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22 Creative Design Thinking Exercises to Bring Your Team Closer Together

Design thinking exercises are crucial in fostering creative problem-solving, collaboration, and innovation. These exercises engage participants in a structured and iterative problem-solving approach, enabling them to explore, understand, and address complex challenges effectively.

Key takeaways:

Design thinking exercises are structured activities or methods used to encourage and facilitate collaboration.
These exercises foster creativity providing structured but open-ended frameworks for problem-solving.
The list of design thinking exercises is huge; in this article, we elaborate on 22 of them.

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What is the Purpose of Design Thinking Exercises?

The primary purpose of design thinking exercises is to cultivate empathy and a deep understanding of users’ needs and perspectives. By encouraging participants to step into users’ shoes through empathy mapping and user interviews, design thinking helps uncover valuable insights that inform the design process.

These design thinking workshops create a user-centered environment that encourages collaboration and creativity. These activities empower design teams to challenge assumptions, explore diverse perspectives, and approach problems from multiple angles.

Design Thinking Exercises for Empathy and User Research

These design thinking activities enable teams to gain empathy and a user-centric perspective during the research phase, informing the design process and ensuring solutions align with user needs.

Empathy mapping: Create visual representations of user perspectives by capturing their thoughts, feelings, actions, and aspirations. This exercise helps teams develop a deeper understanding of users’ experiences.
Persona development: Create fictional user personas representing different user segments based on research and insights. Personas humanize user data, making it easier for teams to empathize and design for specific user groups.
Customer journey mapping: Visualize users’ end-to-end experience as they interact with a product or service. This exercise helps identify pain points, opportunities, and moments of delight throughout the user journey.

Ideation and Brainstorming Exercises

Ideation and brainstorming exercises are essential to the design thinking process, aiming to generate a range of ideas and possible solutions. Designers use these exercises to foster creativity, drive collaboration, and explore new possibilities.

SCAMPER

SCAMPER is an acronym that stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. This technique prompts designers to creatively explore different dimensions of a concept or problem, encouraging alternative perspectives and generating fresh ideas.

Brainstorming sessions

Brainstorming is a group activity that encourages free thinking and the rapid generation of ideas. Participants share their thoughts, build on each other’s suggestions, and explore various possibilities without judgment or criticism.

Crazy 8s

Crazy 8s is a fast-paced exercise that challenges participants to sketch eight ideas in eight minutes. This time-constrained activity encourages rapid ideation and pushes participants to think outside the box, resulting in diverse concepts.

Mind mapping and concept mapping

Mind mapping and concept mapping are visual techniques that help organize thoughts and ideas. By creating diagrams or visual frameworks, designers can explore connections, relationships, and associations between different concepts, stimulating further ideation.

Design studio workshops

Design studio workshops unite cross-functional team members to generate ideas and potential solutions collaboratively. Participants share their perspectives, expertise, and insights through structured exercises and facilitated discussions, resulting in more comprehensive and well-rounded concepts.

Worst possible idea

This exercise challenges participants to devise the worst possible ideas or solutions deliberately. By exploring extreme and unconventional concepts, designers can break free from conventional thinking and uncover unexpected insights or alternative paths.

5 Ws and H

The 5 Ws and H (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How) is a questioning technique that prompts participants to analyze and explore different aspects of a design challenge. By systematically considering these elements, designers can uncover new perspectives, identify potential gaps, and generate innovative solutions.

Prototyping and Testing Exercises

These prototyping and testing exercises offer valuable opportunities for designers to gather feedback, iterate on ideas, and validate design concepts.

Paper prototyping

Paper prototyping is a low-fidelity technique where designers create rough sketches or wireframe mockups on paper. This exercise lets designers quickly iterate and gather feedback on a design concept’s overall layout, content, and flow.

Designers can use paper prototypes to simulate user interactions and test usability, compiling valuable insights before investing time and resources into digital prototypes.

Role-playing and simulation

Role-playing and simulation exercises involve participants acting out specific scenarios or user personas to understand user needs and behaviors better. By immersing themselves in the end user’s perspective, designers can empathize with their experiences, identify pain points, and uncover opportunities for improvement.

Wizard of Oz testing

Wizard of Oz testing is a technique where designers simulate the functionality of an interactive system while manually controlling it behind the scenes. This methodology allows designers to test user interactions and gather feedback without investing time and resources in developing a fully functional prototype.

By creating the illusion of an automated system, designers can observe user behavior, validate assumptions, and refine the design based on real-time feedback.

Collaborative Exercises for Teamwork and Co-creation

Collaborative prototyping

Collaborative prototyping involves creating prototypes to test and validate design concepts within a day. Team members work in parallel on a single digital whiteboard and then collaborate using a design tool to build a prototype. By the end of the day, the team has a basic prototype to start the iterative process of prototyping and testing.

Co-design sessions

Co-design sessions bring together multidisciplinary team members and stakeholders to actively participate in the design process. These collaborative exercises foster teamwork and co-creation by leveraging the diverse perspectives and expertise of the participants.

By involving various stakeholders in the design process, co-design sessions facilitate shared understanding, generate innovative ideas, and ensure that the final design reflects the collective input and insights of the team.

Collaborative sketching

Collaborative sketching involves team members collectively sketching ideas and concepts on a shared surface or whiteboard. This exercise encourages open collaboration and rapid idea generation.

By visually expressing their thoughts, team members can communicate ideas more effectively, stimulate creativity, and spark discussions. Collaborative sketching promotes a sense of ownership while fostering teamwork.

Storyboarding and visual storytelling

Storyboarding and visual storytelling exercises help teams convey design ideas and concepts in a narrative format. This technique involves creating illustrations or images that depict user interactions, scenarios, or journeys.

Storyboarding allows teams to visualize the user experience and identify gaps or opportunities in the design. Teams can communicate complex ideas, align design directions, and create engaging user experiences.

Design charrettes

Design charrettes are intensive collaborative workshops where team members solve design challenges within a set timeframe. These super-efficient sessions encourage active participation, foster creativity, and promote collective problem-solving.

Design charrettes often involve brainstorming, rapid prototyping, and iterative design exercises. By engaging in focused and time-constrained collaborative activities, teams can generate ideas, explore design alternatives, and make significant progress in a short period.

Design Thinking Exercises for Reflection and Learning

Rose, Thorn, Bud

The Rose, Thorn, Bud exercise is a reflection activity that encourages participants to share positive aspects (roses), areas for improvement (thorns), and potential opportunities (buds) in a given project or experience.

Rose, Bud, Thorn helps teams identify strengths, address challenges, and explore new possibilities with a structured framework for reflection. The exercise enables team members to learn from past experiences and apply those insights to future iterations or projects.

Post-it voting

Post-it voting is a simple and effective technique to gather insights and prioritize ideas within a group. Participants write their ideas or suggestions on individual sticky notes and then vote on the most valuable or relevant ones.

This exercise promotes active participation and empowers team members to have a voice in decision-making. Post-it voting helps teams identify popular ideas, build consensus, and focus efforts on the most impactful concepts.

Four Ls

The Four Ls exercise (Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed for) provides a structured framework for reflection and feedback gathering. Participants share what they liked, learned, lacked, and longed for in a project or experience.

The Four Ls encourages constructive feedback, helps identify areas of improvement, and uncovers growth opportunities. The exercise promotes open dialogue and creates a safe space for team members to reflect on their collective experiences and identify ways to enhance future outcomes.

Retrospective exercises

Retrospective exercises are reflective activities conducted at the end of a project or iteration to evaluate the team’s performance and identify areas for improvement.

These exercises include team discussions, storytelling, timeline mapping, or even gamified approaches like “sailboat retrospective” or “stop, start, continue.”

Retrospectives foster a culture of continuous improvement by providing a dedicated space for teams to reflect on their successes, challenges, and lessons learned. These exercises enable teams to optimize processes, enhance collaboration, and evolve their practices.

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The Atlassian Design System – Creating Design Harmony at Scale

What is Atlassian Design System?

Atlassian Design System, ATL for short, is a design system which mission is to create simple, intuitive, and beautiful experiences for their end-users. Atlassian’s products include Jira, Trello, and Confluence, so their design system needs to work across those products plus serve for people who built internal product and more.

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How Atlassian Design System Was Built

When Atlassian expanded their focus on design in 2012, Jürgen Spangl was hired as the new Head of Design. One of the first projects he initiated was creating the Atlassian Design Guidelines (ADG) – their new internal design system.

