Design for Screen - UX Design

Google design
IOS human interface guidelines
Material Design
SP-AN

UX Design (UXD)

A UX DESIGNER is someone who designs everything that affects the user's interactions with a particular product.

Why UX matters:

• You're doing some of this already, when you understand what you do, you become better at it
• User-centred design is a process, basically scientific
• It's not hard, just about thinking and testing the design behind the visuals

User Experience (UX)
UX refers directly to the ways that the user/customer/operator experiences using the product/system/interface on their own terms.
UXD is the informed manipulation and development of the factors that influence the user's experiences.
HCI (Human Computer Interaction): The ways that people interact with digital systems
Usability refers to the ease and efficiency by which a user operates a system Interaction design is, then, the organisation and construction of interactive elements. 

When using a digital app we use it to aid our ability or enhance our social identity and ability to communicate

PROCESS:
ANALYSE - business research/user research/ data analysis and conceptualisation
DESIGN - creating concepts/interaction behaviours/look and feel
PROTOTYPES - realising design alternatives, not just one. In the form of wireframes, mockups, digital mockups and experiments, looking at engagement with particular layouts etc.
EVALUATE - verifying and refining to ensure the user experience problems and needs have been solved and accounted for.

ITERATE each step!!! point out the failures and then keep changing until it is correct and as good as it can be. 

User research:
Ux designers commit to a lot of user research. User research seeks to gain a better understanding of the needs of users. 

• Focus groups
• Interviews
• Observations
• Identifying and conceptualising user roles, user needs (convenience, time-saving, ease of use), task flows (what page/sections fits within a flow of a particular task), etc. 

TECHNIQUES:

1. Personas

Fictitious profiles of the potential users, allowing the designers to design the most appealing interface for one or a handful of the users, cannot please everyone so generalisation has to happen. 

• reflect data found in user research
• focus on the present
• be realistic, not idealistic
• describe a challenging target user (if not then there will not be any design obstacles to overcome)
• provide insight to the users' context(student, occupation...), behaviours (hobbies, social life), attitudes, needs, challenges/pain points(what do they not like about existing systems), goals and motivations

2. Task Flows / User Flows

Workflows visualise the stages involved in completing certain task or the journey a user takes through the system

• what series of actions will the user need to go through to get to that point e.g. finding a particular movie on the Netflix app (open app, sign in, choose account, search bar, type in name, click on movie, enlarge screen...)

3. Wireframes

Wireframes are the first step towards putting all the user research, personas workflows, etc. into a visual format. 

The aim of wireframes is to experiment an test hierarchies and informed layout strategies. UX designers will always refer back to personas and workflows to test the wireframe layouts. 

The wireframes can be fairly simple and general, using placeholders to suggest where the text and images could be placed etc.