets, before one makes a proposal about
| it."?
|
| If that be your interpretation, then that certainly does
| not follow from the text, and is contradictory with the
| interpretations others have given.
| asoneth wrote:
| I'm sorry, I would like to help but I can't figure out
| where you're getting tripped up since (to me) the various
| interpretations don't seem to differ much in meaning
| beyond the linguistic/semantic fuzziness that is common
| in informal communication.
| dgb23 wrote:
| There seems to be a strong focus on iterative process.
| Problems/needs are (actively) discovered and then boiled
| down to possible solutions/proposals or at least
| something that can be acted upon.
|
| The focus on communication and discourse is paramount,
| because UX brings the user to the forefront and then has
| to convince owners and implementers. This kind of
| convincing is important and often challenging, because
| there are often tradeoffs involved.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I fail to see the connexion between what you just wrote,
| and what I said that it does not make much sense to call
| a process wherein ideas are reduced in number a
| "proposition".
| albedoa wrote:
| > I normally have an idea, but not in this context, as it
| speaks of stages of a product definition. A definition
| does not have "stages"
|
| It's really difficult to understand your confusion here.
| "Definition" is referring the the act of defining, not
| the formal statement that results from that process. Are
| you reading it as the latter?
|
| Every product I have ever worked on had definition
| stages. How else does the formal definition come into
| being?
| heyn05tradamu5 wrote:
| The section you quoted defines exactly what it means by
| product definition - and the entire thing is a definition
| of value proposition canvas. If you can't understand the
| meaning of these things when they're clearly defined then I
| don't know how to help you.
| asoneth wrote:
| I work in UX so I'm poorly equipped to objectively evaluate
| whether the field's jargon is any better or worse than any
| other field.
|
| But my impression is that UX jargon is usually pretty self-
| explanatory but sometimes unnecessary e.g. I'm not sure we
| really needed to come up with new terms for "sensemaking"
| (adding meaning), "microcopy" (labels), "responsive"
| (adaptive), "design thinking" (thinking), etc.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I have very little direct experience with the UX specialization,
| although one could argue that everyone is somehow involved in it,
| I never worked directly with a UX Designer[0].
|
| If you squint, you can recognize this approach as an iterative
| specification for a product or a set of related products.
|
| Some interesting take-aways for me:
|
| - UX seems to put a lot of value on visualizing data, thought and
| processes in different forms. They range from simple, ad-hoc, to
| quite involved.
|
| - A huge part of this work revolves around communication and
| testing: getting the right feedback and then analyzing it.
|
| - In software, they should probably be directly talking to
| engineers and UI designers, to provide the right set of problems
| to solve. This is maybe a good way to cut off management
| hierarchies that understand neither (users and implementation).
|
| [0] I've also seen the term "Engineer", "Architect" and others
| associated with it, but from talking to a UX "Architect" from a
| large company, I found that the best description would be
| "Designer" or "Director", because even though there are sometimes
| data-driven inputs their bread and butter seem to be very design,
| and communication focused. Maybe "Analyst" is a good term too.
| beckingz wrote:
| There is a lot of value in visualizing information.
|
| Especially if you need to communicate that information with
| design, product, and engineering stakeholders who understand
| visual information better.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree. I also think the visualization space
| is vast and under-explored. Especially in the "hardest" cases
| like taming complexity, very abstract concepts and
| discovering new ideas.
| Geminidog wrote:
| This is just your standard formalization of a process to make it
| sound more professional and seem more legitimate.
|
| It's similar to agile.
| JacobSeated wrote:
| I am a multimedia designer, by education, and I tend to still
| dislike some of these methods. Often I find them to just be a
| distraction from getting actual work done. Does not mean I would
| not use some of them, but I really prefer to just get the work
| done.
| EFFALO wrote:
| can experiences be designed? or are they co-produced with the
| service/system?
| ThomPete wrote:
| Yes you can design different experiences on top of the
| service/system. Customer support, packaging, onboarding
| process, flows etc.
| csours wrote:
| Everything is UX. UX starts with underlying data analysis - see
| Taxonomy and Card Sorting on the linked page. It continues
| through the development process. It doesn't directly comment on
| service implementation, but it does help specify what those
| services need to deliver
| torwayburger wrote:
| I think so. Some examples of places where this has impact but
| is often overlooked could be when you change car brand. Or if
| you go from one phone OS to another. The UX features will be
| slightly different, and there will be a learning curve.
|
| Pulling down to update on feeds/pages/apps is as natural as
| clicking icons by now.
| cnorthwood wrote:
| Co-production is a form of design, no? You design within
| constraints and it should be happening in tandem with the
| development of the system so they both feed into one another.
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