At the time, they faced several challenges common to scaling a design practice:

Design inconsistency – For example, 45 different types of dropdowns.
Insufficient tooling – The team needed more powerful design tools to scale their work across multiple products.
Redundant questions – Atlassian designers wanted to spend more time on core problems and less time answering the same questions (e.g. which button to use).

Nathan Curtis once said that “a design system is a product serving other products”. Atlassian’s design system is certainly one of their most ambitious products, created from a need to solve complex problems.

To explore Atlassian’s journey from inconsistency to harmony, we spoke with Jürgen Spangl (Head of Design) and James Bryant (Lead Designer) about the creation, governance, and evolution of their design system.

Jürgen Spangl, Head of Design at Atlassian.

James Bryant, Lead Designer at Atlassian.

Creating and Adopting the First Version

Inspired by Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines , Atlassian decided their design system needed to be based in code while maintaining ease of use.

People from multiple teams contributed to the process – a dedicated team wasn’t formed at first so that the design system wouldn’t be created in isolation. The decision paid off since it resulted in design systems champions embedded across the company.

“Instead of creating consistency for the sake of it, we wanted our design system to create a more harmonious user experience,” says Jürgen. “We wanted to equip everyone to make better design decisions – not just designers.”

The process, of course, was not without challenges.

“Early on, we weren’t sure how to document the design system at scale. We tried using Confluence, using embedded iFrames in Confluence, a Bitbucket repository,” says Jürgen. “It wasn’t until a ShipIt hackathon session that one of our designers turned our existing UI toolkit (known as AUI) into a Living Style Guide coupled to the code.”

Planning for the first version of ADG in JIRA.

With a technical framework in place, the design systems team also needed to create a unified design language for the overall brand and each product.

“It’s never easy to align multiple teams on a path forward on the design language,” says Jürgen. “Do you create one direction or several smaller directions for each product?”

To define its design language and create all the patterns and components, the team followed a two-stage process:

Every month, the team would meet to work on ADG. The fast decisionmaking and momentum helped the team create many new patterns with 70-80% completeness.
During the following week, the team would then spend small chunks of time refining the patterns and codifying them into ADG.

The first iteration of ADG was released in June 2012 to govern its products. To allow for careful iteration, the team used a staged rollout and launched ADG first to Bitbucket, then Confluence and JIRA.

Atlassian Design Guidelines 3.0.

Supporting and Governing the Design System

Now 5 years later, Atlassian Design has grown to almost 200 people while the design system governs the brand and its 12 products across multiple devices, platforms, and marketing properties.

The company has since built a dedicated ADG team of 18 full-time employees: 5 designers, a writer, a project manager, and 11 developers. To maintain a high level of technical proficiency, an engineering team was embedded into the overall design organization.

Design space in Atlassian Sydney.

“A coding background is a huge benefit for designers who want to join our team,” James says. “They also need a strong understanding of prototyping tools and be able to work with developers to ship their work quickly. Finally, they must understand how their work multiplies across different contexts, products, and teams.”

When it comes to contributing to the design system, the workflow is a two-way open source model:

1. The ADG team is regularly exploring changes and consolidations to the design system. Once they’ve done the initial research, the team converges to discuss specs and requirements. Program managers then work with other product teams to align on the design system changes, roll out the changes, and monitor feedback.

2. Product teams can also suggest changes to the design system. The process is made much easier since each product has its own ADG representative to collaborate with a member of the design systems team.

Change requests are managed in JIRA and Confluence. Updates are pushed live to AtlasKit (based in React), which acts as the source of truth for design patterns and code components. The ADG team also maintains a library of UI assets in Sketch for all designers. Meanwhile, the ADG website describes the logic and guidelines around how to use all the patterns and components

Evolving the Design System

“Every 5-7 years, you probably need to revamp your design language completely because of new trends and technologies,” says Jürgen. “The world is constantly changing.”

The team works in 2-week sprints to ship iterations within days or weeks to customers. Larger changes (like revamping a color scheme or set of UI patterns) require more time.

JIRA using ADG 3.0, the latest version of the design system.

Luckily, as James points out, embedding designers in product teams (and vice versa with developers in design teams) helps build consensus more quickly for changes to the design system.

“It’s very hard to scale when you need to talk to all designers for every single change,” James says. “We bring all the champions into large design critiques to understand whether our ideas and proposed changes affect their current projects or down the line. They may learn something from our way of thinking that they can then apply back to their own work.”

To measure the success of design systems updates, the team triangulates data from several sources:

Opt-in and opt-out in products for changes to the design system
Changes in NPS scores for products after design system updates
Qualitative and quantitative feedback from testing iterations with UserTesting and in-person sessions

Now in its third version with strong adoption and instrumentation in place, one of the next goals of ADG is to make back-end services more consistent.

“A really good example of that is how we’re improving ‘@mentions’ for users in our products,” says James. “Design guidelines and front-end components make the experience feel more coherent, but you can also make back-end processes more consistent in a way that improves performance. Now we’re exploring how we can improve that level of platform services.”

Attlasian’s Design System Summary

When you consider the nature of Atlassian’s products, the stakes are almost too high to not have a design system in place.

“We’re changing the tools people use to get their work done,” says James. “I don’t think there’s anything more frustrating or frightening than having changes slow you down since that threatens your efficiency and livelihood.”

A design system is more than just a style guide or pattern library — it’s the blueprint for product development. By rooting the design patterns and code components to a common language, ADG gives room to innovate without forcing users out of their comfort zone.

“Some tension between the product and ADG team is perfectly healthy,” says Jürgen. “Product teams don’t just give in to ADG without good reason, and the ADG team doesn’t accommodate every change requested. That balance really helps drive us forward in the enterprise space.”

Interested in being a designer at Atlassian? To see available positions, check out Atlassian Design Careers.

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User Error — All About Preventing, Detecting, and Managing Errors

User errors can cause frustration, confusion, and decreased user satisfaction, leading to many undesirable outcomes, including product abandonment. Identifying, understanding, and addressing user errors is crucial for designing user-centered experiences and optimizing product performance.

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What are User Errors?

User errors are actions or decisions that lead to unintended or undesired outcomes when interacting with a product, system, or interface. Product teams typically classify these into three types of errors:

Slips occur when users make unintentional errors due to inattention, distraction, or muscle memory.
Mistakes involve cognitive errors in decision-making or problem-solving processes.
Violations occur when users intentionally deviate from the expected behavior or rules.

What is an Example of a User Error?

Here are four examples of human errors:

Data entry error: When filling out a form, a user accidentally types the wrong email address, resulting in failed communication or an inability to access important information sent to that email.
Navigation error: While browsing an eCommerce website, a user clicks on the wrong product image due to unclear labeling or misleading visuals, leading to frustration and potential loss of sales for the business.
Misinterpretation error: In a mobile app, a user misinterprets the meaning of an icon and taps on it, expecting one action, but it performs something else. This misunderstanding can lead to unintended consequences and a negative user experience.
Configuration error: When setting up a software application, a user incorrectly configures the privacy settings, unintentionally sharing personal information publicly or granting excessive permissions, compromising their privacy and potentially exposing sensitive data.

These examples demonstrate how user error consequences can be banal, like clicking the wrong button, to extremely problematic when accidentally sharing sensitive information.

6 Factors Contributing to User Errors

Here are some common factors which contribute to user errors:

A high cognitive load, such as information overload or complex decision-making requirements, can increase the likelihood of user errors.
Design complexity, convoluted workflows, or confusing navigation can contribute to user errors by overwhelming or confusing users.
Lack of feedback, including error messages, notifications, or visual cues, can prevent users from recognizing and rectifying mistakes promptly.
When users are under time constraints or facing tight deadlines, they may rush through tasks, leading to more frequent errors.
External distractions or interruptions can divert users’ attention, impairing their ability to focus on tasks and increasing the likelihood of mistakes.
Insufficient user onboarding, familiarity with the system or interface, or inadequate onboarding can contribute to user errors.

Detecting User Errors

Error logging and analytics

Product teams use error-monitoring tools to gather data on user errors and analyze user behavior and error patterns. These tools capture error data, including error messages, error codes, and contextual information, such as the user’s actions leading up to the error. This data allows UX design teams to identify root causes for mistakes and implement corrective redesigns.

User feedback and support channels

Organizations typically create dedicated feedback channels, such as online forms, feedback buttons (i.e., thumbs up or down), or support email addresses, where users can easily report errors and provide valuable feedback about their experiences.

11 Ways of Preventing User Errors

Clear and intuitive interface design

Don Norman’s concepts of affordances, signifiers, and mapping from The Design of Everyday Things help designers create intuitive interfaces that guide users toward correct interactions and minimize the risk of errors.

