Steps Needed to Design for Successful User Experience

When designing a product for new target users or a new type of product, you’ll need to go through almost all the previously described methods in this book. I have changed the order of the steps to optimize the design process for a new product and a product with a new target user group. Here are the steps:

1. Identify or define your target users.
2. Identify target user needs.
3. Find and prioritize core tasks for new target users.
4. Identify key core tasks.
5. Design and innovate basic user experience elements.
6. Identify and design needed technologies.
7. Identify applications and innovate.
8. Design your product.

In this chapter I will go through all the steps listed above. However, I'll reference previous chapters to avoid repeating myself too much.

This chapter's example will look at designing the basics of a touch-enabled mobile device targeted for mature adults in developed markets. The initial product, shown in Figure 17-2, is hence intentionally left almost blank, since the assumption is that we're designing this product more or less from scratch. But two things are fixed: the target group and the touch screen technology.

Figure 17-2. Touch-enabled mobile device for mature adults in developed markets

Let us assume that the decision for targeting mature adults with a touch-driven mobile device comes from thorough market research indicating that mature adults in developed markets have a high disposable income, and that they will also likely purchase a device with a large touch display. It is also assumed that this target group is likely to start slowly adopting this touch technology.

Step 1: Identify or Define Your Target Users

Identifying or defining a target user group is essential for any innovation around user experience. This applies when designing new products. Chapter 3 talks about how to identify a target group, so refer to that if you need a refresher.

Often, your target user group will already be defined, based on, for example, market research and market insights. But even if this is the case, you will still want to interview target users to find their needs and potential core tasks for your product. In the mobile device example, the target user group has already been identified as mature adults in developed markets.

Step 2: Identify Target User Needs

The next—and probably most essential—thing you want to do is get into the heads of your target users. Before starting any design or innovation, you need to know much more about who the target users are and what their needs are. In particular, you want to know what their needs are for the type of product you are designing.

Identifying user needs can be achieved through market research, interviews, or some of the other methods described in Chapter 4. In the example of a touch device for mature adults, let us assume that you have identified as the most essential user needs those shown in Figure 17-3.

Figure 17-3. User needs identified for touch-driven mobile devices for mature adults

Step 3: Find and Prioritize Core Tasks for New Target Users

When designing a new product—or when optimizing an existing product for other target users—it is equally important to identify the core tasks of your user group. Chapter 5 talks about the importance of core tasks and gives a method for identifying them.

When I described methods for identifying core tasks in Chapter 5, I focused on getting information from your existing users (interviewing, measuring, web surveys, etc.). But how do you find the core tasks for a target user group that is not yet using your product? How do you find core tasks for a product that maybe does not even exist yet?

It is in fact not that difficult to identify core tasks for a product not yet in use or existence. You simply need to find a number of representatives from the target user group and interview them about their expectations on what they may use in your product.

When you prepare your interviews, you will use the target user needs actively. You can, for example, based on the user needs, create a list of potential core tasks in advance. Do not limit that list of tasks to assumed available technologies and applications on the device. If there is a user need for certain functionality that requires new hardware or applications, you should list tasks related to this as well. You may also want to look at potential competitor products to see which core tasks they solve and which could be relevant for your target users.

Each of the tasks you come up with should be specific enough to allow creating innovations around them later on. However, asking a user to prioritize 100 or more tasks will most likely produce an unreliable result, so you may also want to combine small core tasks into larger, more overall tasks. For example, driving a car is an overall task consisting of numerous, more granular tasks such as steering, accelerating, braking, and so forth.

You can then ask the target users to categorize each of the core tasks that you have prepared; for example, you can ask the target users to rate each potential task by putting it in a different category (e.g., Very Important, Important, Less Important, Not Important, etc.). Remember to allow target users to also add their own tasks during this exercise, since you may have overlooked potentially important tasks for your product when preparing for the interview.

Figure 17-4 shows how this exercise might turn out with the target users in the touch mobile device example. (The list hasn't been verified with actual mature target users; it serves purely as an example in this book.)

