Category: UX

My major project will be a website service which provides skincare related content with a search functionality to help users narrow down what methods and products are best suited for them. After finalising the concept for my major project, the next step is to define the problem that the website will solve, frame a solution, and outline my target audience. This article will discuss key processes associated with user experience design and will also outline how I will implement them into my own major project. Through research and analysis, I will form my user experience design which will be integrated into my major project as this stage is critical to the development of the project.

My approach to creating this user experience design proposal will follow the Design Council’s double diamond which indicates four parts to the design process: discovery, definition, development and delivery (Design Council, 2019). I believe that following this process will help me plan my user research more effectively, create detailed user profiles and design a good user centred experience.

Part 1 User Research

Research context & objectives

The first part to the double diamond design process is to gather data and to uncover more about existing problems and what variables can affect them in the eyes of the user (Justinmind, 2018). To collect the right information from users, my initial task is to pinpoint my research context and objectives, which will help me define a clear goal for what I want my research aims to be. For stage I will be following the research canvas model.

During the UX research workshops, the importance of setting objectives for research was highlighted as a significant part of the UX design process. In the context of working in the industry, setting research objectives can aid a team of researchers in working together to achieve the same goal. I think that setting clear research objectives will help me to figure out what questions I want to answer (Anderson, 2019) and filter the research methodology. My website will be driven by a balance of both data and content for people who want to browse and understand skincare products available on the market. The impact that I hope to achieve is essentially to provide a straightforward and easy to use glossary for skincare. For this project, conducting research will help me identify what other blogs and websites lack, through understanding pain points, needs, behaviours, motivations, triggers, and barriers.

User experience research objectives can either fall under evaluative, exploratory, or generative research. Generative research includes research conducted to generate more information about users that we did not previously know. Generative or ‘open-ended’ research consists of conducting interviews, diary studies, and ethnographies. On the other hand, evaluative research sets out to find possible gaps or issues in a solution (Rick Dzekman, 2019). Evaluative research, often called ‘close-ended’ activities include usability testing, surveys, focus groups. I think that having a mix of open-ended and closed-ended objectives will be best as I’m at the beginning of my project development so I can conduct some preliminary research (open-ended) to help build a prototype and then conduct user testing (close-ended) at a later stage. Furthermore, for my major project my research objectives may be;

1. To explore and understand the end-to-end journey of why and how people invest in skincare.
2. To validate my assumptions regarding how people learn about skin care products using the internet.
3. To evaluate the ease-of-use of my website, navigation, usability, and pain points.

Methodology

The method of research is another important aspect of the user experience design because it allows a researcher to outline how they approach the research itself. In most cases, the chosen methodology of a project will depend on aspects such as the resources and technologies available to the researcher so these are things to consider over the next 8-9 months (Unger & Chandler, 2012). UX research methods can be split into four categories, which are used to collect different types of information.

Behavioural research methods aim to gather information about what people do and how they behave. Behavioural methods include eye tracking where users are monitored on how they visually interact with a product. Another method is usability testing, which aims to put users through as many real-life scenarios as possible. This gives the researcher the opportunity to watch users interact with the website and evaluate how they understand the site, navigate through it and how many errors they pick up.

On the other hand, attitudinal methods are used to find out what people say; therefore research would measure statements reported by users themselves. Examples of attitudinal research methods would include activities such as user interviews, surveys, card sorting and participatory design. These methods are most effective when trying to depict a user’s mental model of your website giving the researcher more insight into what people think about the site (Rohrer, 2022).

Another dimension comes into play when considering the methodology of research, which is whether the method will gather qualitative data or quantitative data (Maze, 2023). Qualitative studies would gather data such as descriptive information including opinions, feelings, behaviours, and other insights which would answer why and how questions. Quantitative research would collect more analytical data which would help answer ‘how many’ questions aimed to generate statistics. This is particularly important when it comes to research because it will help me determine what specific type of data I want to collect. The qualitative vs quantitative dimension interacts well with the behavioural and attitudinal dimension of research because for example, while quantitative research could be collecting attitudinal data like with surveys, it could also collect behavioural data like with eye-tracking and vice versa.

For my project, I aim to start with existing research within the skincare and beauty industry. As I have no prototype at the moment, before I create my own primary research I think that looking at secondary research within the skincare and beauty industry will help me clarify what I need out of the primary research. I will use tools such as Mint, Statistica and even competitor websites. After conducting secondary research, I think that for my primary I will choose attitudinal research methods as my website will be in its ideation stage without a working prototype. This will be most effective given the stage of my projects as I can use unmoderated surveys with google forms and moderated focus groups with friends to collect meaningful qualitative and quantitative data. From this research I can develop an understanding of demographics, lifestyle, online shopping habits and other consumer behaviour insights.

Once I have a working prototype I think that the best course of action would be to conduct behavioural research to determine the usability of the site. This will play a big role in exposing me to critical feedback where I can get an insight into other people’s perspectives who wouldn’t be experts in how to navigate and how to use the site as I would be at that stage. I would most likely conduct usability testing and A/B testing if I had the time and resources but perhaps analytics research if I didn’t. I  would conduct usability testing with friends, peers and volunteers who fit the user criteria determined by my surveys. This research would allow me to highlight any usability issues with my site as well as pick up suggestions and design opinions.