For example, using recognizable icons and labels for actions, such as a trash can icon for deleting, helps users quickly identify and execute the intended action without making errors.

Effective onboarding

Effective onboarding provides clear instructions and interactive tutorials, so users can familiarize themselves with the product and understand how to use it properly.

For example, a mobile banking app onboarding process might explain how to set up an account and transact or highlight key security features to prevent user errors.

Thoughtful information architecture

Information architecture organizes content logically and hierarchically, enabling users to navigate a digital product easily. For example, an eCommerce website might categorize products into clear and distinct categories, so someone looking for kid’s clothing doesn’t end up in the men’s section accidentally.

Error prevention mechanisms

Safety nets such as validation checks, error messages, troubleshooting, and confirmations alert users to double-check and correct mistakes before they cause issues.

For example, when a user tries to submit a form with missing required fields, an error message highlights them for the user to complete.

Consistent and familiar pattern and interaction design

Consistent design patterns and interactions help users build familiarity, reduce cognitive load, and minimize user errors. Designers follow established conventions so users can rely on knowledge, mental models, and habits to interact with the product.

For example, consistent navigation menu placement across different website sections ensures users can navigate effortlessly, reducing the likelihood of errors.

User-friendly form design

Optimizing form fields, providing clear labels and instructions, and implementing input validation enable users to enter information accurately. For example, using input masks or providing real-time feedback on the validity of the entered data (such as password strength indicators) can prevent errors and guide users to provide accurate information.

Clear instructions and tooltips

Clear instructions and tooltips provide users with contextual guidance using tooltips and dialogs, helping them understand how to complete tasks or use features.

For example, Google Docs uses tooltips to clarify each icon in the toolbar and provides keyboard shortcuts to educate users on how to use the product more efficiently.

Progressive disclosure

Progressive disclosure is a technique to present information gradually based on user context, preventing overwhelming users with too much information at once. By revealing information progressively, users can focus on what is relevant and avoid errors caused by information overload.

For example, a complex software application might hide advanced settings by default, only revealing them when users request to see or modify them, reducing errors due to overwhelming complexity.

User testing and feedback

User testing and feedback allow designers to solve usability issues during the design process. Design teams collect user feedback to identify potential pain points, uncover usability issues, and make improvements to prevent errors.

For example, conducting usability testing sessions and observing how users engage with an interactive prototype can reveal areas where users struggle or make errors, allowing the design team to refine the interface and minimize those issues.

Smart defaults

Smart defaults can prevent user errors by preselecting sensible options or settings. Designers use smart defaults to anticipate preferences and behavior to provide a more seamless user experience while reducing errors. It’s crucial that product teams don’t abuse smart defaults for profits, as this could lead to mistrust and possible abandonment.

For example, a calendar app might set the default time zone to the user’s location, eliminating the need for user input and possible errors caused by incorrect time zone settings.

Limit user options

Limiting options can help prevent user errors by simplifying decision-making and reducing cognitive load. When users have manageable options, it’s easier to choose without being overwhelmed.

For example, a booking platform might limit payment options to the most popular ones and use progressive disclosure to reveal additional options if the user chooses.

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Due to prototyping constraints from image-based design tools, designers often struggle to identify usability issues or design decisions that cause user errors. Design teams either have to rely on devs to build better prototypes or release products and add any problems captured during QA to the backlog–both options increase costs and front-end debt.

With UXPin’s interactive prototyping features, designers can build replicas indistinguishable from the final product, complete with code-like interactions and functionality.

Usability participants and stakeholders can interact with UXPin prototypes like they would the final product, giving design teams meaningful feedback to iterate and improve.

Build fully functioning components

Designers can build fully functioning user interfaces and components in UXPin to enhance testing. For example, this signup form example demonstrates how designers can create field error messages to help users complete forms correctly–accurately replicating the final product experience.

This prototype uses a single frame, with Conditional Interactions hiding and revealing error messages. This simplicity means designers can make changes on the fly and retest to maximize costly testing time.

To achieve comparable results in an image-based design tool, design teams would need to create multiple frames which don’t have the same smoothness or intuitiveness. Making quick changes and iterating fast with a frame-based design canvas is also tricky.

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Assumptions Mapping – How to Remove Guesswork Out of Design

Assumptions mapping is important because it creates awareness of team members’ assumptions and potential associated risks. By making assumptions explicit and visible, teams can critically evaluate their validity and test them through research and validation methods. This approach fosters a more user-centered, data-driven design process, improving outcomes and user experiences.

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What is Assumptions Mapping?

Assumptions mapping is a technique used in product design to identify, analyze, and validate the assumptions made during the design process.

It involves systematically uncovering the underlying beliefs and hypotheses that influence design decisions and mapping them for better visibility. This technique removes guesswork from the design process and replaces it with evidence-based insights to develop better product experiences.

Common types of assumptions

User Behavior Assumptions: Assumptions about how users interact with the product, their preferences, motivations, and needs.
Technology Assumptions: Assumptions about the capabilities and limitations of the underlying technology, such as platform compatibility or data processing speed.
Business Assumptions: Assumptions about the market, target audience, competitors, and business goals, including assumptions about user demand and willingness to pay.
Design Assumptions: Assumptions about the effectiveness of specific design choices, such as the placement of elements, color schemes, or visual hierarchy.
Context Assumptions: Assumptions about the broader context in which the product will be used, including the user’s environment, cultural factors, or regulatory constraints.

The Consequences of Unaddressed Assumptions

How unaddressed assumptions can lead to design failures

Unaddressed assumptions can lead to design failures by introducing risks and uncertainties into the design process. Designers may base their product decisions on inaccurate or incomplete information when assumptions go unchallenged and unvalidated, leading to ineffective or irrelevant solutions.

Unaddressed assumptions can result in misaligned designs that fail to meet user needs, resulting in poor user experiences and low user satisfaction. By ignoring assumptions, designers risk investing time and resources in designs that don’t address the real problems or resonate with the target audience, ultimately leading to design failures.

Negative impact on user experience and product adoption

Unaddressed assumptions can harm user experience and product adoption. When assumptions about user behavior, preferences, or needs are left unverified, designers risk creating experiences that don’t meet user expectations. This misalignment can lead to frustration, confusion, and a lack of engagement with the product.

Unaddressed assumptions can also hinder product adoption, as users may find it difficult to understand or navigate the product due to unvalidated assumptions.

The Benefits of Assumptions Mapping

Improved design decision-making: Assumptions mapping enables informed and data-driven design decisions by challenging and validating underlying assumptions.
Enhanced user understanding and empathy: By challenging user assumptions, designers gain a deeper understanding of their needs, preferences, and behaviors, leading to more empathetic design solutions.
Mitigating risks and reducing design iterations: Assumptions mapping helps identify potential risks and uncertainties early, minimizing the need for extensive design iterations and reducing the likelihood of design failures.
Fostering collaboration and shared understanding within teams: Assumptions mapping promotes collaboration, shared understanding, and effective communication among team members and stakeholders, leading to a more harmonious and cohesive design process.

Challenges in Assumptions Mapping

Identifying implicit assumptions: Teams may struggle to uncover deeply ingrained or implicit assumptions. Overcoming this challenge requires fostering a culture of open communication and critical thinking, encouraging team members to question and challenge underlying assumptions.
Prioritizing assumptions: With limited time and resources, teams must prioritize which assumptions to focus on. To overcome this challenge, teams can use criteria such as impact on user experience, risk level, or alignment with project goals to determine which assumptions are most critical and require further validation.
Validating assumptions: Validating assumptions can be challenging, especially concerning user research or testing. Teams can overcome this challenge by conducting thorough user research, using various validation methods such as interviews, surveys, or usability testing from diverse users.
Addressing resistance to change: Some team members may resist challenging existing assumptions or adopting a new approach. To overcome this challenge, teams should foster a collaborative and inclusive environment, encouraging open discussions, providing evidence-based arguments, and showcasing the benefits of assumptions mapping in improving design outcomes.
Iterative process: Assumptions mapping is an ongoing process that may require multiple iterations. Teams should embrace an iterative mindset, continuously reviewing and updating assumptions as new insights emerge and adapting the design accordingly. Regular team communication and feedback loops can help address challenges and ensure continuous improvement.

How to Get Started With Assumptions Mapping

Here is a foundational framework for creating an assumptions map.

Step 1: Identify and articulate assumptions

Begin by identifying the assumptions that underlie your design or product. These are your team’s beliefs or expectations about users, their behaviors, and the problem you’re solving.

