User Experience Iterative Flow with User Testing Methods

The UX flow illustrated below comprises the following milestones: 

1. Discovery/ Pre-Product/Service Design Stage: 

1. For New Product/Services 

1. User Personas & Journeys: While User personas represent user archetypes, user journeys visualise the steps a user takes to achieve a goal when interacting with a product. 

2. Benchmarking: Benchmarking in UX design compares a product's performance against industry standards or competitors to assess effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. Benchmarking can be conducted for the core Industry/sector, adjacent Industry/ sector or, be 
   Blue Sky - Unrelated to the industry or sector, but can be a source of inspiration. For digital products/services, product benchmarking has 2 levels:
 

• The evaluation of features and functionality 

• Screen Real-estate Allocation (SRA) or how much screen real-estate is devoted to each feature/ CTA and at which fold - First Fold, Second Fold, etc, it occurs. This helps determine the priority that other competitors give to specific features/CTAs 

2. For Existing Products/Services 

1. Usability Audit: A usability audit is a thorough evaluation of a product's usability and user experience, aiming to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement through expert analysis and evaluation methods. 

2. User Testing: User testing is a milestone in the UX process involving various methods to involve real users to interact with a product or service to assess its usability and effectiveness. User testing Methods have been elaborated in later sections. 

3. Benchmarking 
    

2. Define Stage: 

1. Feature Listing: This milestone refers to defining features and functionality of the Product or Service. The ultimate goal of the bench-marking is to come up with a tiered list of features categorised as:
 

1. Must Haves (for a Minimum Viable Product or MVP): Red route features without which the product/business or organisation would fail.
 

2. Good to Haves (Phase 2 Updates): Features which are found in most competitor platforms and hence are essential to have. However, an exclusion of these features will not break the product/business.
 

3. Great to Haves: Feature which will increase the overall quality of the product but will not have a significant effect on the KPIs 

2. Information Architecture: An Information Architecture (IA) is a map of information and functionality offered by a product or service that enables a user to accomplish their goals.  
   It creates the framework for different features/CTAs to be laid out in accordance with the User Journeys and supported by a hierarchy of information in the form of text, metadata, illustrations, media, etc., to enable the user to take action.  
    

[For Digital Products/ Services]: The IA also helps at the level of project planning as at this stage, Design and Tech effort can be estimated by estimating the total number of Screens/States that are required for each Feature/ Call to Action (CTA). 
Tip: We need to design for mainly 3 user states: 

• Zero State or how the user interacts for the first time 

• Recurring State or how the user continues to interact regularly  

• Error State or what happens when the user commits an error or is unable to proceed with a regular action 
   

3. Product/service Design Stage: 

1. Wireframing: A wireframe is a two-dimensional skeletal outline of a webpage or app. Wireframes provide a clear overview of the page structure, layout, information architecture, user flow, functionality, and intended behaviors. 

This is a process of visualising the IA into Interfaces. It can be conducted following a process detailed below: 

1. Low Fed Wireframes: These are rough first iterations of laying out the IA in the form of interface designs 

2. Hi-Fed Wireframes: These wireframes have a higher degree of detail with CTAs, Copy, Placeholder illustrations, interactive elements, etc. More the detail, the closer it represents the final product or service interface. 

3. Prototyping: This is to define the connections and interactions across different states and screens to mimic the final product in terms of functionality
 

4. Defining the hierarchy for design components: This is the process of defining the atomic elements of the design system (but it may not be detailed out at this stage) 

2. User Testing: At this User testing Milestone, A/B Testing, Think-Out Loud Tests and Usability Studies are the most appropriate methods. These methods have been elaborated in later sections. 

3. User Interface(UI) Design and Prototyping: UI (User Interface) encompasses the visual and interactive elements of a digital product. Prototyping involves creating preliminary versions of a product to visualize and test functionality before development. The following is required at this stage: 

• Full design system including atoms, molecules, organisms, sections and pages 

• Final Copy Inputs from Copy-writers 

• Checks for Accessibility for visual impairment, colour blindness, etc 

• Final interactive prototypes and micro-animations if any 

• Final Illustrations and visual/branding language 

4. User Testing: At this User testing Milestone, A/B Testing, Think-Out Loud Tests, Usability Studies and Accessibility Audits are the most appropriate methods. These methods have been elaborated in later sections. 

4. Development Stage: 

1. Tech. Specifications: Tech Specs is detailed documentation of the design wireframes and IA’s to aid the process of development 

2. Development Sprints: In Agile product development, a sprint is a set period of time during which specific work has to be completed and made ready for review. Each sprint begins with a planning meeting. It generally is composed of 3 sub-phases: 

• Frontend development 

• Backend development 

• QA/QC 

5. Launch + Post Launch Stage: 

1. User Testing: At this User testing Milestone, A/B Testing, Think-Out Loud Tests, Usability Studies and Accessibility Audits are the most appropriate methods. These methods have been elaborated in later sections. 

2. Feedback: At this Milestone, A/B Testing, Think-Out Loud Tests, Usability Studies and Written Open-ended Questions are the most appropriate methods to collect user feedback. These methods have been elaborated in later sections. 

In summary, iterative UX design processes for product/service design and development prioritise continual feedback, testing, and refinement to create digital products or services that meet user needs and deliver a superior user experience. User testing plays a crucial role in this process, providing valuable insights that guide design decisions and ensure that the final product meets user expectations. 

More on User Testing Methods can be found here: