Lean UX design process, A smart approach for the startups?

The core User Experience Design process is time-consuming. It is costly too. As a result, companies, especially product-based startups, often try to skip this and straight away jump into product design without considering the actual users' needs. They start creating the product based on certain biases. Hence, most of the time, they fail to generate the desired result and quality user experiences. 

In User Experience Design, there are different popular frameworks or processes that a design team can choose to launch the final product starting from creating the initial idea. Choosing the right design framework is extremely essential for the success of the product development process. 

Unlike other frameworks where a lot of time is spent from research to the final design, a Lean UX design process focuses more on the quick outcome of a product.

 

Lean UX, a solution for user experience design for startups?

As mentioned earlier, Lean UX is a popular design framework. This is an iterative process where the designers prioritize producing a quick, practical product and receiving feedback as promptly as possible. Here, all the team members like researchers, product managers, designers, and developers work in collaboration to come up with solutions.

This process is based on both the ‘Lean model’ and ‘Agile methodology’. Designers continue to iterate the designs based on the feedback gathered, until and unless the stakeholders, and potential users find the product, useful, usable, equitable, enjoyable, and accessible. The main aim is to generate results fast by removing extra, avoidable, and time-consuming elements.

Before we start digging more into this process, let’s quickly understand what a ‘Design Thinking Process’ is. A DTP probably is the most popular UX design framework till date. It’s a ‘user-centric’ design process where the designers and researchers put the actual end users and their requirements front and center.

There are 5 steps or stages of the Design Thinking Process that UX designers need to follow:

1. Empathize: The first phase is where we conduct the user research to understand the user problem.
2. Define: Here we define the problem by simply writing a problem statement.
3. Ideate: In the 3rd phase of the Design Thinking Process, we quickly come up with ideas of actually what to design.
4. Prototype: Here, we come up with sketches, wireframes (both paper/digital), design mockups, and finally create ‘Low-fidelity (lo-fi)’ and ‘High-fidelity (hi-fi)’ prototypes.
5. Test: As the term itself suggests, it’s time to test the prototype that we create in the 4th phase of the DTP. Testing can be done for wireframes and mockups as well. 

Though the process is very popular, a lot of companies can’t afford this because of both time and money constraints. Now, in Lean UX, to have a quicker outcome, the process is divided into three categories. 

3 stages of the Lean User Experience (UX) design framework: 

1. Think: In this starting phase, all the research work is conducted by means of interviews, surveys, competitive analysis, etc. in order to get the idea of what the users actually need and how the desired product can make their experience and lives better. 
2. Make/Create: In the 2nd phase of Lean UX, the designers actually start creating the designs. Here, they convert their ideas about the product that they generate via research work to testable designs. They create wireframes (can be quick paperwork or digital wireframes), design mockups/layouts, and functional lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes. It’s important to know that here we create a ‘Minimum Viable Product (MVP)' where we can create basic design prototypes and test those with the end users.
3. Test: In the last phase of this process the team let the users, and stakeholders, test their designs by methods like A/B testing, usability analysis, etc. The main target here is to gather as much feedback as possible in a quicker manner so that the designers have a better idea about the improvements that need to be incorporated into the designs. Iteration is the key here. 

What are the basic benefits of the Lean UX process?

 

1. Faster process: As mentioned earlier, we can remove extra, avoidable, and time-consuming documentation processes to generate quick ideas by following a lean model.
2. Supports Agile methodology: Encourages flexibility, quick iterations, collaborative team efforts, and continuous improvement of the product itself.
3. Better user experience: This is a complete iterative process. The team keeps on improving the product till the user feels happy. 

To sum up: 

Building a product while ignoring the users, and their pain points will never bring any success. To restrict the budget and time, end numbers of companies make this mistake. As a result, they often fail to deliver the desired result and cannot sustain themselves in this competitive world.

The Lean UX framework or methodology helps the companies overcome this problem. Here, they get a chance to practice core UX techniques to improve the overall user experience. At the same time, they also manage to make the design process more economical and practical by eliminating unwanted extra elements that can’t be done in other design frameworks.

6 Important Phases of Design Strategy

Like we do planning in our day-to-day lives for better living, we need to opt for a proper design strategy to create a great product or an application. In this blog, we will learn the various stages to build an appropriate strategy for design. At first, we should recognize what a strategy for design is.

What is a design strategy?

It’s a process of understanding the brand’s business requirements and achieving that with design. It’s necessary to have the design plan first before commencing the actual implementation process.