As little research has been conducted at this stage I have a good opportunity to state my assumptions regarding skincare shopping and propose some hypothesis which I could test.

Assumptions & hypothesis

1. Most people who want to take care of their skin struggle to find the right product
2. People buy the wrong products because of misinformation
3. People aren’t aware of alternatives to expensive products

Part Two User Insight

The second part to ‘exploring the problem’ in my UXD journey is to outline some user needs statements. This stage of the UXD focuses on capturing and isolating the user’s needs, which almost tells a story to the researcher. This story telling aspect will allow me to gain further insight into my target audience beyond my prejudice and expectations. I think that well written user needs statements will give me a good benchmark for success at the end of my project. A few examples of user needs and job story statements that I may consider for my skincare website include;

User Needs Statement

Job Story

When browsing the internet for new products,

I want to see personalised products suited for my skin type,

So that I can confidently purchase new products without worrying if they will work for me or not.

User Personas

After collecting information about my potential users or target audience, I should be able to construct some useful materials such as user personas, empathy maps and journey maps. Generating these materials will give me a good visual representation of the website’s potential users, allowing me to put the users at the centre of UX design.

As my user research has not begun yet I believe that creating some user profiles based on my assumptions will be a good place to start. It will also give me materials to adjust once the research has been conducted which will also allow me to retrospectively contrast, highlighting my preconceived ideas about the users.

Along with a few detailed user persona’s, I believe that creating some empathy maps will be greatly impactful to my UXD for the skin care website. The empathy map will give me valuable insight to 7 different aspects of what the user considers. There is a more simple template for the empathy map which considers what the user feels, does, says and thinks. However for my project, I would prefer to delve into more depth and uncover the additional areas such as what they hear, see, what they need to do and most importantly who am I trying to empathise with.

I think that by uncovering further information about the user through an empathy map, I can create a detailed journey map. All of these materials combined will help me analyse the current needs of users and highlight potential opportunities that I may not have thought about before the user research stage. Overall these user insights are aimed to isolate the pain points of users which will aid me in creating a refined user experience across my website.

Part 3 Ideation

Following the double diamond design process, after extensive research the proposed next step is to conduction ideation sessions and prototyping. This stage will help me tackle my initial user needs statements and any problem areas picked up through research. It’s a chance for me to sit down and reframe my design focus, to effectively achieve this I might use the ‘frame and re-frame’ technique introduced by Chris. The technique will give me the tools to keep the users main problem in mind whilst designing a refined and specific solution. One example that may come from this is if I find that users feel that too much skincare jargon makes them feel confused, my re-framed solution may be to create two versions of my site, one for beginners and one for those with more knowledge of the subject. This would be eliminated complex jargon for beginners but keep the terms available for regulars.

Prototyping

In the prototyping stage I will have the content ready to be able to try variations of how I would like to present it on my website. The process will entail lots of trial and error, which is why I would like to start with sketching any page designs, user interfaces, user navigation and even with the site identity concepts. Personally this is the stage which I enjoy the most because I can unleash some creativity whilst referring back to the research, enabling me to design for users not just myself. Once I have produced a few detailed sketches, I will move over to using digital prototyping and wireframing tools such as whimsical and figma. I will also start using illustrator to create graphics and branding materials for the aesthetic design of the website. Using collaborative tools like figma can also help me with gathering peer feedback on design, as it allows commenting and notes.

Conclusion

Overall, this planning document has given me the opportunity to delve further into UXD, learn about UX concepts, and begin the preliminary steps for my major project. As I’ve been able to generate some assumptions and hypotheses, I now feel confident that if I stick to this plan, I will be able to conduct effective research to validate my assumptions through the right research methods. I also think that this document will also give me an opportunity to gain a retrospective insight into my project at the end of it in September. Understanding more about UX research and design is an important part of understanding web design as a whole.

References

Design Council. (2019). Framework for Innovation: Design Council’s evolved Double Diamond. Design Council. https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/skills-learning/tools-frameworks/framework-for-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond

Just In Mind. (2018). The Double Diamond model: what is it and should you use it?. Just In Mind. https://www.justinmind.com/blog/double-diamond-model-what-is-should-you-use/

Mentoring. (2023). UX Research 101. Mentoring. Mentoring. (2023). UX Research 101. Mentoring. https://www.mentoring.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/UX-Research-101.pdf

Anderson, N. (2019). Elevate your research objectives. UX Design. https://uxdesign.cc/elevate-your-research-objectives-745cf9415d5b

Dzekman, R. (2019). UX Research: Objectives, Assumptions, and Hypothesis. rickdzekman. https://rickdzekman.com/thoughts/ux-research-objectives-assumption-and-hypothesis/

Chandler, C., & Unger, R. (2012). A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making (2nd ed.). New Riders. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dF7li-90OYQC

Rohrer, C. (2022). When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods. Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/

Maze. (2023). Understanding the Top 9 UX Research Methods & Techniques. Maze. https://maze.co/guides/ux-research/ux-research-methods

Dave Grey (2017). Empathy Map Canvas [PNG]. https://gamestorming.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Empathy-Map-006-PNG.png