Nailing the basics

Good foundations are what all great things are built on. This is why it is vitally important to get each stage of the user experience process right, and complete them in order.

Without getting the underlying strategy and structure right, the surface level layout and designs will not have the desired affect.

Let me give you an example.

I was asked not so long ago to look at pulling together the location and time at which a checkbox and upload button would appear on a sales screen. This was to replace the need for sending requests for confirmation emails to customers.

The issue here is that the bottom three levels were skipped per the iceberg above. It ignored the strategy and objective of the platform and business, didn't care for function and mostly didn't need input around the structure of the page.

This meant that the goal of this function would be missed and was more manual effort than the email process it was trying to replace.

For this particular example, it's important to consider better ways to achieve the same outcome. It needed more UX thinking and problem solving at the start, before the story was written and handed to me.

Thankfully, my concerns were heard and it went back to the drawing board.

The user experience, after all, is far more than surface level interface shine. It's the combination of solving strategy, creating functionality and marrying business outcomes with user needs.

Taking the time to focus on the underlying UX processes upfront, saves indeterminate amounts of time and money down the track fixing and guessing what the best decisions are for building the product.