An in-progress list of concepts, tools and resources for simplifying experiences.
Problem statement
A concise explanation of the real problem to be solved and the desired outcome. Problem statements set the boundaries to focus discovery activities and the search for solutions.
Stakeholder mapping
An approach for figuring out the different groups of people who will be involved or impacted by the piece of work you are doing to inform how and when you will engage with them throughout your project.
Stakeholder workshops
Facilitated sessions focused on a specific task (such as identifying the key steps in the customer journey or eliciting subject-matter expertise) to build context, empathy and understanding of the problem-to-be-solved.
Interviews
Semi-structured interviews held with stakeholders or people who represent the target audience. Used to build understanding of their needs and develop empathy with the way they see and live in the world.
Focus groups
Facilitated discussions held amongst groups of people representative of your target audience to explore their aspirations, motivations, perceptions and views around a subject area to help build empathy and understanding.
User shadowing
Accompanying users over a period of time to observe them in their own day-to-day environments to see how they carry out their tasks or interact with a product or service.
Service safari
Where team members use the existing service and immerse themselves in the experience to understand and build empathy with users.
Jobs to be done (JTBD)
Also known as ‘Customer Jobs’, JTBD describe the outcomes that users want to reach. To achieve their outcome, a users will have specific tasks or ‘jobs’ and they will often make use of products or services to help them complete them.
Usability testing
Testing carried out with users to identify barriers and issues that prevent them from easily completing their journey through a product or service.
Personas
Used to describe your target audience (normally in terms of demographic details such as age, gender, location, occupation, etc), so that teams can begin to relate to the people they are building a service for.
Customer lifecycle mapping
A way of showing the different points where a customer will engage, use and eventually churn from the products and services you offer.
Surveys and questionnaires
A relatively quick way to capture feedback and insights about your target users.
Data analysis
Querying and modelling data (including web analytics, CRM, procured third party data, market research) to gain insights and improve decision making.
Customer journey map
A way to visualise the entire journey your customers or users will go through to reach their desired outcomes. Using a customer journey map enables you to see where your product or service fits into the overall journey to ensure a smooth connection. A journey map can also be used to identify problem areas that are impacting the user experience.
UX storyboards
Storyboards enable you to visually explore the experience user’s go through to achieve a goal by illustrating both on-screen and off-screen activities in a given scenario. The visual nature of storyboards also makes them very useful for communicating context and building empathy among stakeholders.
User flows
Shows the path in which the user will navigate through a website or app. This path is divided into a series of steps that the user takes from the entry point through conversion funnels towards the final action (signup, purchase, etc.).
Use cases
A use case describes a specific business goal to be satisfied by the system to be built. A use case diagram provides a graphical overview of goals that users want to achieve by using the system. Use cases can be effective when you use it as a tool for requirements discovery and management.
User stories
Short statements about a feature, written from a user’s perspective. A well-defined user story does not spell out the exact feature, but rather what the user aims to achieve, to give agile teams the freedom to identify the best possible solution. The most common format for framing the story is: “As a [user], I want [goal or action] so that [outcome or reason].”
User story mapping
Outlines the interactions that the team expects users to go through to complete their goals in a digital product. Story maps are intended to spark collaboration and conversation among Agile team members, while providing them with the bigger picture of how the digital product flows and fits together.
User scenarios
Stories created to show how users might act to achieve a goal. Scenarios succinctly and explicitly capture what users would likely experience as they proceed toward using an ideal solution.
User archetypes
Used to describe the behaviours of your target audience, so that teams can understand their motivations, needs and pain-points.
- The role of archetypes in enterprise user experience
- How to use personas and archetypes to drive shared understanding and digital strategy
Service blueprint
A way to visualise the key components (people, processes, products and props) and the connections between those components that enable the delivery of a service.
Competitor analysis
A view of the direct and in-direct products, services and alternatives that your service will be competing with.
PESTLE analysis
A summary of the key political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors impacting your users and your organisation.
Business capability analysis
Mapping out the things that the organisation is capable of doing through its people, processes, locations, specialist knowledge, tools and technologies.
Value stream assessment
Mapping out the steps that an organisation takes to bring a service from its beginning through to delivery to the user.
Channel assessment
Understanding the best ways for your target audience to access the service.
Financial analysis
Using financial data to assess historical and projected profitability, cash flows and risk, to inform decision making.
Value proposition
A simple statement that summarises why a customer would choose your product or service. It communicates the clearest benefit that customers receive by giving you their business.
Business model design
A methodology for understanding if and how the value proposition of the service can be scaled up and delivered as a profitable business.
Organisational design
Defining the structure, people policies and ways of working of an organisation to best deliver on goals and strategy.
Business process mapping
Building a picture of how an organisation operates and finding insights into how a current way of working can be improved.
