6/8/2020 UX design & process — how to run a successful workshop

UX design & process — how to run a successful

workshop
Rezaur Rahman Shahed
Jul 27, 2018 · 6 min read

UX Design is one of the most complex design process to follow. It follows many terms
and ways from the very beginning of a project to proceed to a solution till the end.

On December 2017, I took a basic workshop for people who have no idea on what is UX
Design. So the main goal of this workshop was to deliver the basic knowledge to the
participants that what is UX Design, why it’s needed and how its done. I’ve designed
the workshop very basic so that people who has no idea on UX can understand clearly.
So let’s get started.

On the very beginning of the workshop, you need to explain people what UX actually is
and an overview of what’s going to happen throughout the whole session for a good
heads up.

What is UX Design?

The term UX stands for User Experience, so the term UX clearly gives us a thought that
this is directly involved with Users of any product, System or a service and about their
Experiences attached with/using them.

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Brief speech on What is UX Design.

So, User Experience Design is about creating meaningful, usable, valuable and
satisfactory product for it’s users which gives them a better experience using that
particular product(s).

The product, system or service we design should involve human factors like efficiency
of a product, user satisfaction and their needs, limitations, accessibility and
sustainability etc. This is the idea of Human-Centered Design. Human psychology is
directly involved when using a product so when developing a product for your users
you need to concentrate on 7 important UX factors related to Human Psychology and
Usability.

Read my article on Cognitive Psychology & User Experience to know more on this.

Human-Centered Design is an approach of developing a product that involves human factors, necessity and
their emotions. Photo Source: Google.

So, How do you start your UX work? How do you explain your participant the steps to
do the design?

Well, there is no exact way to do it, but i am going to show the steps here so that you
can practice a standard process.

1. User Research

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6/8/2020 UX design & process — how to run a successful workshop

When you are designing a product for your users you need to know who your real users
are. So the second step to the design process is User Research. This is a must to do step
so that you know your usergroups well. There are two types of user research —

A. Quantitative Research.

B. Qualitative Research.

User research widely includes Surveys, Ethnographic studies, Focus groups etc. These
techniques help us to identify problems very easily and work forward.

“If the user is having a problem, it’s our problem.”

— Steve Jobs

Even google offers various rewards for their users to participate in their User Research
studies to help them collect data.

If you want to learn more about Surveys. You can read my article on-

3 simple steps to design user-centric survey for betters results.

2. Task Analysis
When developing a product we need to observe the users in action using the product to
understand in detail that how they perform their tasks and achieve their intended
goals. Task analysis helps us to identify the tasks that our product or service should
support and it also helps us to determine the key pain points of our products which
need to be improved, updated or modified for the user satisfaction and easy of use. Task
analysis could be done both Cognitive or Hierarchical way.

Task analysis helps you understand:

What your users’ goals are; what they are trying to achieve

What users actually do to achieve those goals

What experiences (personal, social, and cultural) users bring to the tasks

How users are influenced by their physical environment

How users’ previous knowledge and experience influence:

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How they think about their work

The workflow they follow to perform their tasks

From the book , User and Task Analysis for Interface Design by JoAnn Hackos and
Janice Redish.

Task Analysis also includes:

2.1 Persona — A user persona includes a detailed information of the users

Name(Fictional), Address, Age, Gender, Religion, Ethnicity, Education, Job and any
specific identifications etc. This information is necessary to identify the users
Limitation, Ability , Desires and Goals.

2.2 Scenario — A Scenario includes the story of the users daily life and how they
complete/perform the tasks.

Helping the participants to understand clearly.

3. User Journey Map & Card Sorting

User Journey Maps are visual interpretation of users & their connection to the the
solution through step by step tasks to reach the desired goal. After the successful user
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6/8/2020 UX design & process — how to run a successful workshop

research and task analysis completion, we have all the information about our users and
how they are completing the tasks.

Card Sorting helps us to decontaminate the information and sort a large number of
unnecessary information to smaller ones which helps us to determine which
information are the important and necessary. There are mostly two ways of card
sorting are done, One is Open Card Sorting and the other one is Closed Card Sorting.
Participants practiced open card sorting during the workshop.

All the information are finally categorized and labeled which are considered as core
features and navigation of a product or a service. This is the idea of Information
Architecture(IA). A good Information Architecture helps people to understand their
surroundings and find what they are looking for, in the real world as well as online.

Participants are working on Card Sorting.

4. Interaction Design
Interaction Design is about how your users connect to your design. It is the design of
the interaction between users and products. Interaction design includes aesthetic
elements, psychology, visual elements and representations, fonts, words, physical
objects, timing and behavior etc.

5. Hand Sketch & Wireframes

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Once all Information & features are ready it’s time to sketch the basic idea of the project
so that it gives a clear idea to the team of the whole project work and the solutions as
well as a final product outcome. Hand sketches are finally converted as wire-frames so
that it gives a clear visual representation of that final design.

The workshop covered all these parts above and i tried to give them a basic idea of
everything clearly.

Great response from the participants.

6. User Interface Design(UI)

User Interface (UI) Design or Graphical User Interface (GUI) is the process of making
interfaces in software or computerized devices with a focus on looks or style. It’s
basically the furnished version of wireframes that includes colors, stylish fonts, buttons
etc that gives a perfect and real visual representation of a product.

7. Usability Testing and Prototypes

Usability testing is a process to see how easy a design is to use on a group of
representative users. Users are asked to complete different tasks, while they are being
observed by a researcher, to see if they encounter any problem or experience any
confusion. Usability testing could be done with low fidelity prototypes/Paper
Prototypes on the early stages of development or using digital Prototyping tools.

A perfect design is never done. Because design keeps changing on user demands. UX Design
is a long and continuous process .. You need to understand your users and put them on the
first phase every time.

Watch the video below to see what happened on the workshop that includes a panel
discussion session on UX too! (In Bengali)

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Workshop on User Experience & Design Process

A quick video on the whole day workshop.

Don’t forget to give this article claps if you liked it 👏👏

Comment below 👇 if you have any suggestions or anything to say!

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