A successful design is more than usability, we need our designs to be desirable and satisfying while promoting the brand’s core values. Design is about communicating between a company and its customers appropriately, not just finishing tasks.

No matter how much experience design teams have, creating prototypes that you can test logic, flow, and the feel of animations helps teams figure out what does and does not work before costly development.

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Throughout the design process we need to be working hand-in-hand with the development teams and product team members to write clear specifications that make sure the design will be executed as intended while also meeting the business rules and development capabilities.

Often overlooked, human cognition plays a huge role in whether a design is successful or not. Understanding how humans perceive and process information can make designs that are easier and more satisfying to use. Fitts’s Law, Hicks’ Law, Power Law of Practice, Rationality Principle and more.

Research gives us the foundation to work from, but the number of possible solutions is infinite. Getting stakeholders together and working through ideas together helps shorten design cycles by forcing everyone to participate and spend time on the problem. Together, we can interate quickly.

Great design starts with understanding visual design principles. From color theory to Gestalt principles to understanding how human vision works, creating engaging and accessible design starts with these fundamentals.

One-on-one user testing of prototypes removes the bias from working on the product directly and helps reveal blindspots while also providing the opportunity to probe for why users are struggling. The recruitment and testing can easily all be done online, reducing costs and increasing the ability to recruit, allowing us to test more users more often for less money.

For testing, you must always start with what you are trying to learn. Otherwise you won’t create the proper test or use the correct method. This diagram from NNGroup frames a variety of research methods into 4 quadrants to make it easier to discuss what each product needs at each stage of development.

There are a lot of tools that will track cursor and mouse movement for testing, but actually getting data on where users’ eyes are fixating can tell you whether you product imagery is effective and how long users are contemplating any of your copy. It isn’t expensive either, equipment is cheap now and data from coworkers and friends alone is very valuable and free.

Fortunately research is constantly evolving as well and a lot is shared traditionally via journals and interest groups, but now we also have the power of tools like ChatGPT using Scholar GPT to synthesize immense amounts of research into usable summaries.

Data and research is only valuable if we can derive insights to guide our design process though. Service blueprints and journey maps help us find key touchpoints and opportunities for better experiences or even new products.

User research is critical because no two problems are the same. Products have different markets, different regions of people have different needs and vernacular, and the world never stays static. Markets are constantly changing and evolving due to invention and growth. What you know about your customers is already outdated so research helps you adapt and grow as well hopefully predict new obstacles.