This week we were asked to read, review and summarise three articles from the website ‘Medium’.
The first article was called: ‘User Experience Design Process’ by Saadia Minhas published in January 2018. I understand that this article is a little older than the others that I reviewed however I was interested to see what the process of UX design looked like.
This article started off with a quote that really inspired me: “The primary factor of your success lies in the fact that you keep your user in the centre of your design process.” The rest of the article was divided into 6 parts that explained the UX process: Understand, research, sketch, design, implement, evaluate. Understanding is about meeting, talking and observing users in order to understand their needs. Research involves understanding market competition and gathering inspiration from competitors. Sketching is drawing pencil sketches, wireframes and flowcharts. The design part of the process is working on the final graphics and turning initial mockups into polished graphics. The implement stage of UX design involves a development team building the ‘back-end functionality’. Finally, evaluating involves asking questions about your final product like: “Is the system usable? Is the system easy to use? Does it provide a desired solution?”. Overall this article was interesting and gave me a good insight into how I will plan and design my own application through this module.
The second article I looked at was ‘Top 7 UX Trends to Watch in 2021’ by Lollipop Design studios published in December 2020.
This article is incredibly up to date and evaluates how coronavirus has effected trends in UX design. I would like to implement some of this into my design. Things like mobile first design become of paramount importance as ‘individuals are adopting mobile phones as their main device to consume information’ especially in a time when ease of access is most important. Data visualisations and infographics are also incredibly important as the pandemic has created a need for clear communication of important data. I also think it is interesting that multiple articles I have read comment on ethical design meaning that we must use psychological research conducted on users to benefit users and not exploit them. One trend I would definitely like to implement into my design is ‘gamification’ this is popular at the moment with apps like ‘Duolingo’ creating a new and exciting way to learn. I definitely enjoyed reading this article, I am aiming to use a few of these trends to elevate my design and appeal to a very current user audience.
The third article I looked at was called ‘Better Design with UX Rules and Psychological Research You Need to Know’ by Ali Corak published January 2021.
This article is incredibly content heavy and is overall a small compilation of ideas from a book called ‘Laws of UX’. This article taught me about some basic principles of UX design such as ‘mental modals’ which means to bring real life designs into your virtual designs for example – using a letter graphic to symbolise an email application. Some other valuable things I learnt include the idea that users reactions to a new product is shaped by past experiences – they expect it to be similar to products that they have used before and develop impressions of a product quickly. Users rate how they feel about a product based on ‘how they feel at their peak’ with no comparison or evaluation. This article also makes a comment on user control – users always want to feel in control, physical accessibility plays a big part in this – buttons should be easily clickable and websites homepages should not be overly complex. This article was very interesting and taught me a lot about the psychological processes behind the UX design process.
I really enjoyed reading these articles and know that the things I have learnt will be useful when designing my own application.
Minhas, S. (2018) User Experience Design Process. Medium. Available online: https://uxplanet.org/user-experience-design-process-d91df1a45916 [Accessed 3/2/2021].
Top 7 UX Trends to Watch in 2021. (2021) Medium. Available online: https://uxplanet.org/top-7-ux-trends-to-watch-in-2021-4dab5bb2cfec [Accessed 3/2/2021].
Corak, A. (2021) Better Design with UX Rules, and Psychological Research You Need to Know. Medium. Available online: https://uxplanet.org/better-design-with-ux-rules-and-psychological-research-you-need-to-know-df4c9d8dd2b5 [Accessed 4/2/2021].