whitepaper the five planes of ux design

8/19/2019 Whitepaper the Five Planes of UX Design

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The Five planes of UX DesignUser centered development is a must for a software developer that’slooking to establish a solid foundation in their chosen market segment.There is no one-size-ts-all approach for UX design, but there are a fewbest practices that any project benets from, regardless of its methodology.

Many software companies focus on function over form. They put most of theirresearch and energy into the software features without paying any attention to howuser friendly the application is. Instead, they feel that reducing production costs andsoftware cycles requires the UX focus to be cut out of the equation. While softwarecan’t stand on its own without a solid design, it’s also worthless if the users areunable to gure out the software because the UX is unclear, frustrating, or otherwiseproblematic. Even worse, some companies assume that the developers can puttogether a design, instead of sending it over to their design team.

When they don’t see the sales that they expect, they blame everything before realizing

that a subpar UX is the major issue. There are countless software developers outthere, so unless the company has a stellar and completely original idea, chances arethey’re in direct competition with at least one other company. It doesn’t matter howmany stellar features they oer if they never get used because the UX has end usersrunning away before hitting the buy button.

User centered development is a must for a software developer that’s looking toestablish a solid foundation in their chosen market segment. It’s not enough to havebetter functionality than the competition. It has to come together with a cohesive UXthat makes it simple for the end users to gure out which way is up.

What is User Experience?

User Experience has to come in atthe beginning of the product’s lifecycle not tacked on near the end.The question is, what exactly is UserExperience? UX design used to belumped in with everything elsethat a software developer handledin their standard workload. Itwasn’t until the past few years thatit split o into its own design eld, as companies began to realize that a great UXmakes a big dierence in the eectiveness of software.

UX is sometimes referred to as the design methodology behind the visuals. Graphic

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designers make an interface look pretty, but a UX centric design also focuses on theuser accessibility and user friendliness. It encompasses a wide range of how a user

interacts with the design, their feelings during the process, and keeping that all inperspective to make a great software experience.

One of the rst things a software development team should do is establish what,when, where, why, and how the product is being used. This helps to shape the entiredevelopment process around the UX, instead of trying to shoehorn it in a softwareframework that doesn’t work well with it. Every aspect of the user is considered duringthis process, down to the psychological responses created by the software. This addsvalue to the software package overall.

How Does UX Benet a Business?

There are thousands of applications launched per year, due to the massive growthin software, web, and mobile industries. The amount of competition in the marketrequires every company to take advantage of everything they can to get ahead andcarve out a solid user-base for their product.

The typical user isn’t going through datasheets of hundreds of applications to gureout which one works for the best. They go o several factors, such as their rstimpressions, whether a software selection looks like it can meet their needs, andwhat their overall user experience is. Much of the decision making happens on asubconscious level, which is where UX design comes in.

Deliberating designing software with the UX in mind helps create a favorable rst

impression, even if this particular application isn’t as feature rich as a competitor’soering. The UX works to meet user expectations from a product.

Some tangible benets that result from UX design includes positive responses fromthe customers, higher sales, better conversion ratios, and increased web trac. Ifthe UX is for a website, some benets include lower maintenance costs, better userfeedback, established brand or industry authority, and better brand awareness.

The Five Planes for UX Design

There is no one-size-ts-allapproach for UX design, but

there are a few best practicesthat any project benets from,regardless of its methodology.These 5 steps go fromabstract to concrete and eachof them has special tasks,helping businesses developa workable UX centeredapplication from the groundup.

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Whitepaper | The Five planes of UX Design



Strategy

The rst step is strategy. Most software developers have brainstorming sessions

where they go over the feature set of an application, the general look, and otherimportant considerations. The UX design comes in during this strategy session so it’sincorporated right from the beginning. Here are a few questions software developersask themselves when sketching a framework for a UX design:

• What is the big goal of the product?

• What does the user want?

• What does the business want?

Scope

The next step after strategy is establishing the scope of the development. In aperfect world, software developers could add every single idea that comes up at thebeginning of a project. In reality, maybe 10 percent of these ideas are incorporated.

Determining the scope of the project takes the strategy session and translates it intoconcrete requirements for a piece of software. A few ways of handling scope creationincludes:

• Creating user stories

• List objectives for the software

• How does the product help the users?

• How many clicks does it take to get to each essential function?

• What type of user is interested in this application?

Structure

The third step gets down to the nitty gritty of development. The structure of the





application is established. This is the step where development ideas move fromintangible data points to actual areas of the application. Some questions to ask during

this step of the development process includes:• How do all the pieces of the site t together and behave?

• How does the user nd what they are looking for in an intuitive way?

• What are the ow of actions and interactions throughout the site?

Two ways to visually answer these questions includes a site map to gure out howevery part of the application groups together, while user ow diagrams shows howthey move throughout the site or app.

Skeleton

It’s time to make a design blueprint in this fourth step. Typically, software developersutilize wireframes to move from structure building to the look of the entire application.They are basic drawings or renderings that simply have to display how the applicationlooks, what form the navigation takes, the general layout of the software, all of theelements involved in the application, and where these elements go.

The wireframe is not complicated visually. It’s a simple representation of what themajor elements look like, before ashy graphics and logos get added to the picture.Here are some essential questions to answer while developing a wireframe:

• What elements are on which page?

• Where do the buttons go?

• What types of calls to action are there?

• How many columns are used?

• How is the text displayed?

• What is the image placement?





Surface

The last step of the process is to bring the entire process together with a unied visualdesign that makes it attractive to consumers. A good visual design should also worktogether with the rest of the development process to help augment the features,function, and form of the software.





Some elements that are added during this step of the process include:

• Color palettes

• Typefaces

• Icons

• Tables

• Buttons

• Brand identity

UX process

To get a better understanding of the process, we’ll see an example of the completeUX process for facility manager software.

1. Strategy

Denition of business and user ’s needs:

The company has the need for its employees to be able to graphically locate whereother employees sit within the various oce locations the company has.

This allows for employees to easily nd someone for meetings, locate conference rooms

in the campus, and allow oor-admins the ability to do space/capacity planning.

2. Scope

Creation of user stories:

3. Structure

In this case dierent site maps were created according to dierent user ’s permits. Thisis the user’s site map:





4. Skeleton

Creation of general and specic wireframes emphasizing interaction andworkow:





5. Surface

There were presented two dierent visual options. Finally, a third version was

chosen with the best features of both:

Conclusions

A UX centric design benets the user and Software Development Company inmany ways. The user gets a better experience with the application, resultingin customer loyalty, an extensive user base, increased sales, and other directbenets.

Incorporating UX planning in each step of the development process guaranteesthat the user will have their expectations met while the software company alsomeets its goals. Pick and choose which best practices work with a particular

project’s development cycle to achieve success with UX design. This is a valueadded feature that needs to be included with any app on the market today.

Sources

The Design of every day things – Dan Norman

The UX week 2009

Harvard iLab - UX Design: An Introduction with Scout Stevenson

www.uxboot.com

http://www.nngroup.com



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