The best experience design starts with usability research. Our multidisciplinary mobile team at this mid-sized e-commerce company excelled at weekly iterative usability testing on the beta mobile website in development.

Six targeted Friday morning formative sessions allowed participatory design discussions in the observation room. Debrief seldom happened outside the 9-to-12 time slot as all stakeholders were present during at least one session.

Moderating usability testing was shared by most on the team so everyone got to observe from both sides of the usability lab. When we were hot, the lead developer would push changes to the prototype in development between participants three and four, in keeping with usability best practices. Testing took place on iOS and Android devices using a sled-mounted video camera and audio recording. 

Our approach had more in common with Guerrilla Usability Testing (1, 2) and other Lean research (3) than the original Lean research method: "RITE", or Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation  (4, 5).

Decisions made while I was on the team include pagination vs. infinite scroll, industry template categorization and selection, and menu drawer interaction design & behavior. Some of these are seen here, taken from the current public website.

A Fortune 500 industry market leader aimed to expand into the DIY internet security arena. This mid-horizon blue sky real user monitoring product got traction early from formative usability research, experience design, and development within a cross-functional team setting.

With usability testing, competitive analysis, and participatory experience design, our multidisciplinary team (product manager, development manager, lead principal developer, experience designer, and technical writer) devised the best initial prototype, earning kudos across the company. 

UX worked closely and directly with development, and with daily — and sometimes hourly — conversations, we were able to iterate quickly, minimizing waterfall delivery of unnecessary UX deliverables. Design recommendations were made via whiteboard sketches and bullet lists in Jira tickets, and then easily implemented by development. Frequent, targeted communication was the key to our success.

Our final prototype featured animated data visualizations utilizing D3, and is shown here before the application of internal interaction + in-house visual design patterns or connecting up to the back end. 

In a technology company with over 200 web-based tools to be used by in-house power users and external customers alike, UXbuddha brought iterative usability testing to this Agile development business process. The first spoke in a hub-and-spoke UX model, the experience designer worked in our multidisciplinary team to conduct usability research, gaining insight across roles on what users really needed. With these UX requirements in hand, interaction design followed elegantly.

These days, the mature UX design process includes usability research. Real user insights are what sets the experience designer apart from the interaction design role of decades past, or the lone wolf UXer. You may have met designers like this — they hoard their special, private knowledge. Not always the best team players.

In contrast, we accomplish Lean UX by uncovering usability issues prior to design and development. We lead the cross-functional team through targeted exploration with real users by persona group. Knowledge sharing by involving multiple roles brings an unprecedented involvement and whole-team ownership, thereby circumventing extraneous development cycles. This saves money and time. Meanwhile the lone wolf interaction designer may be on the mark, or miles off. When it comes to your product, we prefer not to guess.

But which research method is best in each instance? Between our experience and deep ties within the research + design community, UXbuddha can identify the fastest and best research methods to answer business and UX requirement questions before interaction design begins. Whether we come in as a consultant or in-house specialist, we strongly recommend that true user insights be taken into account before interaction design starts. 

“If you want a great site, you’ve got to test. After you’ve worked on a site for even a few weeks, you can’t see it freshly anymore. You know too much. The only way to find out if it really works is to test it.”
— Steve Krug

Persona research gave this web product team a jump start on a new blue sky product. Testing internal users, we found our team’s business assumptions were a good start, but were slightly off. It turned out the users we planned to prioritize were less frequent users of the tool. Only through research did we know to shift our development priorities to target our largest user group, bringing the product to market sooner and more successfully.

UXbuddha has experience with small-to-midsized business marketing websites, with built-in purchase flows or links to external stores. Your web presence acts as today’s business card or brochure, serving to orient your customer base to your business offerings. We routinely recommend cross-links to your blogs + vlogs, twitter feeds, LinkedIn company profiles, Facebook business pages, and other social platforms.