The 10 Secrets to Becoming an UXpert.

While User Experience (UX) is seemingly still in its infancy in the world of design, here in the South we’ve been doing it for a long time. Carolinians are known for our hospitality and interest in making sure everyone has a good time. Whether it’s making sure your guests are taken care of, or following up their visit with a thank you note, these real-life experiences should shape the way you view and treat your customers online. After all… “y’all means all.”

Don’t spend your time solving problems that don’t exist. Site refreshes, layout updates, and new feature rollouts suffer from this all the time. Many companies worry that the current state is stale and the future state must be better, but this anxiety isn’t necessarily based on real data. The best way to set your optimization goals is by using data to understand where problems are actually occurring rather than letting internal initiatives be your guide. Get close to your analysts, work with them as part of your regular process, and dig in on their reports to see what insights you can gain.

Don’t settle for just quantitative data. Sure, it’s great for understanding what is happening, but that’s only half the battle. Without qualitative research to accompany quantitative, you’re never going to truly understand why your numbers are what they are. Conducting empathy sessions or other forms of benchmarking user research allows you to see the whole picture.

Whether you are a digital professional, working internally for a company, or are the owner of that company, you know too much about your product and your website to have an objective understanding of how others will experience it. Stop making decisions based on your opinions and gather input from your actual users.

This is the question you should ask yourself when trying to understand your customers’ responses. Taking user input at face value is one thing, but you want to get deeper. By learning more about who are they, where they come from, and what experiences shape they way they shop you will be able to understand the people behind the data. And once you have that, you can design better solutions to their problems.

When it’s time to take first steps toward solving the problems you’ve uncovered, don’t rush straight to the computer. The simple act of sketching a concept map or wireframe activates your brain in complex ways that can lead to better, more strategic ideas. Don’t be afraid to sketch because “you can’t draw” well. The quality of your sketches should be judged by how well they address the problem you’re trying to solve.

Don’t hold on to your idea until you’ve achieved pixel perfection. You’ll just spend a ton of time perfecting something that a responsive design is going to tear up in that one random screen size or browser you didn’t account for, or worse you’ll invest a ton of emotional and physical energy into creating something that may only get left on the cutting room floor. Seek feedback EARLY and OFTEN. Trust me, it will save you time and make your designs better!

You thought you were ready to launch? Not yet! This is an extremely important part of the process. You have to see if your solutions are going to work, and the best way to do that is through A/B Testing. While it may be upsetting when your “solution” underperforms, just think about how much money you’ll have saved by not launching that update. Test, test, test your way to the right solution.

Since we are using this test to decide if we should launch our solution(s), we want to make sure we approach this in a way that achieves statistical significance. Otherwise, we’re just looking at a trend. Understanding the amount of traffic you need, in addition to your confidence level, is paramount to conducting a solid A/B test. I’m never going to make a rollout decision based on a 5-person research study.

I firmly believe in the power of sharing. I am a lifelong learner and have only gotten to where I am today because others have taken the time to share what they know with me. This is certainly part of the reason that I’ve shared these tips with you today, but the final one is for you to pay it forward. Share what you know by speaking, training, and writing. Gain confidence and a deeper understanding of the material you deal with every day, with the positive side effects of educating those around you and helping build the UX community.