Why do we need a perfect design strategy first?

Normally, a client approaches a designer or an agency for branding and design requirements. But often, the client comes up with some tangible thought. The designer straight away jumps into the process of converting that thought into visual design. Sometimes it may click but mostly, the result ends up not achieving the desired goal. In turn, the process gets lengthier with lots of iterations. This creates frustration and leaves a negative impression on the client. Now, to achieve every good thing we need to plan a strategy. Likewise, we must have a proper design strategy before we proceed with the design implementation part. Be it UX design or product design, there are a few stages to create a perfect strategy that we cover next.

6 important phases of design strategy:

1. Initial brainstorming session:

Here the client will be asked a few questions as part of requirement gathering:

• What business the does client deal with?
• What’s the environment in which the client runs the business is it fun, flexible, etc.
• Who else would be interacting with the client? In this context, the ‘who’ are users who would be interested in doing business with the brand and also the people who visit the client's website a lot.
• What can they expect from the brand?
• Besides, in this discovery session, it’s also essential to consider the benefits that the brand can offer to the target 

2. Creating user stories:

• Based on the earlier analysis (brainstorming), now the next step in this design thinking process is to develop the user stories. Here it’s important to understand the users’ psychographs. Psychograph includes their interests, hobbies, the way the users behave, their attitude, and personal and social lives.
• Also, the users’ demography should be taken into consideration. For the design thinking strategy their age, sex information, income, etc. are indispensable to be analysed. Creating a ‘User Persona’ can be the ideal solution for this.
• Besides, it’s also necessary to examine the user journey here by finding out their pain points, the services they are looking for, etc. Finally bringing the solution by means followed by the brand to help the users and the benefits they can provide to them.
• Need to understand the reason why the users want to interact with the brand. The thinker must evaluate why the users recommend the brand.

3. Competitive analysis:

While strategising the design process, it’s necessary to analyse the competitors. Subsequently, understand how they are doing their businesses. Furthermore, we should study their approaches, and visit their websites to explore what’s working and what is not doing good for the business. This way industry standards for the business can be figured out.

4. Prioritise goals:

It’s necessary to realise the clients’ revenue generation process. The prioritisation process must cover the areas that demand enhancement to increase revenue. In the process, the design thinker should also understand the channels that the clients have adapted. Social media marketing, content marketing, emails, and websites are the mediums a client can adapt. Again, as a design or user experience strategist, one needs to prioritise the mediums to focus on. Lastly, the designer should figure out how quickly and efficiently the client's expectations can be met.

5. Point down the requirement:

Based on the previous processes, the design analyst should make a requirement list. This list in the course would help to achieve the user requisite.

6. Creating information architecture:

Finally, the strategist needs to come up with the architecture or the wireframe. The next steps are creating prototypes, and screen designs, taking feedback, and if needed repeating the process.

For better strategic thinking in design, you can opt for any online design strategy course available. You can opt for a design degree as well from a reputed institute if you can afford time and money.

Conclusion:

Without a proper strategy, no design can improve the experience of a user by utilizing good usability and accessibility.

Top Five Places In India To Celebrate Holi

Holi Hein!

This is the time to splash colours, taste the lip-smacking gujias. It’s also the time to be carefree, get drunk, and be cheerful with a glass of bhang.

Holi is one of the most popular and ancient festivals of India; is also recognized as the ‘festival of colours’. This colourful festival has many Hindu mythological stories associated with it. Though, it is mostly celebrated in India, but, is spreading fast to various parts of Asia and the Western countries.

This outstanding festival is celebrated with loud music, sweets, folk dances, and vibrant colours which are traditionally known as ‘gulal’.

Top five places in India to celebrate Holi:

Holi, the festival of colours and spring is celebrated differently in various parts of the country. Every place has its own culture, tradition, myths, and legends behind the celebration. 

The top five places where one can choose to visit are as follows:

1. Mathura and Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh:

When it is Holi, the first choice to visit would be Mathura and Vrindavan where it’s believed that Lord Shree Krishna was born and grew up. Here, Holi is celebrated with full of devotion. Visitors along with locals offer prayers to Lord Krishna. Dramas based on ‘Rash Leela’ are staged to portray the love between Lord Krishna and his beloved Radha, and thus show respect to the Lord. Besides, people play with vibrant colours, and sweets are exchanged between friends and relatives.

