4 CRITICAL MISTAKES IN UX DESIGN PROJECTS

HOW STAKEHOLDERS SHOULD WORK WITH UX TEAMS

AND NOT SCREW UP THE DIGITAL DESIGN PROCESS

It's your ship now, you’re the head honcho, the main point of contact for the UX Team that will design the digital experience for your audiences.

First of all, understand the value of the User Experience design – it’s the bedrock key to the success of any digital design project. Be it human nature, or the nature of the beast, UX comes with common pitfalls that, if avoided, change good projects into great projects.

The following are four of the most critical mistakes stakeholders make when dealing with User Experience – and the pathways they should take to ensure the project delivers instead of fails.

So, you find yourself the lead stakeholder in a digital design project. You’re the business owner, CEO, Creative Director, product developer, or marketing guru.

A UX Success Guide Provided by Tucker Fiscus

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Supply  a  UX  Research  Plan.  Gather  data,  metrics,  insights,  and  success  criteria,  which  stakeholders  can  use  to  create  an  informed  opinion.  

Do  This:  

Designers  and  developers  should  work  together  to  find  a  faster,  simpler  or  more  powerful  way  to  achieve  the  project  goal.  

Chuck  Norris    knows  opinions.  

IN  THIS  GUIDE:  1. Don’t  be  a  user  study  of  one  2. Don’t  put  design  before  development  3. A  million  monkeys  can  be  wrong  4. Brainstorming  is  the  leading  cause  of  death  

1.  Don’t  Be  a  User  Study  of  One.   A not so secret but rarely spoken truth is that one of the more satisfying aspects of being a stakeholder is seeing your opinion come to life as a product, application, strategy, or alteration, etc.

However, opinions can be very dangerous … and expensive.

Shoot-from-the-hip opinions by lead stakeholders cause development teams, marketing plans and design jobs to spiral out of control, muddling the quality of a product or – at the very least – generating hours of arguments.

When those opinions are dead wrong, the product fails with the priority buying audiences.

To borrow a quote from Chuck Norris in 1985’s Code of Silence, “If I wanted your opinion, I’d beat it out of you.” Turning this quip on its head a bit, this is the approach a stakeholder needs from their UX team.

Determine  if  user  testing  is  appropriate  for  the  project  and  follow  the  UX  research  plan  to  gain  solid  feedback  from  first  adopters.    

Stakeholders  should  use  the  UX  Research  plan  as  the  roadmap  to  conceiving  the    Big  Idea.    

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“It  turns  out  there  really  is  no  such  thing  as  snozzberries  and  it’s  going  to  double  the  development  budget  to  create  them.”    

Do  This:  Skilled  developers  are  often  a  treasure  trove  of  ideas.  Working  in  conjunction,  designers  and  developers  can  almost  always  find  a  faster,  simpler  or  more  powerful  way  to  achieve  the  project  goal,  potentially  saving  thousands  of  dollars  in  development.    

And  every  so  often,  a  developer  pulls  out  a  bit  of  functionality  that  revolutionizes  the  project,  which  can  lead  to  untold  profits!

2.  Don’t  Put  Design  Before  Development  Every stakeholder at one time or another has experienced the euphoria of sitting with the design team in a room abuzz with ideas: the whiteboard beaming with sketches, arrows and boxes, the air thick with the smell of dry-erase markers.

Suddenly someone, seemingly off in the distance says, “Do we know if the developers can even build this?”

But it’s too late. Willy Wonka has already opened the door to CandyLand. The children are already running through edible grass and smashing candy mushrooms; Augustus is on the precipice of the chocolate river….

When the idea is presented to the developers (or to strain the metaphor even further, the oompa loompas), it turns out that there really is no such thing as snozzberries and it’s going to double the development budget to create them.

Painful as it might be, this should happen just once to a stakeholder. Lesson learned. Design and development need to work in parallel. Move on. This fixes one issue but ignores potentially a more expensive issue: Once bitten by overzealous designing, there is a tendency to structure development questions to get a “Yes” answer.

For example, everybody knows bananas exist. So the question to the developers becomes, “Can you make banana flavored wallpaper?” Their answer, of course, is “Yes!”

