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Let's delve into UX design with our creative director, Angela Dallin. Today's blog is full of insights into the strategies and thought processes behind creating intuitive and engaging user experiences.
Angela: User Experience, commonly known as UX, refers to a person's overall experience while using a product – such as a website or an application.
UX designers strive to create a positive experience for the users of their website or app. They study user behaviour, preferences, as well as potential pain points to develop a product that is easy and enjoyable to use. Great UX design leads to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability. Poor UX causes users to bounce from your website or app and damages their opinion of your brand.
The UX design process we follow at RRC is part of every digital project we create, whether it’s a website, an online portal, a landing page or an application.
Angela: Here is my ultimate list of the UX design principles:
Angela: Keeping an open line of communication with clients, developers and other stakeholders throughout the entire design and development process is essential. We do this through regular meetings, gathering information from the client and stakeholders, sharing design mockups and prototypes, and providing the opportunity for feedback. We love working together as a team because it makes the final product better!
Angela: Yes! Here is the general process we follow:
The first step in creating a digital product is understanding our target audience. We ask ourselves who will be using it, when, why, how and where. We try to figure out what is most important to them and what they want to see.
This step lays the foundation for the success of your website or app. We have to determine your objectives so we know how your offering should be communicated to your audience. We bring your senior management team together and ask them a lot of questions to ensure we develop a successful strategy.
Based on our target audience research, we create a few fictional characters and write a narrative for each – who they are, where they come from, what is important to them and what they want to get out of the digital product. We use these user personas to see the product through the audience members’ eyes. This helps us to design and develop the product that appeals to them and meets their needs.
Information Architecture (IA) involves organizing a website's functionality and content into a structure people can navigate intuitively. This stage takes more effort than you’d think! Especially if you have an existing website that’s been added onto for many years – it tends to turn into quite a mess! The IA process includes site mapping and wireframing. We figure out the purpose of each site page in order to know what content is necessary and what belongs elsewhere.
We apply the brand identity and use visual design principles to create a beautiful, functional product. We ensure the menu and content look good and are easy and intuitive to navigate on all devices. We also try to add an element of delight – there is always an opportunity to engage them in a way that is unexpected.
Budget permitting, we do a soft launch of the website and test it with a sampling from your target demographic. This can help us gather data and feedback to adjust and create a top-notch user experience before the hard launch.
After the launch, we use Google Analytics or other tools to track data. In the case of a website, we track how visitors arrive on the site and how they use it, in order to ensure they are getting the information they need.
We use the data we collect to make updates and improvements to the website or application. We want to always be updating the content, keeping it fresh and accurate. We want to make sure the digital product doesn’t get stale or irrelevant.
Angela: We recently worked together with Leaseplan Canada to develop a vehicle management portal for ALL of Amazon’s delivery vehicles in Canada. The portal we created ensures the data that is pushed to and received from is completely accurate and efficiently assembled–while providing a pleasant experience for the operators. Everything from onboarding right through to scheduling routine vehicle maintenance and fuel consumption tracking is integrated into the portal in an appealing and user-friendly manner. On our website, you can learn more about Leaseplan’s vehicle management portal project.
Creating a phenomenal user experience requires a lot of effort and planning, but it’s worth it! Constantly questioning and always adapting means you get the best and most effective product – resulting in a better website that helps propel your brand and improve your business’s bottom line.
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