2. Barsana and Nandgaon, Uttar Pradesh:

Barsana and Nandgaon are places, very near to Mathura in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where one can experience a very unique style of Holi celebration. Here men with proper protection or shield are hit (mar) by women with ‘lath’, a thick bamboo stick. This tradition is being followed for centuries. It is believed that Lord Krishna went to tease humorously, his lover Radha and her friends on one of the auspicious days of Holi; were chased away by the annoyed women of Barsana. This myth made the locals follow ‘Lathmar Holi’ as tradition.

3. Jaipur, Rajasthan:

In the capital of Rajasthan, the pink city Jaipur, Holi is played along with an elephant festival, which is also known as ‘eleHoli’. This is one of the events that enrich your memories forever. One can play with colours, and take photos with trained elephants; covered with colourful clothing and ornaments. Besides, tourists can enjoy the delicious Rajasthani dishes (Thali) to make their tummy happy and cherish their visit throughout.

4. Shantiniketan, West Bengal:

Shantiniketan shows its magical charm when Holi or Basanta Utsav is celebrated here. It was once introduced by the Nobel laureate, the legendary poet Rabindranath Tagore. Here one can witness various cultural programs that are based on Rabindra Sangeet (songs which were produced by Tagore himself), dance, and other Bengali cultural programmes with vibrant colours and joy. Fans and followers of Rabindranath Tagore visit this place from all over the world during Holi. The festivity here spreads the feeling of love, and happiness and makes one’s visit more enchanting.

5. Kumaon, Uttarakhand:

Beside breathtaking scenic beauties with snow-clad mountains and greeneries, Kumaon a village, located in the mountain region of Uttarakhand, celebrates Holi with three major forms:

1. The Baithki Holi, where devotees dedicate devotional songs to Lord Krishna.
2. Khari Holi, where locals gather together and sing songs in harmony.
3. Mahila Holi, where only women gather together and sing songs for Lord Krishna

During Holi, one can visit Kumaon to experience the cultural richness and the holiness of the surrounding nature.

To conclude, it can be said that, though Holi is celebrated differently by people in many places; followed by the diverse culture, one thing is really common and that is the spirit of the people to celebrate.

Bhimtal An Offbeat Place Near Nainital: Worth A Visit

Life is becoming more mechanical these days. With ever-increasing socio-economic pressure, you are getting more upset. At the end, you are entering into the state of depression. One of the best possible ways to come out of this situation is to take a break from your regular schedule and go for a trip.

Among lots of other places to travel in India, you can visit Bhimtal to enjoy its eternal scenic beauty and peace. This will surely charge up your state of mind and can bring the positivity back in you.

A bit about Bhimtal:

Bhimtal is located at an altitude of 1370 meters above the sea level in the Nainital district of Uttarakhand. The town is known for its panoramic landscapes and the famous Bhimtal lake. The lake is the biggest one in the Kumaon region. It was named after ‘Bhima’ the second Pandava brother from the epic Mahabharata.

Why Bhimtal should be your next holiday destination?

The place is perfect for those travellers who want to get rid of stress and relax while enjoying the eternal beauty of nature. Unlike Nainital, which is quite crowded, busy and loaded with activities, Bhimtal lakeside is extremely tranquil. This lake is the foremost attraction of the region and is becoming more popular among the couples who love boating, trekking, can enjoy the charm of this place and want to keep themselves away from the buzz. The place is a must-visit for its undying sceneries, calmness and fills your mind and heart with peace and heavenly pleasure.

Top attractions to visit in Bhimtal:

• There is an island at the centre of the Bhimtal lake where you can go to experience a beautiful aquarium. 
• You can visit Victoria dam as well to enjoy astounding sights. 
• A temple of Lord Hanuman is located around nine kilometres away from Bhimtal which is also an attraction where people can experience a breathtaking sunset. 
• You can also visit and pray in the famous Bhiemeswar temple which was established in the 17th century. 
• Plan a short trip to Nakuchiatal and Sattal which are very near to the place. 
• Last but not the least with proper planning and time in hand; one must visit Mukteshwar which is known for its rich scenic beauty and the 350 years old Mukteswar temple of Lord Shiva.

But, Bhimtal lake is itself enough to please us alone with its earthly scenic beauty. By sitting at the lakeside with hot snacks and tea can be an ultimate memory for any visitor to cherish. Though you can visit the place anytime except monsoon, still you can plan accordingly to enjoy to the fullest.

Time to visit Bhimtal:

Though the weather remains pleasant throughout the year, the best time to visit Bhimtal is between March to June and between September to December when you can enjoy the most.

So if you are planning your next vacation, you could consider this place to add to your bucket list.