It’s a good idea to hold design thinking workshops or brainstorming sessions with diverse team members to gather assumptions from across the organization. Articulate these assumptions clearly to gain a shared understanding among team members.

Step 2: Prioritize assumptions for mapping

Once you have a list of assumptions, prioritize them based on their potential impact on the design and the level of uncertainty surrounding them. Focus on the assumptions that have the highest risk or those that are critical to the success of your design to allocate resources and attention effectively.

Step 3: Create an assumptions map

Visualize the assumptions using an assumptions map using a diagram, matrix, or other visual representation. This map helps you see your assumption relationships and how they interact.

The assumptions map provides a holistic view of the landscape, aiding analysis and decision-making.

For example, an assumptions map for the mobile banking app might show the interdependencies between assumptions about user security concerns, user familiarity with mobile banking, and user preferences for transaction speed.

Step 4: Validate assumptions through research and testing

Conduct research and testing to validate the assumptions identified in the previous steps. This process involves gathering data, user feedback, and insights to determine the accuracy and validity of the assumptions.

Designers use research methods, including user interviews, surveys, usability testing, or analytics, to gather evidence and challenge assumptions.

Tools and Techniques for Assumptions Mapping

Affinity mapping

Affinity mapping organizes and analyzes a large amount of information or assumptions. It involves grouping related assumptions into categories or themes to uncover patterns and insights.

For example, after conducting assumption mapping sessions, the team can use sticky notes or digital whiteboards to group similar assumptions, such as user preferences, technology limitations, or market trends. This visual representation facilitates discussions and prioritization of assumptions for further validation.

Desirability, feasibility, and viability framework

Mural outlines a framework for mapping assumptions using the desirability, feasibility, and viability design thinking methodology developed by former Precoil CEO David J Bland:

Desirability assumptions: Do They? – is this what users want?
Viability assumptions: Should We? – assess whether you should do this. i.e., why hasn’t it been done before?
Feasibility assumptions: Can We? – does the organization have the resources?

This framework is also excellent for testing business ideas or developing unique value propositions. Teams map these assumptions to visualize them and identify trends, patterns, and areas of focus.

Mural’s assumptions mapping webinar provides a high-level overview of this desirability, feasibility, and viability framework and why it’s important for developing new products.

User research and feedback

User research and feedback are essential tools for validating assumptions. Teams gather insights and data to challenge or support their assumptions by directly engaging with users through interviews, surveys, or usability testing. UX research methods like card sorting, diary studies, and service safaris can provide valuable insights into user behavior.

Data analysis and metrics

Data analysis and metrics play a crucial role in assumptions mapping. By analyzing quantitative data, such as website analytics or user engagement metrics, teams can identify patterns and trends that challenge or confirm their assumptions.

For example, tracking user behavior through heatmaps or clickstream data can reveal insights about how users interact with a product or website, shedding light on user flow or navigation assumptions. By using data to inform assumptions, teams can make more data-driven decisions and reduce reliance on guesswork.

Prototyping and usability testing

Prototyping and usability testing allow teams to gather feedback and validate assumptions through real user interactions. Teams use interactive prototypes to observe how users interact with the design and gather insights about potential assumptions.

For example, usability testing can help identify assumptions about a user interface’s intuitiveness or the content’s clarity. By observing and gathering user feedback, teams can uncover hidden assumptions and iterate on the design to improve user experience.

Integrating Assumptions Mapping into Design Processes

Incorporating assumptions mapping in agile and iterative workflows

Teams can seamlessly integrate assumptions mapping into agile and iterative design processes, enabling teams to address them at different stages of development.

For example, during the sprint planning phase in an agile workflow, the team can identify and prioritize assumptions that need validation and allocate time for research or testing activities. This iterative approach allows continuous learning and refinement throughout the design and development cycle.

Collaborative approaches to assumptions mapping within cross-functional teams

Assumptions mapping is most effective when done collaboratively within cross-functional teams. You can tap into diverse perspectives and expertise by involving stakeholders from different disciplines, such as designers, researchers, product managers, and developers.

For example, conducting assumption mapping workshops where team members collectively identify and discuss assumptions fosters shared understanding and generates valuable insights. This collaborative approach ensures that assumptions are thoroughly examined and helps build a culture of shared ownership and accountability for the design’s success.

Testing Assumptions With UXPin’s Interactive Prototypes

Interactive prototypes are crucial for testing assumptions, allowing product teams to simulate user interactions and gather valuable feedback early in the design process. Teams can observe how users navigate user interfaces, interact with features, and uncover usability issues or gaps in their assumptions. With UXPin, design teams can create fully interactive prototypes that look and feel like the final product.

Some of UXPin’s key prototyping features include:

States: allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like dropdown menus, tab menus, navigational drawers, and more.
Variables: capture data from user inputs and create personalized, dynamic user experiences–like their name and profile image in the app bar.
Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
Conditional Interactions: create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to replicate the final product experience accurately.

Increase prototype fidelity and functionality with the world’s most advanced UX design tool. Sign up for a free trial to build your first interactive prototype with UXPin.

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How Functional Prototypes Improve Usability Testing?

Launching a successful digital product takes a lot of effort. Working hard, however, does not ensure that users will adopt your product.

The truth is users may resign from your product, because you haven’t tested the product before release. If you skipped creating an advanced, fully functional prototype and decided to go with a low-fidelity one and then went into the development stage, there was no room for any reliable usability tests.

Only now do you realize that you spent countless hours building a product that is not as successful as you anticipated.

Let’s learn from this hypothetical mistake by taking a closer look at the importance of usability testing and why you need functional prototypes to get accurate results from your trials.

Build functional prototypes without missing deadlines. Use UXPin Merge and use functional components that can be assembled into ready-to-test prototypes in minutes instead of hours. Discover UXPin Merge.

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Most Digital Products Fail

The odds of success are not in your favor. That’s not a pessimistic outlook. That’s just what the numbers say.

Only about 0.5% of apps succeed. Let that sink in. If you build 200 apps, the statistics say that only one of them will succeed. What happens to the rest of them?

67.8% never reach 1,000 downloads.
17.9% never reach 1,000 active users.
5.8% don’t retain users, meaning they probably get deleted and forgotten.
5.8% don’t earn any revenue. Nothing in return for all of that work!
1.4% make some money but never turn a profit.

You can’t deny the math, but you can test your products before committing to launch.

After this heavy dose of reality, you might wonder why user testing even matters. What’s the point?! One out of 200 apps turns out to be successful!

Fully Functional Prototypes Give You Perspective

Let’s put this into perspective so you can see the true benefits of working prototypes and user testing.

First, a lot of those apps are worthless. They don’t perform functions that anyone wants. If you have seen the second season of Silicon Valley, you probably remember the “Bro app.” All it does is send the word “bro” to other people who have the app. Silicon Valley did an excellent job skewering some of the insane trends in technology. With the Bro app, the show lampooned all of the meaningless products out there.

The internet has thousands upon thousands of Bro apps.

Second, a lot of companies don’t spend enough time developing and testing their apps. According to appinventiv, 24% of developers spend three months or less working on their products before launch. Some of those companies launched their apps within one month. Is it feasible to research the market, design your product, develop your product, test it for quality assurance, and launch within a month? That seems unlikely.

Third — and this brings us to the heart of the matter — very few designers have the benefit of user testing with fully functional prototypes with interactive features and real data.

team collaboration talk communication ideas messsages

If you casually say to someone, “I’m going to make an app that sends the word ‘Bro’ to people,” you’ll probably get some encouragement from well-meaning friends. You’ll get a much different response when you put the app in their hands and tell them how much it will cost to develop, launch, and market.

With functional prototypes, you gain a perspective that you rarely get from mockups that don’t do anything except sit on the page (or screen).

Early Usability Testing Saves You Time and Money

You’re a project manager with two designers and three developers on your team. Over one year, you can expect to pay your designers about $53,400 each and your developers about $114,300 each. Your small team costs $449,700 per year, plus benefits. (These are the median salaries in the United States. Professionals might get paid different amounts in your area.)

Obviously, you want to get as much productivity as possible from your staff. You cannot make that happen when you wait until the end of the development process to test your products. When you enter the usability testing phase, you might discover that your developers spent a week adding a feature that no one even wants to use. What a waste!

user bad good review satisfaction opinion

Early usability testing that happens during the design phase speeds up your process (and shifts more of the responsibility to employees who earn lower salaries). With fully functional prototypes, you might discover that an interaction doesn’t perform as expected. You might learn that most users prefer one layout over another. You might find out that people despise the core concept of your product!

