User Research Do Be Important
This week we were tasked with conducting our own competitor analysis and user interview based on the app we are currently redesigning. We would then create an empathy map and persona based on the in-depth research. “A competitor analysis means knowing your product or service like the back of your hand and stacking that up against the competition out there” (UsabilityGeek). Being able to know who your competitors are and what they provide is extremely important because it helps you understand what factors should be acknowledged. I’ve had to do a competitor analysis in a previous class, but this is the first time I’m going to be doing one specifically related to UX design.
“User interviews are where a researcher asks questions of, and records responses from, users” (Interaction Design Foundation). User interviews are essential because it helps provide useful information about what the product is doing correctly and incorrectly. The questions should be catered toward your goals when redesigning or improving a product so that you’re able to receive some possible answers. The interviewer should also be observant and take notes on how the interviewee is acting or reacting in response to the questions. This helps provide you with the proper information for an empathy map and an eventual persona based on the interview. Being relatively new to this kind of interview process, it’s important for me to familiarize myself with it before conducting my own user interview.
After all of the user research has been done, it’s now time to analyze the information and create empathy maps. In general, empathy maps are basically visualizations of the information based on the user. “Empathy maps should be used throughout any UX process to establish common ground among team members and to understand and prioritize user needs. In user-centered design, empathy maps are best used from the very beginning of the design process” (Nielsen Norman Group).
Once the user’s needs have been identified, it must be visualized in a persona. “A persona can consolidate expansive customer data into a single document that’s both easy to reference and easy to understand. This document can then be shared among the entire team to keep everyone on the same page” (99designs). Personas have so many different forms because it’s all based on what you need from the user. There’s so much information that could be included in the persona, but you should narrow it down to the relevant parts. Out of the artifacts from this week, I think I enjoyed this the most because there’s a lot of creativity that could be included into it. While a persona must be concise and accurate with its information, it can also be designed in whatever format is appropriate and visually appealing.
The user research process was more comprehensive than I expected, but it helped me understand what must be done in order to succeed when creating a product. Once I’m familiar with this process, I think I’ll be able to properly execute it when redesigning my app.