Research

Thoroughly examine the products, services, marketing, and overall approach of competitors to understand strengths and weaknesses, identify potential gaps, and ultimately inform your business strategy. Read more about Competitive Analysis: Understanding the Market Context

Do you have all the useful data you need? Try to have a look at funnels, clicks, page views, performances... Read more about Three Uses for Analytics in User-Experience Practice

User Feedback refers to the process of actively gathering info and opinions from users about their experience, typically through methods like conducting interviews, distributing surveys, and monitoring interactions. Read more about An introduction to user research techniques

Define

Have you done personas yet? If not DO IT NOW. Ok, now use them to write down user stories and scenarios. Read more about How to Tell the User’s Stor

Create your user's flow based on the scenarios you created, you can use it later to review the journey and create wireframes on top of each step. Read more about A shorthand for designing UI flows

Define red routes for your product and you’ll be able to identify, prioritise and eliminate any usability obstacles on key user journeys. Read more about How red routes can help you take charge of your product backlog

Map & Plan

A "user flow" refers to a visual representation of the steps a user takes to complete a specific task or achieve a goal within a website or app, essentially mapping out the path they follow to reach their desired outcome. Read more about User Flow Examples

To create a journey map, you need to define clear goals, based on customer personas, identify your touchpoints, gather data through research, then map out the journey phases chronologically. Read more about The Guide to Journey Mapping

You can build an effective content strategy. Start by clearly defining your target audience, setting specific goals, researching relevant keywords, and developing high-quality content aligned with your audience's needs. Read more about Building Effective Content Strategies

Ideate

Blue sky discover time! Work with your partner, team, or research online to generate innovative and user-centric ideas by bringing together diverse perspectives and explore a wide range of possibilities.Read more about Brainstorming Sessions

UX Sketching is simply rough drawing by hand, commonly used for generating, communicating and refining ideas. Read more about How to Use Sketching as an Ideation Method

At this stage, a wireframe is a two-dimensional outline of a webpage or app. Wireframes provide a clear overview of the page structure, layout, information architecture, the application's user interface (UI) and core functionality. Read more about GOV.UK Accessibility

Help the planet by reducing the resources you use, reinforce greener behaviours and promote sustainability best practices. Yes, your product can do that! Read more about Low-fidelity Prototyping

Allow users to simulate interactions, essentially giving a realistic preview of how a user would navigate and experience the design, enabling designers to refine flows and identify potential issues. Read more about High-fidelity Prototype

Validate assumptions about how a product will work by testing a product's early model with actual users to gain feedback.This feedback helps designers and developers improve the product's design and functionality. Read more about Real-World User Testing

Design

Create consistency by re-using elements and following style guidelines. Don't have any? Create your guidelines. Start small, then create systems. Read more about guiding user attention

Strategically arrange elements within a layout, using tools like typography, color, and spacing, to guide the user's attention and prioritize information. Read more about Visual Hierarchy

Can I see it on my mobile? Oh wait, what about my smart-watch which works as a remote for my 50" TV. Bonus: remember cross device experience. Read more about Create a Better Responsive User Experience

Validate

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of principles that ensure digital content is accessible to people with disabilities. It is important to consider various aspects such as permeability, operability, understandability, and robustness. Read more about Designing for Web Accessibility

Feedback is a fundamental design principle for human interaction, it is the way of letting people know that the action they performed is working or resulted into an outcome. Read more about the feedback principle in UX design

Use these thoughtful addtions to make your design engaging. Carefully refine subtle animations and microinteractions to create moments of delight that enhance the overall user experience. Read more about Microinteractions

Test & Iterate

UX KPIs indicate how effectively a company is progressing toward its UX objectives. UX KPIs provide UX management with measurable data to report on advancements in the field of user experience." Read more about The 7 Most Important User Experience KPIs

Use of icons and images is strongly influenced by context, culture and layout that you use. Like icons, test your images, small changes can bring huge improvements. Read more about A/B Testing Techniques

Testing helps a UX designer validate concepts and observe user interactions. The process ensures the design meets needs and identifies areas of improvement before final implementation. Read more about Prototype Testing to Validating Designs

Launch

Design is also the way a product works. Some ideas may be great in theory, but not in practice. During the process, ensure alignment between design and development as early as possible to make sure your vision is "doable". Read more about Aligning UX Designers and UI Developers

Create clear documentation for developers and stakeholders to maintain design integrity. Use simple language and avoid UX jargon to make it clear for everyone on your team. Read more about Technical Documentation Examples for Inspiration

A phased launch involves rolling out a product or feature incrementally rather than launching it to all users simultaneously. Read more about the User-Centered Approach to Rolling Out a New Product Design

Evolve

In what ways are users interacting? Can you track their unconscious actions? Continuously track user behavior and engagement post-launch. Read more about What is App Engagement + 7 Proven Ways to Increase It

Now that the pressure is off, step back and make it even better - for all. Optimize designs for long-term efficiency and environmental impact. Read more about How to Master Sustainable UX Design? Strategies, Benefits

Test, observe and fix, test, observe and fix...Regularly refine based on evolving user needs and feedback.Read more about How QA Can Help Refine Your User Experience