It’s always better to learn these things early in the process. If usability testing shows that you have a terrible concept, throw it out now before you dedicate more money toward it. You can always come up with a better idea.

By creating interactive components in your prototypes with states, conditions, and interactions, you do not need to rely on your developers to create a feature before you test it.

Also, you can send your prototype to anyone. They don’t need UXPin accounts. As long as someone has the right link to your project, they can interact with the prototype and leave comments.

Not sure how to improve product usability? Start with these 5 User Experience Principles to Help Guide Your Work. Nothing’s more effective than doing the job right the first time.

Working Prototypes Break Down Barriers Between Designers and Developers

You might worry that your prototype — as functional as it seems — might not perform as precisely as your end product does.

Merge eliminates your concerns as each component is fully coded. No, you don’t need to know how to write a single line of code! It’s easy because as a designer you look at the interactive UI and developer looks at the production-ready code of the same component. One element, yet two perspectives.

Merge’s code-based approach to design also means that your developers can create new products from existing components. You already know how the features behave, so you can fit them together in inventive ways and offer your users new tools. Once you have a library of React components or a Storybook, it’s easy to put them together and know how they will interact.

Get started with Merge to test fully functional prototypes

Merge isn’t one of those prototyping tools that only give you an imitation of the final product. You get fully functional prototypes that you can start testing immediately. What’s most important, it takes you 10x faster to build a hi-fi prototype to test out.

Get started with Merge today so you can see how much easier, faster, and less expensive digital products become when you can improve usability testing with prototypes that work just like the final product.

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A Simple Recipe to Building Resilient Design Operations

As organizations strive to streamline their design processes and enhance collaboration, DesignOps serves as the backbone to align design objectives with business goals.

UXPin recently hosted a webinar with three DesignOps experts titled Strategies for Building a Resilient DesignOps Practice, which provided valuable insights and strategies.

The webinar featured a panel of three industry experts:

Salomé Mortazavi, Senior Director of DesignOps and Design Systems at SiriusXM
Meredith Black, a seasoned DesignOps consultant
Adam Fry-Pierce, Chief of Staff for UX Leadership at Google

These highly knowledgeable individuals brought unique perspectives and experiences, discussing the challenges and opportunities in DesignOps.

Streamline redundant operational tasks and workflows with a single source of truth from UXPin. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

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Pinpoint the Real Needs of Design Teams

It’s essential to understand and address the real needs of design teams when building a resilient DesignOps practice. One of the fundamental challenges that design teams face is the lack of alignment between design and the overall business strategy. This misalignment can lead to inefficiencies, communication gaps, and resource constraints that hinder the design process.

Creating a common vision

A pivotal step in addressing the needs of design teams is to create a common vision. This shared vision involves aligning the design team’s objectives with the business’s broader goals. By establishing a shared understanding of the role of design within the organization, teams can work more cohesively and effectively.

Learn about creating Design Team Vision Statement.

Streamlining workflows

Another critical aspect of supporting design teams is streamlining workflows. Design teams often encounter bottlenecks and inefficiencies due to fragmented processes. DesignOps can help design teams overcome these challenges by streamlining workflows to improve efficiency while fostering a more collaborative environment.

Implementing design systems

The implementation of design systems is an effective way to address communication gaps and resource constraints. Design systems provide a set of standards and guidelines that help maintain consistency across different design projects, facilitating better communication and collaboration among team members.

Aligning roadmaps with maturity models

Aligning roadmaps with maturity models is beneficial in the design planning process, including assessing the design practice’s current state and identifying improvement areas. By aligning roadmaps with maturity models, design teams can ensure their efforts focus on achieving specific milestones and objectives.

Check out: Iress Quests of Achieving the Final Level of Design Maturity.

Rightsize the DesignOps practices

designops increasing collaboration group

Rightsizing DesignOps practices is essential for tailoring operations to the specific needs and maturity of the design teams, including aligning the DesignOps roadmap with the organization’s maturity model, which helps define areas of focus within the dimensions of maturity.

Using maturity models

One effective approach is to align DesignOps roadmaps around a maturity model by gathering the design leadership team and discussing qualitative challenges, needs, and goals. The maturity model helps outline focus areas and identify and prioritize themes. This alignment ensures that DesignOp’s efforts focus on achieving specific milestones and objectives that align with the organization’s maturity.

Read a Checklist to Track DesignOps Maturity.

Advocacy for design inclusion in planning

Another critical aspect is advocacy for the inclusion of design in the organization’s planning process. Sometimes design is not seen as an essential planning component, so it takes advocacy from the design team to change this perception. By advocating for design and demonstrating its value, DesignOps can ensure that design is a key consideration in the organization’s planning and decision-making processes.

Internal focus and team growth

In addition to aligning with organizational goals, it’s vital to focus internally on the design team’s needs. This alignment involves assessing how the team can grow and how to provide designers with development prospects. Sometimes designers may get stuck working on the same type of project, and it’s essential to provide them with diverse opportunities that contribute to their growth and development.

Read our eBook about design teamwork: DesignOps First Pillar: How We Work Together.

Identify and Establish Critical Cross-Functional Partnerships

designops increasing collaboration group collab

Establishing critical cross-functional partnerships is essential for the success of DesignOps. These partnerships ensure that the design operations align with the goals and incentives of other teams and departments within the organization.

Understanding goals and incentives

One of the key aspects of establishing cross-functional partnerships is understanding the goals and incentives of partners. It is essential to recognize that different teams and departments have distinct goals and motivations that drive their actions.

By understanding these goals and incentives, DesignOps can align its efforts with those of other teams and work towards common organizational objectives. This alignment is crucial for ensuring that DesignOps integrates with the broader organizational goals and doesn’t operate in isolation.

Balancing urgency and importance

Another important consideration in establishing cross-functional partnerships is balancing urgency with importance. While it is important to focus on building culture and connecting designers, it is also crucial to recognize that urgency often takes precedence. DesignOps must focus on driving value for design organizations while ensuring efficiency.

Scaling and scoping DesignOps

When establishing cross-functional partnerships, it is also essential to consider the scale and scope of DesignOps, including assessing the unique needs of different teams and determining the appropriate scale and scope of DesignOps to meet these needs.

Starting slow and understanding the nuances of the team and organization can help identify what types of support and resources they need. This systematic approach ensures that DesignOps is rightsized and tailored to the organization’s specific needs.

Measure and Impact: How to tell a story about the ROI of DesignOps

Measuring the impact and telling a story about the ROI of DesignOps is essential for justifying its role within an organization and focusing on the critical aspects that drive value for design and cross-functional teams.

Focus on impact

One of the vital aspects of measuring DesignOps is focusing on impact. DesignOps practitioners must resist the urge to do everything and instead concentrate on the most critical things. It is important to recognize that the size of the DesignOps team does not necessarily equate to impact. Therefore, focusing on efforts that are low cost but high reward is essential.

Building the foundation

Before adding layers to DesignOps, you must build a solid foundation by focusing on the essential aspects that drive value for design and cross-functional teams. Once you lay this foundation and there is buy-in from the organization, you can start adding additional layers while being mindful not to detract from the core value that DesignOps provides.

Internal scaling and multipliers

In times of austerity, getting creative with scaling efforts is crucial, which does not necessarily involve increasing headcount but may involve partnering with managers or leaders interested in DesignOps. It may also affect unlocking opportunities for design leads interested in processes and DesignOps activities. These internal multipliers can help scale efforts without necessarily increasing costs.

Transitioning designers to DesignOps

Another approach to scaling DesignOps is transitioning designers to DesignOps roles. Many designers may already be performing DesignOps activities without realizing it. By transitioning these designers to DesignOps roles, organizations can leverage their understanding of design to drive value for DesignOps.

Scope Impact: Cost Centers and Revenue Generators – Metrics in our Sphere of Control

It’s essential to focus on business needs through cost centers and revenue generators when scoping the impact of DesignOps. This scoping involves establishing robust cross-functional partnerships and focusing on metrics within DesignOps’ sphere of control.

Focus on business needs

Identifying the critical aspects that drive value for the business and focusing efforts on these aspects is vital for impact scoping. It is essential to recognize that while there are many things that DesignOps can do, focusing on those that have the most significant impact on the business creates the most value and ROI.

Establishing cross-functional partnerships

Establishing strong cross-functional partnerships involves building relationships with other departments and functions within the organization, such as engineering, product, and technical program managers. These partnerships ensure that DesignOps is aligned with the organization’s broader goals and can contribute to achieving them.

