A great Collection of Slide Decks which explain what UX is (and what not)
How to define usability? How, when, and where to improve it? Why should you care? Overview defines key usability concepts and answers basic questions.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
(in scope)
User Research
Context - Who is working with a UX designer?
(out of scope)
In the given area you first have to get a certain degree of knowledge. This can be achieved through different approaches. But the beside classic research or reading studies, in my opinion the best way possible is always to talk to real people.
Before you even can start sketching out your idea, you might need to have a basis of assumptions you can build your idea upon. These assumptions (or hypothesis) you then need to validate in order to know, if your thoughts are going into the right direction.
Survey: enables you to get data from a large sample of people.
Interview: enables you to get to more concrete data from a small sample of people.
Field study: observation of genuine user behavior in the context of use.
When you have conducted an interview or have run a survey, you have a lot more information and statements available. But you are not done with that, you have to break it down and come to a conclusion.
Finally, you now have a solid basis for your further work. In the best case you have some validated hypothesis and conclusions which help you going on.
When generating hypothesis you might also already have asked yourself, WHO will be interacting with you product. This leads us the next topic…
An actor usually refers to an element that interacts with the modeled system. Mostly it is related to a specific use case (User Journey, User Story):
It is the actor who initiates a process or who receives the expected results of a use case.
Actors should not be confused with real-world characters or systems, but should rather be considered as a kind of role. As a rule, generic terms (such as "teacher" or “administrator”) usually are the better choice than personal identifiers.
Definition:
On the basis of observations on real people, some fictitious persons are created, who should stand for the majority of actual users of the (future) product.
Everyone involved in a project should have a good understanding of the context of the product they are building. “Who exactly is using this thing (or this part of the product) in the end?” is actually what you should have in mind. Depending on these informations you are able to make decisions while developing the product.
Decisions, not only made by Project Managers/Product Owners or the UX guy, but also decisions to be made by a developer.
Based on your research, studies, surveys and talks you should be able to create personas.
It’s a comprehensive image of your real user, a typical representation of your ideal customer. It is generally based on user research and incorporates the needs, goals, and observed behavior patterns of your target audience. Also, it can play a role in many situations, including specify product strategy, design interaction, usability design, target users, discuss product demand, etc.
A User Journey (or Customer Journey, or Customer Experience Map, or … you know …) basically tries to answer the question:
“What journey does a User/Customer take while interacting with your product?”
The goal of this maybe fancy looking step/method actually is to understand, what flow a user is going through and where maybe there are steps, where there are so called “pain points”. Pain points lead to potential to optimize a solution/service/product.
If you (can) take the phase of analysis serious, you define two types of user journeys per persona and per use case:
While the concept of defining a User Journey is quiet common, there is no such thing like the one and only correct template to do that. Basically you can go from very simple/basic to very detailed … depending on what time you want (or can) invest and on what details you will need for the further work with this piece of work.
There are just a few steps which you need to respect:
A good Collection of User Journey Templates (or User Experience Maps) which you can use as is or as a teamplate to build the map which best fits your needs: https://uxpressia.com/templates
A good explanation and step-by-step guide of how to create a really detailed user journey map: https://uxmastery.com/how-to-create-a-customer-journey-map/
12 – 13.30h Lunch
13.30 – 17h Coaching
You need to have at least one persona per actor. But usually, depending on what actor (remember: the technical role in a system) you are looking at, there might be multiple (or a lot of) real persons in this role.
Creating personas will help you to structure and to make this diversity clear and easier to understand.