Expedite Studio came into being on 1st January 2021 with a mission to bring UX Design into the limelight. In the very first month, we discussed the idea of hosting the first UX Design meetup, long story short, the first UX Design Meetup was successfully hosted on 24th January 2021. The energy of all the UXers made us realize that there is a dire need to host more events like this. So yes, here I’m writing the story of UX Design meetup 2.0 that was hosted by Expedite Studio in collaboration with Airlift. The only motive behind such events is to make the UX Design community grow, and I feel super proud to say that the UX Design community in Pakistan is growing stronger each passing day.
I will try to sum up all the important points that were discussed by the great UXers there at the meetup!
UX Myths Busted!
As a UX Designers, you must have heard about some of these UX myths, let’s see what our experienced designer has to say about these myths:
1. All pages should be accessible in 3 clicks
- If we try to adjust everything within 3 clicks, it can become overwhelming and frustrating for the user to handle too much information.
- As long as a user is getting desired results, and the application is easy-to-use with a good user experience, it’s okay to have more than 3 clicks for making a user complete a particular action.
- There is a navigational scheme in Information Architecture which says that try to avoid more than 3 tiers of navigation, this is an actual rule and is mostly used in those platforms that follow 3-tier rule.
2. Users don’t scroll
- This generation is used to scrolling 24/7 on their mobile screens. (Aren’t you? ) The most consumed content these days is on mobile devices, and if we talk about the UX of mobile phones, scrolling is much more convenient than actually clicking on to the CTAs.
- For continuous and lengthy content, scrolling provides a much better user experience.
- The scrolling thing can totally vary depending on the platforms. For example, there is a higher rate of scrolling on mobile devices than on the web. So, it totally depends on which platform you’re designing for.
- The design and content must be pleasing and engaging enough that makes a user scroll more.
3. Users can tell you what they want
- User can tell you the symptom of his pain points and frustrations, but not the root cause behind those symptoms. As a UX designer, it’s your role to identify the root cause of the problems.
- You don’t have to follow everything that a user is telling you, sometimes even the user is not right.
- There was research conducted for a new Coke mint flavor, according to the research reports, most people were sure that this new flavor will be a hit, but the launch of the real product proved the research to be wrong.
- Netflix conducted A/B testing for the research on its sign-up process, users predicted that they are most likely to sign up if they can see whether the show they want to watch is there or not, but it eventually resulted in fewer sign-ups.
- Try to identify where your user is coming from.
- Observe more about how the user acts or behaves, rather than just what he says.
- Sometimes you have to convince the user to give a chance to a new design, for the cause of a better UX.
4. Aesthetics are not important if you have good usability
- The first and the most important thing is the usability/functionality of the product. The product must fulfill its purpose.
- With functionality, if you add a touch of aesthetics then it can definitely level-up the standard of your product.
- In those products where users have other choices as well, then he will prefer the one that is aesthetically pleasing as well as usable.
- Chances are high that a user might not even go through the whole website/application if the User Interface is not pleasing enough.
5. If you’re an expert , you don’t need to test your design
- Designers usually become obsessed with their own designs and eventually become defensive for their designs, which is definitely not a good thing. As a designer, you should be open to suggestions and improvements.
- Even if you are an expert, or a user yourself, you still need to test your designs to get different perspectives from different people.
- The expert opinions also matter a lot. The things that you can’t see, others can identify those issues.
- Sometimes the user’s expectations are different from what we are thinking, so it’s very important to let the user test the product.
6. You don’t need content to design your website
- If we design just with the dummy content (Lorem ipsum blah blah.. :p), it results in aesthetically pleasing but unrealistic designs.
- Content is by far the most important element of UI Design.
- The layout problems can occur if we are totally designing with the dummy content, chances are high that you might have to change the whole design after putting real content.
- In a case where a product is in the brain-storming phase and the content writer does not have any idea about the content direction and all, we can go with the low fidelity wireframes/sketches, instead of directly moving towards UI.
Some open discussion topics
All about Usability Testing:
- Usability testing is about evaluating your designs by testing it with representative users.
- You must have a basic prototype ready for the usability testing.
- Usertesting.com, maze.co are great platforms where you can test your products.
- We can use Data Analytics for the products, the data can help us know where the real user is getting stuck, and what actions the user is performing.
- Hotjar, Mixpanel are great tools for website heatmaps and behaviour analytics.
- The methods of Usability Testing vary from company to company, and environment to environment.
- When you are conducting usability testing with the user, make sure to make him easy and comfortable first.
- Try to engage with the user instead of just silently observing.
- It’s a good practice if you prepare a list of questions beforehand, but try not to use it as a script, and just go with the flow of the conversation.
Generalist VS Specialist:
- There’s this misconception that you cannot be a master of more than one thing at once, the truth is that you can be a master of more than one things if you focus closely and keep on trying.
- Specialist is someone who focuses on one thing while a generalist is looking after many domains.
- The specialized fields in the UI/UX Design: Visual Designer, UX Researcher, UX Writer, Product Designer, Motion Designer, Interactions Designer, and Service Designer, etc.
- It’s not bad to be a generalist, but if the domain and scope is of large scale, then we definitely need specialists there!
- Most people at leadership positions are the generalists, as they are the one’s keeping a bird’s eye view on so many things at once.
Noob Clients and UX processes
- Try to identify the needs and requirements of the client and pitch them the solutions of his pain points.
- Make them understand the value of UX processes by showing the “with” or “without” examples and result-driven solutions.
- Evaluate the business matrices of the product and then try to explain to the client about ROI based UX.
- If you are telling that the actual cost of a bad design is huge, then you must also tell the benefits of the good design.
(It’s totally okay if nothing works, and the client just wants a quick UI (sigh), we all are in this together! )
Future of UI/UX Design in Pakistan:
- The design industry in Pakistan has been evolving since the last 5 years. The UI/UX design has started getting attention, and this is something we are super proud of!
- The processes are becoming more formal, people are willing to learn more about UX, we just need the right processes and then we will definitely see a huge boom in the UX design world.
- Currently, we lack in the educational programs of UX/Human computer interaction. Some UX relevant programs should be introduced by different universities in Pakistan.
So these were some of the insights from the great UXers from different firms which include Airlift, Bazaar, Bykea, Careem, Ibex, Securiti.ai, Systems, and many more! The whole idea behind this initiative is to bring the UXers on one platform where they can meet and know each other and share their experiences with each other. Expedite Studio will be hosting more events like this, just to empower the UX DESIGN community in Pakistan!
See the recorded UX Design Meetup 2.0 here
Wanna read insights from the first UX Design meetup? Read here
Join the UX Hub by Expedite Studio here
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