In this guide to the UX design process, we’ll be walking you through the meaning and value of the UX design process, providing you with clear steps for completing each stage of the process and offering guidance, tips, and best practices throughout.
The UX design process provides manifold benefits for users and designers alike. It ensures an experience that meets users’ needs in an intuitive and delightful way while providing the UX team with a structured methodology that aligns business and user goals.
For those learning UX design, getting to grips with how the UX design process works, and what is expected of the UX team at each stage, is a fundamental part of the learning journey. In this article, we’re going to go through each stage of the process in detail and provide you with the steps you’ll be expected to take in order to run a project from end to end; starting with scoping out the initial challenge through to validation and testing.
Here’s a rundown of what we’ll be covering:
- 1) What do we mean by the UX design process?
- 2) How does the UX design process work with Design Thinking?
- 3) Why use the UX design process?
- 4) The UX design process
- 5) Conclusion
- 6) Next steps
Ready to learn more? Then let’s get started!
What is the UX design process?
The UX design process is a collection of UX methodologies which are conducted chronologically by a UX designer or a UX design team. The process is used to approach projects, challenges, and product development in order to create the most intuitive and seamless user experience possible. In a practical sense, these actions are what the design team takes before a new design can be handed over to the development team for implementation. However, elements of the UX process can also be used once a website or app has already been built, as part of a redesign or to improve the brand’s offering.
This process is not fixed and different UX designers will have their preferences as to how it is conducted and, depending on the project, could choose to place more weight on one part of the process than another. However, despite slight variations in the process from team to team or from project to project, most designers seek to include all of the following stages:
- Definition and scope of the product
- Research
- Analysis
- Design
- Implementation
- Testing
How does the UX design process work with Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is an approach to innovation and design that focuses on the human experience, and comprises five core elements: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. It’s used by designers to get the balance right between what’s logical to end-users, what can be achieved technologically, and what the business can take on.
However, Design Thinking and the UX design process are not the same, despite containing similar elements. While Design Thinking provides principles and an ideology for UX designers to work with, the UX design process is an end-to-end methodology that incorporates these ideas and provides a structure that a team can follow.
Why use the UX design process?
The UX design process provides numerous advantages to individual UX designers, UX teams, and other stakeholders in product development, such as product owners, developers, and project managers. The process ensures that assumptions are kept away, standards for quality and consistency are maintained, and the optimal solution for a given challenge is found and implemented.
In addition, the different stages of this process allow for multiple rounds of design iteration and testing, while at the same time promoting and actively facilitating collaboration between colleagues and teams. The UX design process also increases transparency, making it significantly easier for stakeholders in the project–management, members of other departments, and clients–to track the status of a project and keep an eye on its progress.
For the end-user, the process ensures the delivery of a product that has been designed with the user at its center and therefore addresses the specific needs, desires, challenges, and goals of that individual or group. When a product or service meets the needs of the target user, a brand builds a relationship of trust with the user which in turn encourages brand loyalty, repeat sales, and word of mouth or online recommendations.
The UX design process
Stage 1: Definition and scope of the project
The first stage of the UX design process is to define and scope out the project in order to understand the user and their needs, as well as the expectations and limitations of the business.
For the first part, the UX design team will need to identify the challenge which needs to be addressed and gain a detailed understanding of the target user for whom they are solving the problem. By empathizing fully with users, a team can better grasp the issues that need to be most urgently addressed. To achieve this, a team creates user personas, user journey maps, and empathy maps.
Once the team has a clear idea of the target users, they’ll need to start gathering data to understand the needs, goals, and limitations of the business, and what the team can achieve within a given timeframe. To understand the expectations of the team and project stakeholders, one can conduct stakeholder interviews and identify value propositions before bringing the whole UX team together for a kick-off meeting.
If you're looking to enhance your team with specialized expertise, consider hiring a UX developer who can bring a fresh perspective and advanced skills to the table.
User personas
The creation of a user persona is to have a representation of your typical user. It’s built through a combination of user research, brainstorming, and data from any current or previous users. The user persona enables the UX designer to make decisions around website or app features, design elements, structure, and functionality.
