Tag: user experience

Building Empathy and Guiding Design with Personas

Posted on by Kim Shepherd in UX

No one website, app, or piece of software can cater to the infinite number of differences its users may have. You simply can't design everything for everybody. You can, though, look for the common denominators in people and solve for those problems. While a website may have a million users, each with a unique experience on the granular level, you may create just 3 or 4 personas into which most of them would relate in some way. You would do this in order to keep your project user-centered, but out of the weeds and focused on attainable goals.

Building Bears and Building Empathy in Undercover Boss

Posted on by Kim Shepherd in UX

By using empathy, a UX designer can recognize people’s needs and design products, services, or experiences that work for them. The reality show Undercover Boss is an example of how someone can gain empathy for users. I watched an episode featuring the CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop to show just how much user information you can gain in a relatively short amount of time. My empathy maps of the company's CEO and an employee demonstrate how multiple people can have different experiences, even within the same company, and why UX designers must gain insight into every type of user in the ecosystem of a product or service.

Connecting with Users Through Empathy Maps

Posted on by Kim Shepherd in UX

Empathy is about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and trying to understand their feelings, even if you haven’t had the same experiences as them. It's an important part of the design thinking process. In order to gain empathy for users, UX designers conduct extensive user research. Empathy maps are a great visual tool for organizing, communicating, and synthesizing this research into helpful user insights.

UX/UI Design and the Streaming Wars

Posted on by Kim Shepherd in UX

When Disney Plus, the company’s streaming service, launched last November, I was intrigued by the possibility of adding some Disney magic to my life again, if only through the TV and movie content I’d loved as a kid. That content has proven as satisfying as I remember, but the Disney Plus experience has left a bad taste in my mouth. Learn how I used a feelings and needs website analyzation of UX and UI elements on Disney Plus and Netflix to find out if Disney's design is the root of my negative opinion.

Why Emotions Matter in Design Thinking

Posted on by Kim Shepherd in UX

Feelings are the most powerful force in the decision-making process. In fact, research has found that people with injuries in the area of the brain responsible for emotion are incapable of making decisions. So, if you want to successfully use design thinking—a human-centered approach to problem-solving—then you must understand humans’ biggest motivator: emotion.

The Gift of Design Thinking

Posted on by Kim Shepherd in UX

Sometimes the best way to learn something new is to just jump in head-first. The Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford—also known as the d.school—offers those interested in learning design thinking an opportunity to do just that with their aptly named Design Thinking Crash Course. Through a video, you and a partner join instructors from the d.school and a room of students for a wild, hands-on ride through the steps of the design thinking process in just under 90 minutes. Your assignment? To redesign the gift-giving process for your partner. I took the crash course challenge and it was one of the most unique, memorable learning experiences of my life.

Design Thinking is for Everyone

Posted on by Kim Shepherd in UX

Design thinking puts the topics of emotion, intuition, and human behavior at the core of the problem-solving process. It has rapidly grown in popularity in recent years and is now used by businesses and organization worldwide to solve some of the most complex problems. For anyone possessing the right mindset, or willing to learn it, design thinking is a valuable skill to have in our future economy where people's experiences will matter more than ever.