UX Design Framework — Design Thinking
Industry UX Design, frameworks are conceptual tools that provide guidance on best practices and processes for solving problems and building solutions that solve real user problems. This framework in the world of UX Design provides a structure for the design process and encourages collaboration between teams, which can spark innovation from a brilliant solution and think outside the box. Most UX designers follow a certain framework or process when approaching their work, from the first idea to the final launch of a product.
Design Thinking framework for sequencing tasks that contribute to designs to be created by professional teams or private projects. The Design Thinking Framework is a user-centric approach to problem-solving that includes activities such as research, prototyping, and testing to help understand who your users are, what their problems are, and what to include in your design to solve the problems they face. The bigger the problem faced by many users, the greater the opportunity to create a product that is innovative and useful to users.
The design Thinking framework involves the following phases: empathize, define, idea, prototype, and test.
While it may sound like a linear process, the Design Thinking framework should be iterative, meaning you will repeat certain phases as you refine your design. For example, depending on the feedback you receive during testing, you may need to do additional research, brainstorm new ideas, or develop new prototypes.
Let’s take a look at the five phases of the Design Thinking framework to learn more about which activities you will engage in during each phase. Bearing in mind that a Design Thinking framework like the one presented here is the ideal model for UX designers to follow, you may notice some variation in its implementation across companies, teams, or projects.
Empathy
The main goal of this empathy phase is, to learn more about users and their problems, wants, and needs, and the environment or context in which they will experience your designs. The most important part of the empathy phase is to move away from assumptions, and guesswork and let research findings inform decision-making in the next design phase. User research may include user surveys, interviews, and observation sessions, and it may also be necessary to conduct research on competing products to determine how users frame competitors’ products as part of everyday life and everyday problem-solving.
Define
The main objective of this defining phase is, to analyze research findings from the empathy phase and determine which user problems are most important to solve, and why. This will lead to clear goals for product design. The most important outcome of this phase is a clear problem statement, which is a description of the user requirements that the design will address. Possibility of developing a value proposition, which is a summary of why users should use the product or service for which it was designed.
Ideate
After discovering the user’s problem and establishing why it is important to solve, it’s time for the ideate phase. The goal of ideation is to come up with as many design solutions as possible, don’t settle for the first solution, because the most obvious solution is not always the right one. Ideation involves collaborative brainstorming with other members of the team to come up with as many solutions as possible to a problem. This could include marketing, engineering, product management, or other stakeholders for a product or service. During the brainstorming session, should explore all possible solutions. Don’t focus on whether something is a “good” or “bad” idea, just gather as many ideas as you can. What is important here is to keep this process free from anyone’s judgment. After brainstorming, analyze potential solutions and start making choices about which one is the best option to pursue as a prototype. Return to the user or competitive research to help narrow down ideas, and can also create user flows to illustrate how users will interact with the solution.
Prototype
Once you have an idea about how to solve the problem, get ready to enter the prototype phase, where the goal is to produce an initial model of the product that demonstrates its functionality and can be used for testing.
Test
The testing phase is critical to developing the right solution to address the user’s problem under research, an organized testing approach can help create a great user experience. Prototyping and testing are interconnected, which means testing the design at every stage of prototype development rather than waiting to test until a working prototype is complete. If the design is too subtle when first presenting it to the user, the designer may not get much input. Think about ways to include testing throughout the design process, so you can iterate over the design based on user feedback, for no other reason.
For example, designers can test the concepts behind their designs by presenting users with simple sketches, wireframes, or sitemaps. Taking what was learned, it is possible to move on from that design to a more detailed design on paper (known as low-fidelity prototyping) and perform another round of user testing. At some point, the designer will iterate over the design again into a functioning interactive model using a software program (also known as a high-fidelity prototype) and test it as well. Designers may also consider testing more than one prototype simultaneously to get feedback on multiple solutions or testing the same prototype on multiple platforms, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
The goal of prototype testing is to continuously improve the prototype while gaining insight into whether the design for your product or service is easy to use and solves user problems. At some point, the Designer will finalize the prototype, and will then pass it on to the developer, who will then turn the design into a product.
Conclusion
Design Thinking Frameworks are just one type of framework that UX designers use to organize their approach to design, often based on the products they design and the organizations they work for. Regardless of the framework used in designing, they all share some core principles:
- Focus on the user.
- Create solutions that address user problems.
- Collaborate with teammates across departments.
- Validate your design.
- Repeat as needed to design the right user experience.