However, if the question is reframed to: “What flavor of wallpaper can you make?” the answer might be “snozzberry!”

By asking developers unstructured questions, they are being used in conjunction with design, not just parallel.

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Resist the notion of “intelligence” in numbers when it comes to choosing

a user experience direction.

3.  A  Million  Monkeys  Can  Be  Wrong!  There will come a time during the life of a project when it is unclear which direction to go from a user experience perspective.

Possibly the data and metrics gathered are skewing against expected results. Possibly two stakeholders are butting heads. Perhaps there’s just an intangible doubt. This can lead to an urge to poll the proverbial audience – expose your project to as many people as possible to gain a consensus of direction.

Please, resist the notion of “intelligence” in numbers. To quote Agent K from Men in Black, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”

Consider this: Looking up is contagious. If one person on a busy street looks up, everyone follows. If 30 people in a testing lab are looking at a product, invariably one leads the commentary and the rest fall in line.

If two people chime in with conflicting opinions, then the rest of the room is suddenly in an A/B test choosing to side with Dick or Jane.

Do  This:  Unqualified  users  forming  opinions  that  may  or  may  not  be  their  own  are  of  …  zero  value.  The  UX  Research  Plan  needs  to  include  whether  or  not  user  testing  is  appropriate  for  the  project  and,  if  so,  must  identify  who  will  be  the  first  adopters.    

First  adopters  are  users  and  buyers  who  have  some  stake  in  the  product  being  created  and  therefore  can  add  value  to  the  UX  research.    

Follow  the  research  plan  to  get  deliberate  and  focused  feedback  from  first  adopters  and  the  project  will  find  direction  and  maybe  a  little  sunshine.  

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4.  Brainstorming  Is  the  Leading  Cause  of  Death  in  Stakeholder  Ideas  At the inception of any digital design project there is a need. Possibly a stakeholder sees an opportunity in the market, or a VP identifies a problem the Creative Director should fix.

In any case, addressing that need becomes the goal. The stakeholder has to come up with an idea to address the goal.

In 1948, Alex F. Osborn published “Your Creative Power,” introducing brainstorming to the world. By 1958, Osborn himself was conducting studies that were contradicting his ideas about the productivity of brainstorming.

However, these studies did little to stem the tide of “ideation without criticism” that was washing over the corporate world.

Of course, there is a certain rush that comes with shooting from the hip. There’s excitement that comes from a jam session with the design team or free-styling ideas with the water cooler gang. It’s certainly more of a rush to adlib instead of following a structured UX Research Plan.

However, going off plan will never generate the rush of seeing a digital design project become a success story. So, to belabor the movie references one last time – stick to the script!

Do  This:  To  avoid  the  inefficiency  and  general  mediocrity  of  brainstorming,  stakeholders  should  refer  to  the  UX  Research  Plan.  The  plan  is  a  roadmap  to  conceiving  an  idea.  The  plan  defines  how  to  obtain  the  data,  metrics,  interviews,  success  criteria  to  allow  the  stakeholder  to  find  a  solution  and  execute.    

Which  really  is  the  best  idea!  

 John  Fiscus  is  Managing  Partner  for  User  Experience  at  Tucker  Fiscus.  John  is  a  diverse  problem  solver  with  a  unique  blend  of  expertise  –  intuitive  experience  design,  user  experience  engagement  methodologies,  and  complex  technical  development.     John  leads  a  team  that  embraces  the  impossible  and  solves  the  extreme  by  consistently  innovating.    

Let  us  solve  your  complex  design  challenges  

Tucker Fiscus provides world-class expertise in digital brand strategy, user experience and visual design services to showcase companies’ brands, products and services – and inspire conversion. Tucker Fiscus is a team of imaginative digital design and communication experts who use proven methodologies to engineer user-optimized websites, mobile applications and specialty platform experiences that inspire. Our difference as a business partner is based on how we solve your complex challenges: • Business analysis and insight • Exceptional user interface design • Insightful visual design solutions • Flawless development work

Visit us at: Tuckerfiscus.com

58 N. 2nd Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 info@tuckerfiscus.com 610-633-0793

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