Personal relationships as an investment

Building personal relationships with cross-functional partners allows DesignOps to better understand other departments’ and functions’ goals and needs, which helps align efforts while focusing on metrics within DesignOps’ sphere of control.

Adapting to changing times

DesignOps must be agile and adaptable to change by being resilient and looking for opportunities to grow and develop, even in times of austerity. By being flexible and resilient, DesignOps can continue to drive value for the business, even during change.

DesignOps and ChatGPT (+ Other Generative AI)

In the context of DesignOps, artificial intelligence (AI) and generative models like ChatGPT can significantly streamline design processes and enhance productivity. Here’s how:

Automating routine tasks

AI can automate routine and repetitive tasks in the design process, freeing designers to focus on more complex and creative aspects of their work. For example, DesignOps practitioners can use AI to automate design asset generation, user interface components, and even entire layouts based on predefined rules and guidelines.

Rapid prototyping

Generative AI models can assist in rapid prototyping by generating design concepts based on specific inputs. Leveraging AI can significantly speed up the design ideation and concept development phase, allowing designers to explore a broader range of ideas in less time.

User research and data analysis

AI can also assist in user research and data analysis. For example, AI can analyze user behavior data to identify patterns and trends, providing valuable insights to inform design decisions. DesignOps can also use AI to conduct user testing and gather feedback, automating the otherwise time-consuming process of collecting and analyzing user responses.

Enhancing collaboration

AI models like ChatGPT can improve collaboration by serving as virtual team members generating ideas, providing feedback, and assisting with various tasks. These AI assistants can enhance the efficiency and productivity of design teams, especially in remote and distributed work environments.

Enhance designer and developer collaboration by bridging the gap with UXPin’s Merge technology. Create a single source of truth across the organization, eliminate drift, reduce time to market, and minimize debt with one tool. Visit our Merge page.

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What Is Green UX? Definition, Best Practices & Resources

Everything we do affects the planet. From recycling and saving water to going electric and reducing our environmental impact – all of these make a difference. But what about web and mobile apps? Yes, these digital resources also play an important role in how much damage gets done to the environment.

According to the IEA, the average person’s annual energy-related carbon footprint is around 4.7 tonnes of CO2. Data centers and transmission networks are responsible for about 1% of global energy consumption. These are big numbers, but people can do more to bring them down.

This article unpacks the concept of Green UX. It explores what teams can do to pursue it and the tools and resources available in the fight against the climate crisis.

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What is Green UX?

Green UX means focusing on how ecologically sustainable a product is. It involves considering what designers and developers can do to minimize the product’s impact. In other words, it’s all about ensuring that the result of UX design efforts is environmentally conscious and ‘greener’.

But Green UX starts with aligning team project goals by implementing eco-conscious prototyping principles into early product design. This drives an increased sense of responsibility among team members. All this while fostering the development objectives aimed at educating customers while serving them.

How Designers Can Reduce Carbon Footprint

Sustainable design is already an important consideration for many. And encouraging customers to play their part makes for good business. But going green with web and mobile apps is essential to the fight against climate change.

Here are some tips and best practice ideas that allow designers to boost sustainable design ambitions.

1. Upload smaller images and files where possible.

The bigger the file, the longer it takes to load in the app. Aside from hurting the user experience, images and files that take longer to load demand more of the device’s power. And unnecessary power consumption isn’t great for those eco-friendly goals.

Prototyping aims to prove that an app’s design works. So save the attractive parts for later. This is why prototypes shouldn’t boast high-res images or oversized files. There’s no point in using high-resolution images when designing minor elements for small-screen mobile devices in any case.

Instead, use a JPEG image or a file format with similar efficiency properties. The difference in quality on a smaller screen won’t be noticeable. And the far smaller file size will help the app to run smoothly without degrading function or design.

2. Use file formats will take up less space.

Storage space matters. The format chosen for saving files plays an important role in how much space is needed to store them. Since designers must continually transfer, download, and import files, larger ones can also chew up resources. This can affect performance and increase energy output.

Picking the right file formats for prototypes is essential to green UX. Besides ensuring optimal load performance, efficient file formats mean more effective space usage. Naturally, avoid formats that may compromise the project and pick from the more efficient formats available.

Opting for file formats like SVGs over embedded videos or GIFs lowers both page load times and storage space. For example, one designer shared that the decision to use SVGs for animations instead of video or GIFs helped reduce the page load speed from 8.75 to 412 ms. and page size from 1.6 MB to 389 KB.

Similarly, turning to CSV versus larger data file types is ideal for improving sustainability while still using a widely utilized file format and decreasing its data usage.

3. Choose a simpler design over a complicated one.

Keeping things on the design front simple means less time, resources, and energy invested in developing web and mobile apps. Lighter design elements and uncomplicated design structures allow designers to save time – and energy – creating them. “Less is more” design approaches are tried-and-tested UX angles, and end-users prefer the uncomplicated journey over a congested one.

Prototypes with oversized multimedia and complex JavaScripts consume more to build and roll out. Eliminating unnecessary components allows a smoother UX, limiting the chances of problems. Custom fonts, optimized images, and structures demanding fewer HTTP requests are effective green UX enablers.

CSS image sprites are always a good idea. They allow designers to combine optimized images into easy-to-access collections. This reduces server redirects and saves on bandwidth. With all pictures, logos, and other visual elements in one place, designers can decrease carbon emissions.

4. Prioritize design accessibility.

Product design accessibility and usability don’t have to be sacrificed in pursuing Green UX. In fact, they can be incorporated into the sustainable UX design mission. By prioritizing things like readability and navigation, users spend less time in the app, saving on CO2 output.

Content presented in a light and accessible layout allows users to understand what they’re doing faster. This also helps with improving the overall experience. At the same time, an intuitive app architecture makes for more efficient navigation. This enables users to reach their target content in fewer clicks. Easier-to-read content clearly laid out and easily interpreted improves design appeal for everyone.

Designers can consider reducing app interface clutter. Doing so makes things clearer and minimizes page load volumes. Improving findability with content organized into helpful categories means better efficiency. Clear menus are a must-have for any good UX too.

5. Optimize user journeys.

A user journey optimization is essential to reducing app energy outputs. With around 90% of the time spent on peoples’ smartphones taken up by apps, attention spans are decreasing.

Apps with more content naturally demand more time from the user and, thus, requiring more instead of less energy. Congested pages can lead to higher rates of page abandonment. They also complicate key information discoverability, resulting in missed CTAs.

Designers should consider optimizing user journeys to assist people in getting from A to B quicker. When users get distracted or confused, app time spikes as they struggle to reach their goals.

Usability testing is an effective way to identify the points in these journeys where people are drifting off-course. Designers can streamline them by addressing real user problems more efficiently. UX professionals should also ensure that every page element supports the user journey. They can do this by minimizing the steps and time taken to reach goals.

6. Create a prototype.

Possibly the most effective Green UX action design teams can take is to develop a prototype. This allows them to test the app out before heading into full-scale development.

Prototyping:

Helps avoid feature bloat
Reduces redesigns
Prevents serious mistakes
And ensures the product design process is more efficient.

But building a functional prototype can still increase CO2 output if the process is not managed correctly. From presenting only essential features to soliciting feedback faster, effective prototyping is critical.

UXPin Merge is the ideal tool for efficient prototyping. UXPin delivers realistic prototypes because it helps you use your app’s components in prototyping. It allows advanced feedback sourcing and a more engaging experience for users.

Merge technology helps design teams reuse their UI coded components, sourced from developer repositories. UXPin means faster prototype delivery, efficient design handoffs, and an optimized design process. What better way to deliver prototypes while minimizing output and an app’s carbon footprint?

Resources & Tools

Here are some resources and tools perfect for helping teams pursue a Green UX agenda when developing their app UX.

Image formats – For understanding the differences between PNG, GIF, JPEG, and SVG formats. This StackOverflow community analyzes the best options for figuring out the optimal file formats for design teams.
Reducing file sizes – TinyPNG is an effective tool for compressing WEBP, JPEG, and PNG files. The web app decreases selected colors without compromising the image.
Optimizing team collaboration – Mural.co makes teamwork easy and fast. This intuitive digital whiteboard tool will save teams time and effort, reducing energy output.
Green UX and digital sustainability resources – This ScreenSpan blog post offers a library of resources for teams looking to learn more about digital sustainability.
The Green UX checklist – Manoverboard’s Green UX checklist is the ideal starting point for design teams. Perfect for those looking to follow a step-by-step sustainability agenda.
Motivation & inspiration – Boasting content, videos, and speakers who understand the need for Green UX, sustainableux.com is an MIT-affiliated resource worth exploring.