User journey maps
The user journey map (sometimes called a customer journey map) is a visual demonstration of how a user moves through a website or app, with key touchpoints and interactions highlighted throughout. It begins with how the user initially discovers the site and moves through each action they take (and where they take it) as they become more engaged. The final stages of a user journey map should include the user’s transformation into a customer and long-term advocate. Many user journey maps include information about the customer’s motivations and emotional responses at different stages, too.
Empathy maps
An empathy map is an effective tool for organizing and categorizing a user’s feelings and behaviors and helps build empathy between the team creating the product and the user. Usually created as a visual aid, it captures the team’s prior knowledge about the user and exists as a reference point for the design.
Stakeholder interviews
According to the Nielsen Norman Group, a stakeholder interview is: “a conversation with a person who has a vested interest in a project with a goal of gathering insights to drive the project’s success.” By involving stakeholders at this stage, the design team has an opportunity to tap into their experience with similar projects, get context for the current project, and identify the business goals of the project. It also means teams and departments are aligned from the get-go and allows stakeholders to feel like their concerns and contributions are heard and valued.
Identification of value propositions
The value proposition is a term used to describe the value, experience, and benefits a company promises to bring to its customers. As a UX team, you’ll need to outline what the product does and why the user should care about it. While identifying and defining the value propositions, it can be helpful to list the product’s features, benefits, and what the user’s experience should be.
Kick-off meeting
The last part of the preparation stage will be for the UX design team to have a kick-off meeting with the other key stakeholders to agree upon a plan, deliverables, and deadlines. Irrespective of the size of the project and how many team members are involved, you’ll want to have everyone aligned on the following points by the time the meeting ends:
- Project scope
- Plan of action
- Objectives
- Definition of success
- Deliverables
- Deadline for delivery
Stage 2: Research
UX research is a fundamental aspect of the UX design process as it directly informs decisions and strategies made by the team. Research helps UX designers eliminate ingrained assumptions, prioritize ideas, products, and features, as well as understand the target user’s challenges and needs more deeply, thereby guiding the direction of the design as a whole and signalling where the main focus should be.
There are numerous ways to conduct research. What method one chooses will depend on the team size, budget, timeframe, and available resources. The following are different types of research and some commonly adopted methodologies.
User research
This sort of research involves studying target users and learning about their challenges, desires, motivations, and goals. User research seeks to provide the design team with tangible insights into the people they’re designing for in order to help them create the most user-centric and intuitive designs. In-depth user research also helps a team avoid making assumptions about the target user, thereby averting a design that does not help the user reach their goal. There are numerous ways a team might choose to conduct user research. Here are some of the most popular methods:
- User interviews
- Observational studies
- Qualitative and quantitative research
- Usability testing
- Online surveys
Market research
Market research is conducted when researchers need to see the bigger picture, by delving into high-level information in relation to a particular industry or market. Rather than focusing on individuals (as in user research), market researchers tend to run studies on large groups, asking them general questions about a product’s appeal and why they might buy it. In contrast to user research, market research is less interested in the individual’s personal relationship with a brand and more interested in the current market as a whole.
Competitive research
This type of research is focused on what a brand’s direct competitors are doing and how users are responding to these competitors. A researcher will first seek to identify a brand’s competitors before assessing what those competitors are doing well and where they might improve. In addition to studying a company’s products and services, the researcher might also gather insights (usually with the help of a competitor analysis) into how the company markets and sells to their customers.
Stage 3: Design
Using the data gathered on the target user’s behavior, preferences, needs, and goals, the team moves on to the design stage. This stage usually involves a range of different team members and can be repeated as many times as necessary in order to validate each concept.
Creating information architecture
During this step of the UX process, the hierarchy of content is decided and implemented. The goal of this step is to enable users to navigate a website or app with the fewest obstacles and find what they are looking for in the most seamless and intuitive manner possible. For this goal to be achieved, clear labeling and structuring of the content is needed . This will also ensure that users have an accurate idea of their location within the site as well as the actions they should take to reach their goal.
Wireframing
Wireframing is when the design team uses the data gathered from the research stage and places it within the context of the structural design of a website or app. While still taking into consideration the user’s needs, preferences, goals, and behavior, the wireframe will be used to plan out text and visual content, interface elements, navigational elements, and elements that assist with page functionality.
Prototyping
Prototyping is when a designer creates an early, lo-fi version of a product or design in order to test or evaluate it before more time or resources are invested into a more high-fidelity version.
