Developing great user experience doesn’t only limit you to designing a good user interface. In fact, user interface designing is just one subset of user experience design. It’s comprised of user research, wireframes & prototypes, and usability testing.
So, how would you deliver great user experience design in the app you’re developing? In this article let’s discuss various phases of user experience design.
##Creating user personas
User experience design starts with a solid understanding of your user base and generating user personas. Creating user personas helps you to identify who the end user of your product is and how to focus your app to thier needs.
You’ll want to figure out the age group, gender, behavior, culture, etc. of your users. This will help you tailor your marketing efforts toward a certain kind of person – your ideal customer. The reality is that this kind of classification is far too restrictive for only one persona. The users of your apps are not limited to these specific types and you may need a half dozen or more personas to test.
While creating personas, developers can segment users into specific groups according to their lifestyle, attitudes and opinions, in addition to physiological categorization.
##Choosing the right features
Too many features are confusing. If your app provides tons of features, it may increase the learning curve of your users.
Simple apps that are easier to use are much more likely to be successful.
Make sure your app focuses on the small set of core functions. For example, if you create an app for banking enterprises, the core functionalilty would include checking the balance and performing transactions on the go.
##Make the navigation easy
Once you decide what set of features are to be included in your app, the next step is to make things easier for the users to flow from one feature to another.
That is, instead of having them navigate through multiple windows, a mobile app that is easy to use and has a clean user interface will save your users time and energy. Your aim as a developer should be to reduce the learning curve for the users and make navigation more intuitive.
##Get feedback from your users
Feedback from your customers is valuable while deciding how to develop an amazing user experience. You can also use customer feedback to develop new features for your app.
A nice way to gather feedback from customers is to simply ask them. Of course, not every user will submit a ticket to share their ideas or to request new features. Even then, there are lots of other ways to gather user feedback. Users often submit their feedback using the product rating process in the App Store. Another place is social media where users are more likely to be brutally honest about their views.Use this feedback to develop new features or to enhance an amazing user experience for your app.
##Bringing It Home
- User personas are helpful to make a user-centric design for your app.
- Focusing on a small set of core functions will make your user’s life easier.
- Make sure that the navigation is simple throughout the app so that users can switch from one task to another easily.
- Gather user feedback to develop new features and enhance amazing user experience.
