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Design Design Ops UX UX Design

UX Benchmarking

I’ve been working on implementing a UX Benchmarking strategy for our products. We’re gathering more data now and it’s going to be a busy year for us with new products coming to market.

UX Benchmarking is a great way to show our progress as our products develop and we get better at what we do. Being able to demonstrate how our users are responding to our systems in the real work will be great for our stakeholders.

Also UX Benchmarking is a valuable process and putting together our process has been an enjoyable process.

Categories
Design Digital Product design UX UX Design

Design Concepts

I’m currently working ahead of production on design concepts for our projects that are in the discovery phase. Based on stakeholder requirements these concepts help to flesh out the digital solution that will eventually be built by our development teams.

The concepts will typically cover the key screens that will enable users to perform certain tasks or access what they need from the specific service. I design the screens in Figma which are then built into prototypes that allow stakeholders and product owners to visualise how the digital solution will look. They can then review, discuss, feedback and adjust the concepts which can easily be edited.

These prototypes give insight to the product’s user journey and allow for early user testing to validate the design concepts. I enjoy this creative process as it helps early understanding of a proposed digital solution and it is an efficent process for digital product production.

Categories
Design Usability UX UX Design

User Feedback

Working on recent products has highlighted to me again the importance of testing usability with actual end users. This step can sometimes be overlooked when product teams are deep in stakeholder requirements and writing user stories.

Getting prototypes infront of actual users in the early discovery phase of a project can save a lot of time, money and effort. End users have a real world perspective on how the new product or system will help them perform their tasks or not as the case may be.

They may have no knowledge of your product or system and will compare it to what they have used or are currently using. They may also give some guidance on what features would be good to see on an industry level which had not previously been considered.

Prototypes can be quickly changed as they only need design team resource with no development resource involved. So the importance of early and regular user testing shouldn’t be overlooked as it’s a valuable step in modern digital product conception and production.

Categories
Design Mobile Product design Usability UX UX Design

User Testing Prototypes

I’m currently building two Figma prototypes for a new NHS rostering solution that has a unique approach for the sector. The prototypes demonstrate the user journeys for two user groups of the new system. I’m working in close collaboration with our POs to refine the final prototypes ahead of user testing to validate our ideas based on the user stories we have created.

I’ve kept the UI as intuitive as possible so the end-users are able to use the new system in the real world. I’m also user testing early so we can make sure that we’re getting feedback on the solution well ahead of any development.

We have a focus group ready for testing and we can also access medical staff that represent the target user groups for the new system. This ensures that we can produce a digital product that engages our users whilst also addressing our stakeholder requirements and business needs.

I’ll be iterating the prototypes and system functionality as we go forward with our successive rounds of user testing. Our new rostering system is designed to integrate with our mobile app to help our medics organise their schedules and make their working day easier.

Categories
Design Digital Usability UX UX Design

UI/UX Improvements

I’m looking at making some UI/UX improvements to two of our products to improve usability and address inconsistent UI elements.

Working with our product owners and senior developers we’re going through user stories that I’ve created based on live system adjustments to our UI. I’m writing my user stories to keep these improvements end-user focused to improve our product usability and also to enhance our product’s look and feel.

Once agreed with the POs and senior devs the UI/UX tasks are estimated and bought into production. I also transfer my user stories to the respective product backlogs for the POs to implement in their sprints.

It’s good to capture these UI improvements that will enhance the user experience of our user groups. This work also improves the overall look and feel of our product suite so there is a seamless cross-product user experience.

Categories
Design Mobile Product design UI UX UX Design

Staff Organisation

It is sometimes a significant UI/UX challenge to design solutions for systems that will help organise large staff groups. In my current role I’m working on new ways to roster NHS staff for large UK based trusts.

Keeping complex systems easy to use for the main user groups is very important in my user centred approach. I’m looking at ways to make our new system both intuative and streamlined. This takes into consideration the needs of diverse user groups and a large number of users.

Being able to access large data sets for admin user on desktop and end-users being able to access the system to see their work patterns on mobile devices are key stakeholder requirements.

I like working on larger projects and this is certainly demanding on a UI/UX design level. The product and development teams currently working on this product are great to work with and we have an excellent working reationship which really helps with the production process.

Challenge is good and designing a better system is never easy but I enjoy leading the design process that can make a difference for our users.

Categories
Creative Design Design Ops Digital Product design UX UX Design

UX Brighton

Well it’s been a while! But I was very glad to having bought my ticket and headed into Brighton to attend this conference once again.

Really good to see it up and running again after the break for the pandemic and good to attend a design orientated conference. I also caught up with some old designer friends that I’ve previously worked with in Brighton.

There were some inspirational speakers with the day’s theme being focused on Product Design and Management. As ever I took lots of notes to mull over and themes to explore over the coming weeks.

UX Brighton always inspires me and I enjoy the takeaways that I can bring into my design practice and career.

Categories
Creative Design Digital Mobile Product design UX Design

Mobile Design

I’ve been working on mobile prototypes and design screen concepts to support our sales team. They deliver webinars that we’re presenting to groups of potential clients that represent large health care organisations.

Using Figma I create screen flows of our products to highlight key screens to show our product features and overall look and feel. The demos help show current and future features that are live or currently in production.

I’m also working on a wider mobile design project as part of a back-end system upgrade project which is underway. I’m looking at our app’s UX and UI, the user journey, improved performance and resolving usability bugs. It’s good to work with our mobile development team during this project and collaborate on mobile functionality.

We have end-users ready for user testing of our new app once it has progressed through our internal test and UAT process. I’m looking forward to getting this user feedback on our app and to see it go live.

This project will improve the user experience of our audience and bring an much improved mobile app to market.

Categories
Design Design Ops Mobile UI UX Design

Product UI Consistency

It can be a challenge bringing consistency to multiple products which are available from the same company. It’s important to present a uniform look and feel to the end user so they can see the relationship within the product suite.

I’m currently working on a group of products that have been developed with by seperate dev teams. They have evolved to have a range of inconsistencies and with the lack of a style guide in place there is no single source of truth for design.

Working with the product owners is key and our technical authors have experienced and helpful attention to detail. Seeing the bigger picture is a must to spot how UI elements and tasks are handled in the different product systems.

This project also builds towards a future design system where each UI component’s use case is detailed for the whole company to refer to. Other benefits are that UI components are understood by all in the production and test teams and new starters can quickly get up to speed with the available UI components.

Categories
Design Design Ops Digital UX UX Design

UX Brighton

I attended UX Brighton last week, a conference which focuses on UX (User Experience), it was inspiring with a good mix of speaker. This year the theme was design which I particularly enjoyed as I’ve worked in this field for many years.

The conferenece was well organised and has info packed talks form a range of industry professionals, the talks were kept to a shorter length which I found refreshing.

UX Brighton was held at the Dome in Brighton, Sussex, UK which is a great venue and handy for me as I live near and work in the city.

I would recommend attending this conference if you’re interested in UX and are able to go. The talks are soon to be available on the UXBri website if you want to get a flavour of what happened on the day or get a feel for the conference.