Prototyping enables designers to validate their designs and capture key ideas in either digital or paper form. The advantage of creating prototypes is that designs can be refined or changed at this stage at a relatively little cost to the team. This stage opens up an opportunity for iteration, design validation, and concept alignment before handing over to the development team.
Stage 4: Implementation
The implementation stage is when the design team’s vision is made into a reality by the development team. Effective communication and collaboration are critical UX design skills necessary for a successful handover, among many others. To achieve this, the earlier the UX design team involves the development team, the better, so that any technical limitations or complicated components can be flagged well ahead of time.
During this stage, the design team is expected to hand over design specifications to the developer for programming . These specifications should be as detailed as possible and clearly communicate each of the visual design components needed to transform the prototype into a functioning website or app.
Stage 5: Validation and usability testing
The final stage in the UX design process is validation and testing. This last but crucial step helps the UX team confirm if their design truly works for its intended users and addresses all of their challenges. Validation and testing is usually conducted using a functioning website or app as this provides the highest-quality feedback from end-users and stakeholders. Usability testing also provides an opportunity to identify any residual user challenges, usability issues, or accessibility issues. Usability testing can be conducted using different methodologies. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular.
User observation
User observation is one of the most common forms of usability testing. It involves a UX designer observing the user as they interact directly with the new (or redesigned) website, product, or feature. While asking users questions directly will go some way towards helping a UX designer understand the user’s motivations and challenges, observation can often reveal much more. During user observation, a UX designer will take notes, observe behavior, ask for feedback, and ask the user to perform specific actions, if needed.
Surveys
A survey can be a useful tool when a UX team is looking to collect data from a large group of people. In the case of a new or redesigned website, a survey might be sent out to a group of user testing professionals after they have interacted with the site, asking them specific questions about their experiences. Although surveys may not capture the detail that comes with in-person observation, they are a practical method of getting an overview of how well a product is working for specific groups.
Interviews
Interviews are an effective way of mining the opinions of users, providing an opportunity for users to elaborate on their feelings towards the experience delivered by a product or brand.
Card sorting
UX testers use the card sorting methodology to categorize information and content on a website in a way that is logical to users. The UX designer writes information onto cards, for example, they might write descriptive labels such as “press releases”, “news”, and “articles”. They then ask the user to put these cards into groups that make sense to them. In this case, those groups might be “homepage”, “blog”, and “resources”.
This methodology helps the UX designer to better understand how users expect to encounter different types of information on the website and where they will look to find what they need.
Once a UX team has concluded its rounds of user testing, the collected data and user feedback are then used to refine and improve the design before the public launch of the product. This stage can be repeated as many times as necessary, until the design is fully able to meet the needs of the user. And thats it! You are now acclimated to the UX design process, atleast in theory. In order to see what these steps look like, take a look at some of the projects (individual and group) undertaken by students enrolled in our UX UI design courses:
- 1) Aromal Jose Baby’s Calisto Readers Cafe - User Research and Analysis
- 2) Farms of India
- 3) Sustainable Resident Welfare Association
- 4) Mission Outdoors
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve described in detail each stage of the UX design process, from defining your challenge to validating and testing your finished digital product. As we have seen, the process provides practical, chronological steps which UX designers can follow when seeking to solve problems or approach new projects in order to ensure the most delightful and intuitive experience possible is created for the user. The process ensures assumptions are avoided, high standards are maintained, and the best solution is found for any given problem or challenge, making it an ideal guide for both new and established UX designers to follow.
Learn More: 13 Common UX Design Job Interview Questions and Answers for 2024
Next steps
Here are some recommendations that we believe will be useful for you regardless of your skill level.
- Watch this session by Shiva Viswanathan, Design Head of Ogilvy Pennywise, and Naman Singh, Product Experience Designer at RED.
- Talk to a course advisor to discuss how you can transform your career with one of our courses.
- Pursue our UX UI Design courses - all courses are taught through live, interactive classes by industry experts, and some even offer a Job Guarantee.
- Take advantage of the scholarship and funding options that come with our courses to overcome any financial hurdle on the path of your career transformation.
Note: All information and/or data from external sources is believed to be accurate as of the date of publication.