Switch to Green UX

From developing the digital product to rolling it out and the energy required to run it, everything matters. Green UX is an often-overlooked UX design concept. It means designing a user experience that thinks about the planet. It helps designers build something with a reduced carbon footprint. At the same time, ensuring that end-users still enjoy the benefits of a clean, effective UX and UI design.

But it extends beyond the direct ecological impact of web pages or mobile apps. It allows designers – and eventually users – to think differently. It’s a concept that is growing in stature, and it is being rolled out across many different industries and platforms.

Everybody wins with a Green UX agenda – not just the planet. With a more sustainable approach to design, an app’s user experience is seen as more beneficial. It appeals to a more environmentally conscious market. Go green. Go Green UX. Your app will thank you.

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Design Planning 101 – A Step-by-Step Guide

Design planning promotes consistency, scalability, and efficiency throughout the design process, resulting in a higher-quality end product and a more satisfying user experience.

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What is Design Planning?

Design planning is a strategic project planning process of outlining and organizing the design approach for a digital product. It sets the foundation for effective collaboration, efficient execution, and successful outcomes in the product development journey.

Design planning involves, but is not limited to:

Setting clear objectives
Defining design principles and guidelines
Establishing information architecture
Determining the overall visual and interaction design direction

Why is Design Planning Important?

Design planning is crucial in digital product development as it provides a roadmap for the design team. It ensures that design decisions align with user needs, business goals, and brand identity.

Effective design planning helps streamline the product design process by conducting thorough research, defining clear goals, and establishing guidelines to reduce ambiguity and minimize rework. It enables effective communication among team members, facilitates stakeholder alignment, and increases the chances of creating a user-centered, visually appealing, and functional digital product.

Who is Responsible for Design Planning?

Someone from the design team is typically responsible for creating the design plan. The individual varies depending on the organization and org structure. Some common examples include:

While the design team is responsible for creating and executing the design plan, it’s a collaborative effort involving multiple teams and stakeholders to align user needs with business goals and objectives.

Aligning Design Efforts for Business Success

In a recent webinar hosted by UXPin titled Strategies for Building a Resilient DesignOps Practice, experts Salomé Mortazavi, Meredith Black, and Adam Fry-Pierce discussed the importance of aligning design efforts with business strategies. The panelists shared insights on the challenges design teams face and how DesignOps can address these challenges.

Key challenges in aligning design efforts

Salomé Mortazavi, Senior Director of DesignOps and Design Systems at SiriusXM, highlighted that a common root cause of challenges faced by design teams is the lack of alignment and understanding of Design’s role within the overall business strategy. Salomé emphasizes the importance of creating a shared vision and aligning the design and business charter.

Addressing bottlenecks and inefficiencies

Meredith Black, a DesignOps consultant, added that design teams often face bottlenecks and inefficiencies due to fragmented processes, communication gaps, and resource constraints.

Meredith stresses that DesignOps can streamline workflows, create design systems, and foster collaboration across teams, which helps in moving forward with deliverables.

Planning and vision setting

The panelists also discussed the significance of planning and vision-setting in aligning design efforts. Salomé shared that her go-to tool for planning is aligning roadmaps around a maturity model she calls the Design Maturity Index. This strategy involves continuous planning throughout the year to ensure design efforts align with business objectives.

The following high-level design planning framework provides a step-by-step process to create a comprehensive plan for digital product development.

Step 1: Understanding the Problem

The first step is understanding the problem and target audience. Design frameworks like design thinking, double diamond, Agile UX, and others help designers research and plan projects with a user-centered mindset. To understand the problem, design teams will:

Conducting user research: gather insights about the target users through interviews, surveys, and usability testing to understand their behaviors, preferences, and pain points.
Defining project goals and objectives: provide direction for the design planning process by outlining what the final product aims to achieve and the problem it intends to solve.
Analyzing user needs and pain points: crucial for designing a product that effectively addresses their problems by analyzing research findings to identify patterns, trends, and user requirements.
Identifying business requirements and constraints: aligning the plan with organizational budget limitations, technical feasibility, and timeline considerations ensures a viable and successful product outcome.

Step 2: Establishing Design Principles and Guidelines

Design systems are valuable in design planning as they provide a comprehensive framework for establishing design principles and guidelines. A design system will simplify or mitigate having to set principles and guidelines for every project.

Defining design principles

Design principles serve as guiding statements that inform the overall approach to design. They outline the fundamental values and goals teams must include in the product’s design. Defining design principles helps maintain consistency, coherence, and a user-centric focus throughout the design process.

Setting usability guidelines

Usability guidelines establish standards and best practices that ensure the product is easy to use and provides a positive user experience. These guidelines cover navigation, layout, content organization, and interaction design. Setting usability guidelines helps create a consistent and intuitive user interface that meets user expectations and needs.

Incorporating brand guidelines and visual identity

Brand guidelines and visual identity elements define the visual representation of the product and ensure consistency with the organization’s brand, including typography, color palette, logo usage, and imagery style. Incorporating brand guidelines and visual identity elements into the design planning process helps maintain a cohesive and recognizable brand presence across the product.

Step 3: Creating Information Architecture

Designers can establish a solid information architecture that ensures a logical and intuitive user experience, making it easier for users to find and navigate through the content and features of the digital product.

Conducting content audit and inventory

Begin by reviewing and analyzing the existing content within the app or website by identifying all the relevant information, assessing its relevance and quality, and determining what to keep, revise, and remove.

Organizing information and content structure

Organize the information into a clear and logical structure by grouping related content, creating categories and hierarchies, and establishing a coherent flow of information for users to navigate.

Creating user flows and navigation maps

Mapping user flows allows you to identify the most intuitive and efficient ways for users to achieve their goals. Navigation maps, on the other hand, visually represent the structure of the website or application, showing how different pages or sections are connected.

Designing wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes

Wireframes serve as a blueprint for the final design and focus on the arrangement of content, functionality, and user interactions. Low-fidelity prototypes allow for user testing and feedback before investing significant resources into high-fidelity prototypes.

Step 4: Defining Interaction Design

A product’s interaction design must facilitate smooth and engaging user experiences, enabling users to navigate and interact with the digital product seamlessly.

Mapping user interactions and actions

Map the product’s interactions and actions to understand user goals, define user journeys, and identify touchpoints where users engage with the interface.

Designing intuitive and user-friendly interfaces

Create intuitive, user-friendly interfaces by designing clear navigation, logically organizing content, and ensuring the UI elements are consistent and visually appealing.

Incorporating interactive elements and microinteractions

Interaction design includes designing buttons, menus, forms, and other interactive components that respond to user input. Microinteractions, such as hover effects or animated transitions, can add subtle but meaningful feedback to user actions.

Step 5: Visual Design and Branding

The design plan must guide designers in creating visually appealing and cohesive designs that align with the product’s brand and effectively communicate its purpose and message to the users.

Choose an appropriate visual style that aligns with the product’s objectives and target audience.
Defining color palettes and typography to create a visually pleasing and consistent design, including colors that evoke the desired emotions and choosing legible fonts that reflect the brand’s personality.
Creating visually appealing layouts and components like buttons, cards, or icons, paying attention to spacing, hierarchy, and balance to ensure a harmonious and engaging design.
Ensuring consistency and coherence in visual design involves defining design patterns, guidelines, and style guides that provide a framework for maintaining consistency across all design elements and screens.

Step 6: Collaboration and Communication

As we discovered from our DesignOps experts above, collaboration and incorporating stakeholder feedback are crucial for design planning. Establishing effective communication channels, collaborating with stakeholders and cross-functional teams, and conducting design reviews and feedback sessions, facilitates knowledge sharing to align the design plan with business goals.

Collaboration and communication considerations for the design plan include:

Establishing effective communication channels, including project management tools, email, instant messaging platforms, or virtual collaboration spaces, to ensure smooth and timely communication among team members.
Collaborating with stakeholders and cross-functional teams involves key stakeholders, such as product managers, developers, and marketers, throughout the design process to gather their insights and align the design decisions with the overall product strategy.
Conducting design reviews and feedback sessions provides an opportunity to present design concepts, prototypes, or wireframes to the relevant teams and gather constructive feedback to iterate and improve the design.

Step 7: Project Management and Timeline

design and development collaboration process product

Effective project and timeline management are essential for keeping design initiatives on track, optimizing resource utilization, and ensuring timely delivery of design outputs.