Positioning
Defining how the service will be positioned in the market in terms of target audience, price and direct / indirect competition.
Branding
Closely related to positioning, but important for defining whether the service will have an identity of its own and how it will relate to the identity of the organisation delivering it.
Moodboards
A collage of images, fonts, interactions, features, icons, and UI elements to communicate the artistic direction of a project.
Ideation
A creative process for developing ideas, concepts and solutions to well-understood problems.
Hypothesis design
Intentionally forming assumptions based on insights you have gathered that can be experimented on.
Task analysis
A research method to identify how users go about achieving their goals.
- Task Analysis: Support Users in Achieving Their Goals
- How to improve you UX designs with Task Analysis
- Task Analysis
Asset mapping
A consolidated view of all the screens and elements users encounter across channels when completing a workflow or journey to assess its consistency. Screenshots, social media posts, videos, emails, text messages, push notifications, copy, and photographs can be included in the map.
Content Audit
Examines, assesses, and evaluates the quality of all your content.
Taxonomies
Refers to the structural methods for how information is sorted, classified and organised.
- Organising information with taxonomies and metadata
- An introduction to taxonomies
- Building a user centred taxonomy
- How to develop a taxonomy
Site map
A hierarchical diagram that shows the information architecture of a website. It gives a visual representation of the site’s organisation and how different sections are linked together.
Card sorting
A UX research technique in which users organise topics into groups. Use card sorting to create an Information Architecture that suits your users’ expectations.
Sketching
A way to convey design ideas in a timely and cost-efficient manner. Used in the exploratory stages of a design to propose, refine, communicate and critique your ideas in a “tangible” format.
- Everything you need to know about UX sketching
- 7 reasons for sketching in UX design
- How to use sketching in UX design
Wireframes
A wireframe is a layout of a web page that demonstrates what interface elements will exist on key pages. Wireframes help teams and stakeholders ideate toward optimal, user-focused prototypes and products.
Prototypes
A simple experimental model of a proposed solution used to test or validate ideas, design assumptions and other aspects of its conceptualisation quickly and cheaply, so that appropriate refinements or changes can be made. Prototypes come in all different shapes and sizes, ranging from simple paper models to fully functional, interactive digital prototypes.
Heuristic analysis
Using rules of thumb to measure the usability of user interfaces.
- What is heuristic evaluation
- How to use heuristic evaluations
- How to conduct heuristic evaluation
- 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
Accessibility testing
Accessibility is concerned with whether all users are able to access an equivalent user experience, however they encounter a product or service. Accessibility testing is the practice of making your web and mobile apps usable to as many people as possible, including those with disabilities.
Pattern libraries
A library of user interface (UI) patterns that designers and design teams use to build digital products. They are referred to as ‘patterns’ because they’re recurring solutions that solve design problems. Used to help build digital products quickly and efficiently whilst ensuring a consistent user experience.
Design systems
- Design Systems 101
- The Difference Between Design Systems, Pattern Libraries, Style Guides & Component Libraries
- GOV.UK Design System
Key performance indicators
Formalised metrics to help your team understand how well they are performing against objectives. KPIs reflect the overall goals of your business – such as revenue growth, retention, or increased user numbers. UX metrics measure, compare, and track the user experience of a website or app over time.
- UX metrics and KPIs
- KPIs UX teams should measure
- 4 metrics to measure the performance of your UX design
Performance analysis
Helps teams creating digital services to measure their success, and to improve services based on data-driven evidence.
A/B testing
A technique of showing two or more variants of a design to users at random to find out which one performs better.
- A comprehensive guide to A/B testing
- A/B testing in UX design: when and why it’s worth it
- A/B testing benefits and limitations
Eyetracking
A method that can be used to objectively and accurately record and analyse visual behaviour. Eye tracking measures either where the eye is focused or the motion of the eye as an individual views a web page. The areas in which a user’s gaze stops moving are called “fixation,” while the movement of a user’s eye between fixation points is known as a “saccade.”
Heatmaps
A data visualisation that shows users’ focus on the page. Generally, a colour scale moving from blue to red indicates the duration of focus. Red depicts popular (hot) areas of the page, and blue less popular (cold) areas. There are different forms of heatmaps, such as eye tracking, click, segment, and scroll.
- Eye tracking heatmap
- How to use heat maps to fire up your UX
- Heatmap Analysis To Improve Your Website UX
Product roadmap
A shared source of truth that outlines the vision, direction, and progress of a product over time. It’s an important asset for aligning teams and valuable stakeholders around your strategy and priorities. Roadmaps that include UX work can have 3 scopes: product, field, and specialty.
Prioritisation framework
A prioritisation framework contains consistent criteria for product teams to use when putting features in priority order or ranking according to business value.