UX Design Briefs: Tapping Into The User Experience From The Inside Out
The Internet and the user experience--known in the biz as the UX--is about making your presence on the Internet accessible and usable. You want your users' experiences to be good ones. Designing for that pleasurable UX on the fly is risky because you don't always tap into that user relationship in correlation to what you want to convey online. Design goes further than just what your company web site looks like on the Internet. Designing for the user experience is a matter of connection. By mapping out what you want to accomplish with your web presence by sitting down and exploring that connection you can maximize your schedule, your budget and your users' experiences.
One kind of design brief insures quality communication from a visual standpoint. Often companies hire graphic design businesses to take that brief from the project's beginning to end. You can take it one step further by using that very same design brief to facilitate that connection from your company to the user. What does a typical design brief entail?
Just the facts, folks. Your basic design brief should include:
- Who you are and what you do as a business.
- A checklist. Design that checklist to entail the who, what, where, when, why and how of your project. What do you hope to accomplish? Who's your competition, your audience? What's the image you want to convey? How do you want to brand yourself? Include what you want the end user experience to be: a call to action? How will you define and measure that call?
- The scope of your project should mesh with your budget. Will you split the design costs from the web site costs? How will you circumvent "requirements creep" and those hidden expenses that can easily derail budgets?
- Be ready. Conference with your design team about what files that they will need to do the job if you've hired one. You don't want to be hunting for files on the fly when there's deadlines to keep.
Now use that information to enhance the UX.
At first glance, there doesn't seem to be a direct line between the design brief and the user experience. But think about it. Today's user is a visual animal. Once your web presence is established, your user will look beyond static pages to peruse on your web site. The user looks for interactivity, value and importance. If your web presence draws the user into your site through social media and other beacons of call, it will be expected that your web site will deliver a pleasurable user experience. Planning this beforehand within your design brief so that you can utilize that information holistically will help you design not only your web presence but your users' positive experiences. It's a time saver.
Is the user experience measurable or is UX purely subjective?
Now that depends on who you talk to. How do you quantify user emotion? Some UX professionals use surveys. Some use sales since a connection arises from wants and needs and a desire to buy. Using that design brief maps out both subjective and measurable user data. Know what you want going in and you have a better chance of making connections that matter to your user.
For more information concerning internet services, contact businesses such as Valley TeleCom Group.
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