As I look back and think of the many times myself and colleagues, I’ve worked with, jumping from an ideation discussion right into design or development immediately make me think, “what the hell was we thinking?”
All that time and effort were going down the rabbit hole with no light at the end of the tunnel, because we were rushing into, “work to show something in production mode,” vs. figuring out our “why” in what we are doing, “is it the right thing for our customer?” Asking this simple question from the start and throughout the process is critical in creating a product or service that someone wants, willing to pay for it, and willing to invest their time.
Understanding your audience and the personas you’ve created will help you navigate the user to the goals and tasks they want to accomplish. Creating the user journeys will bring up the potential challenges that users may face and help you identify critical areas within your design to focus on to turn those into better experience opportunities. At any point in time, the emotional level of users goes into a negative one such as confusion, frustration, angry, upset, or just unable to find what they are looking for or even a way to get help; these are opportunities where better empathy within UX can contribute to creating better design. Thus, in turn, creates an overall better experience for the users.