Figure 17-4. Example of prioritizing core tasks in the mobile device example

Sometimes when you find your core tasks, you may realize that the product you are designing may be over the top for the tasks at hand. This may lead you to radically reconsider whether you are designing the right type of product. Is it, for example, worth designing a relatively expensive touch-enabled mobile device if the core tasks for the target users are basic call handling, alarm clock functionality, and replying to messages?

However, it may not be as simple as creating what you feel is the right type of product. The target users may actually desire an over-the-top product anyway, even though their core tasks are limited. In the case of the touch display, the target users may desire such a product based on general market trends, and you should thus try to create a superb user experience for the core tasks within the given product scope.

Step 4: Identify Key Core Tasks

In the initial design of your product, you will primarily focus on your top core tasks. This will ensure that the product you design is really targeted to your customers and not compromised by lower-priority tasks.

Depending on the product, you might have between one and ten top core tasks. Having more tasks may mean that you'll lose focus or that you have defined your target user group to be too broad.

For the touch-enabled mobile device for mature adults, the top core task list could as an example look like that shown in Figure 17-5.

Figure 17-5. Example of top eight core tasks identified for the touch-enabled device for mature adults

Step 5: Design and Innovate Basic User Experience Elements

The next step is to design the basic user experience of your product. Chapter 6 covers how to do this with respect to innovating around core tasks.

If you are designing a web page, you want to innovate guidelines for the visual style of your product, as well as the basic user experience elements for the page (menu style, whether to include drop-down lists, security, etc.). You also want at this stage to create a basic layout or wireframe of your web page. This is done by using the top core tasks, as well as general insights involving the needs of the target users.

If you are designing a device, you also want to design the basic physical input and output elements, such as the keypad, touch interaction principles, display, LEDs, vibration feedback, and so on.

There may be several solutions for solving each of the tasks, and you may need to prototype a number of different solutions and verify them with users until you have found a suitable solution. The process is similar to that described in Chapter 6, except that this time you do not have any existing solutions for your core tasks yet.

You will need to take each top core task one by one, and work through it in a workshop within a cross-functional team, and potentially with lead users. Focus in each workshop on creating an innovative user experience to solve the core task at hand. During these user experience innovation sessions, you can use competitor products as inspiration, you can use copying, you can focus on wows and positive surprises, and you can look at the ecosystem and the first impression.

Figure 17-6 shows how the result of an innovation session for a single top core task could look for the touch-enabled mobile device.

Figure 17-6. Example of user experience innovation around a single key core task

For each core task, you should easily find a number of solutions, and you should do some initial prototyping of each of these solutions. Create working prototypes, paper prototypes, Flash animations, videos, mechanical mock-ups or whatever else works for you.

The format of your prototype depends on the nature of your product, your solution, and the target users. Generally, there is no reason to overdo prototypes at this stage of product creation. However, it is important that the target users fully understand and relate to your solution when they see your prototype during the verification later. The main goal is to ideally create multiple prototypes of solutions for each of the key core tasks, which can then be evaluated with target users.

I want to emphasise that in this step it is important to focus very much on target user needs and key core tasks. A common mistake is to more or less reuse an existing product and then simply add a few functions for the new target user group. Doing so will very seldom give successful user experience innovations. Another mistake is to try to use too many core tasks when designing the product. The key goal of this part of the process is to create a product optimized for the target users and their top core tasks.

Verification of the concepts with target users is essential at this stage, since you can save a lot of time if you can filter out wrong ideas. You can use multiple solutions and prototypes for each core task, thereby giving users the possibility of choosing from multiple solutions. In some cases, you may find that several of your solutions are suitable and could provide successful user experience innovations. In such cases, you may need to prioritize based on, for example, cost and capability, if you do not want to offer all solutions.

It may in some cases be an advantage to have multiple solutions for the same core task to satisfy different user needs and different usage situations. However, creating too many different solutions for the same core task may easily result in creating pain points or a product that has too many options for performing the same task. So this specific situation is a balancing act.

In some cases when verifying your solutions with target users, you may find that none of your solutions are really optimal, even if some of your solutions may have some good elements. This is where an iterative approach is essential. You will basically go back and redo your innovation sessions again, of course using the findings from your first verification rounds. How many iterations you need depends on the nature of your product, on the quality of your previous innovation sessions, and on how well you have identified your target user needs and core tasks.

In the example of the mobile device for mature users, I will assume that a number of iterations of innovation sessions, prototyping, and user verifications have led to the basic interaction elements for the mobile device shown in Figure 17-7.

Figure 17-7. Example of basic interaction elements identified for the touch mobile device

Step 6: Identify and Design Needed Technologies

After you have a basic user experience structure in place, you are ready to innovate the user experience around the technologies that you have already planned for your product and those that you may need to add to satisfy the target user needs. Use the approach in Chapter 7 for innovating around technologies that you already plan to use. Begin with the core tasks to help in identifying new potential technologies that you may need to add to your web page, system, or device.

If you are designing a web page for new target users, and you have identified that these users have a core task that involves protecting their data, you should consider focusing on easy-to-use and innovative password and login technologies. If your users have a core task of finding products easily on your web page, you should consider investing in or developing good product search algorithms that fit those target users.

If you are designing a touch-enabled mobile device for mature users and these users have core tasks such as listening to the radio and watching TV, then you should seriously consider adding radio and TV receiver technology to your device. Whether you choose to support TV using technologies like DVB-H or DVB-T, or whether you simply design great user experience solutions for Internet streaming of TV will depend on your ecosystem, the market requirements, and the regional target user needs. Figure 17-8 shows how an icon to support TV might look on our mobile device.

Figure 17-8. Technology for TV added for the mobile device example

If the users of your touch-enabled mobile device have a profound need to get tactile feedback when using your touch device, you can consider adding dedicated dome-based keys. Or you can add tactility (virtual or physical) to your touch device. Figure 17-9 shows one possible method of adding feedback to a touch panel.

Figure 17-9. Touch pad with mechanical movement and click functionality

You will certainly want to verify the technologies with target users. You should also innovate around each technology as described in Chapter 7.

Step 7: Identify Applications and Innovate

The next step is to identify the applications of your product. This time you may want to look not only at the top core tasks for your target users, but also at lower-priority core tasks. You will hence—based on the target user needs and core tasks—create a list of the applications that your product should contain.

Even though the core tasks are the focus in this step, it is vital also keep the target users and their user needs in mind. If “making calls to friends” is identified as a core task, then many designers might automatically say, “We can use the call-handling and contact list functionality from our previous product designed for business users.” This may not, however, be suitable for the needs of the new group of target users.

If you are designing an electronic car key, you might limit your applications to opening doors, closing doors, and starting the engine. If you also identify the lower-priority core task of opening the trunk, you might consider adding that as an application as well.

For more complex products, the list of applications might be longer, but you should try to avoid the common mistake of simply filling your product with all applications that any potential user might like to use. So, it is important to follow the core tasks identified for the target users. However, there may be regulations or standards that need to be followed, which may require adding further applications.

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When the applications have been identified, it is essential to verify the list of with target users. You should also use the previously described method from Chapter 8 to create successful user experiences around applications.

Going through all the steps and applications needed for the touch-enabled mobile device would be too much to do in this book, but Figure 17-10 shows how an extract of the results might look.

Figure 17-10. Shortened application list for the touch-enabled mobile device for mature users

Step 8: Design Your Product

When you have the list of applications for your product, you are ready to start designing your product. It will be too extensive to describe all the needed steps here, but you will certainly use many if not all of the methods described earlier in this book. You should, for example, look at the first impression of your product, innovate around the ecosystem, and create wows and positive surprises. You should also try to foresee pain points and create successful user experiences around these.

The key message for this part of the process is to always keep the target users, their needs, and their core tasks in mind. It is easy during this part of the process to get carried away and design applications and elements that you would like yourself, rather than things that the target users want.

Another important thing to emphasize for the design process is involving target users as much as you can. Involving users does not have to mean performing extensive, cumbersome, and expensive usability tests; it can simply mean calling target users that you already have been in contact with, and maybe dropping them an e-mail or visiting them to present new ideas.

Involving users at a very early stage may save you a lot of time later, since you can avoid creating finalized designs of functionality that the users may not want at all. It will also ensure that the user experience of your product is optimal.