Creating project schedules and milestones ensures a structured and organized approach to design planning and execution.
Managing design resources and timelines ensures that design tasks are appropriately scheduled and coordinated within the overall project timeline.
Tracking progress and adapting to changes to meet project goals and address any unforeseen challenges or changes helps maintain open lines of communication with stakeholders to ensure alignment and make informed decisions.

Deliver Better Product Outcomes With UXPin Merge

UXPin Merge bridges the gap between design and development to simplify design planning and product development. With design and engineering teams in sync, DesignOps can spend more time on strategic initiatives rather than wasting resources on redundant processes–like updating multiple design libraries and documentation.

With a real single source of truth, the design system team syncs updates to every team with one release–no more separate design libraries for designers, developers, prototyping, etc. Teams can access UI components and documentation from one centralized repository, resulting in absolute consistency, zero design drift, and minimal technical debt.

Streamline your design process with a single source of truth from Merge. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

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High-Fidelity Prototype – How to Create One in UXPin?

Fidelity refers to the level of detail and realism in a prototype or design. It represents how closely the prototype resembles the final product in terms of visual design, interactions, and functionality. High-fidelity prototypes are highly realistic and aim to simulate the final user experience as closely as possible.

High-fidelity prototypes (hi-fi prototypes) include visual and interactive elements that align with an actual product’s user interface, such as accurate colors, typography, interactions, animations, and imagery. These prototypes offer users and stakeholders a more immersive and realistic experience, enabling them to better understand the end product’s look and feel.

Designers create high-fidelity prototypes in the later stages of the design process to test and validate concepts, gather user feedback, and refine the user experience. These prototypes allow designers to assess the usability and effectiveness of the interface, identify potential issues or improvements, and make informed product design decisions.

Make better design decisions with fully interactive prototypes with UXPin’s Merge technology. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

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High-Fidelity vs. Low-Fidelity Prototypes

Designers use high-fidelity and low-fidelity prototypes at separate stages of the design process for different purposes and goals.

Low-fidelity prototypes (lo-fi prototypes) are simplified design concepts typically created using rough sketches, wireframes, or basic digital mockups. Designers create these lo-fi prototypes early in the design process to iterate on many ideas collaboratively and as quickly as possible.

Low-fidelity prototypes focus on the design’s core structure, information architecture, and functionality. They are quick and easy to create, allowing designers to explore and iterate on multiple design ideas without investing excessive time and resources.

High-fidelity prototypes are more detailed and realistic representations of the final design that closely resemble the finished product’s intended look, feel, and functionality, incorporating visual design elements, interactive features, and realistic content. Design teams create high-fidelity prototypes later in the design process to finalize concepts before the design handoff.

Planning Your High-Fidelity Prototype

Designers complete most research and planning during the early stages of the design process. So this step is about synthesizing and reviewing the findings to guide high-fidelity prototyping.

Defining the purpose and objectives of your prototype

Define the specific goals you want to achieve with your high-fidelity by determining what aspects of the design you want to test, evaluate, or showcase to stakeholders.

For example, if you’re designing an eCommerce website:

Objective: test the user flow of adding items to the cart and completing the checkout process.
Purpose: identify any usability issues and optimize the conversion rate.

Applying user goals from UX research

Thorough UX research must precede prototyping, so designers know what to build and who they’re building it for before jumping into a prototyping tool. Understanding user goals helps tailor a high-fidelity prototype to meet the target audience’s needs and preferences.

For example, if you’re designing a mobile app for fitness enthusiasts, your target audience might be individuals interested in tracking their workouts and progress. This user group’s goals include setting fitness objectives, tracking calories burned, and analyzing workout statistics. Using this research, designers can plan features and interactions accordingly.

Outlining the key functionalities and interactions

Determine the core elements your prototype needs to achieve the desired user experience while meeting the above goals and objectives. Identifying these key functionalities helps you prioritize your design efforts and ensure your prototype captures the essential interactions and user flows.

For example, if you’re designing a flight booking mobile app, key functionalities might include:

Searching for flights
Filtering search results
Viewing flight details
Selecting seats
Booking payment and confirmation
Viewing “my bookings”

Designing the Visual Elements

Designers use research, sketches, and wireframes as a foundation to design the visual elements of a high-fidelity prototype. When designing the visual elements, designers consider various aspects such as typography, colors, iconography, and imagery.

The product’s typography and colors must align with the brand identity and enhance readability. A product’s iconography communicates actions and features using familiar and intuitive symbols. Imagery, including illustrations and photos, enhances the user experience and conveys the desired message.

Designers must also consider how these design elements impact accessibility, including color contrast, legibility, and assistive technologies.

Leveraging open-source component libraries

Designers can accelerate the visual design process by using open-source component libraries–i.e., MUI, Ant Design, or Fluent UI. Designers can leverage ready-made visual elements, such as buttons, forms, and navigation bars, to reduce the time and effort required to design and maintain consistent visual language throughout the high-fidelity prototype.

UXPin offers tools and features to simplify the UI design process. They can also use one of UXPin’s built-in Merge libraries to build screens and layouts simply by dragging and dropping UI elements. These components are interactive by default and contain properties defined by the design system, facilitating faster, streamlined, and consistent UI design.

Once this stage is complete, designers will have a set of high-fidelity mockups ready to build interactive prototypes.

Adding Component Interactions and Animations

Designers define different states, such as hover, active, or disabled, to reflect the user’s interactions with the elements. They also create transitions between components to simulate the dynamic behavior of the final product and provide a more realistic user experience. For example, a button remains disabled until users complete a form’s required fields.

Additionally, designers incorporate microinteractions and animations. Microinteractions are small, subtle, and purposeful animations that provide feedback and guide users through their interactions with the prototype. These microinteractions make prototypes feel more engaging and interactive but also communicate important information to the users and guide them through the interface more intuitively.

Leveraging Merge’s interactive components

UXPin’s Merge technology allows designers to bring code components from a repository into the design process. These UI elements contain properties, including interactions, defined by the design system.

This code-to-design methodology means designers never have to worry about setting up component properties, including styling and interactions. Each component’s variants appear in UXPin’s Properties Panel for designers to select. For example, choosing a component’s state.

Designers can also add microinteractions using UXPin’s Interactions feature, which includes triggers and actions for keyboard and mobile.

Simulating User Flows

Mapping user flows and navigation paths

Designers define the logical sequence of screens and the user’s journey through a digital product, including identifying entry points, exit points, and the various paths users can take to accomplish their tasks. This user journey map ensures a seamless and intuitive navigation experience for users.

Defining interactions

Designers use interactive elements such as buttons or links to establish connections between screens according to the user journey map. These connections allow users to navigate different screens and simulate the transitions and interactions they will encounter in the product.

Taking care of transitions

Designers use animations, transitions, and interactive elements to simulate how users interact with the prototype. For example, a button click might trigger a modal to appear, or scrolling might reveal additional content.

By the end of this process, designers are ready for testing your hi-fi prototype with end-users.

Testing and Iterating

Testing is an iterative process where designers continuously improve the high-fidelity prototype by incorporating user feedback and refining the design to create a more effective and user-friendly solution.

Here is a high-level overview of the high-fidelity prototyping process:

Conduct usability testing sessions with representative users to evaluate the high-fidelity prototype and gather valuable feedback on its usability.
Present the prototypes to stakeholders for business value feedback.
Collect and analyze user and stakeholder feedback and insights regarding their interactions, comprehension, and overall experience with the prototype.
Identify areas for improvement and make changes to the prototype based on the feedback received.
Refine the design to address usability issues and enhance the overall user experience.
Repeat the iterative testing and refining process to ensure the prototype meets user needs and aligns with design objectives.

UXPin’s Preview and Share lets designers share designs and prototypes with team members and stakeholders. UXPin allows designers to choose what they want to share, including the Sitemap, Comments, Spec Mode, and Documentation.

UXPin share links are available on the open web, meaning anyone with the link can access the project. Designers can password-protect projects so only team members and stakeholders can access them.

Collaborating with team members and stakeholders

UXPin’s Comments feature makes collaborating with team members and stakeholders easy. They can comment directly on the interface, tag one another, assign comments, and resolve them after the appropriate action. With Team and Public Comments, even those without a UXPin account can participant in the feedback process.

Smoother developer collaboration and design handoffs

Building high-fidelity prototypes with code components bridges the gap between the design and development process because designers and engineers speak the same language interpreted through UXPin’s Merge technology.

Designers and engineers see the exact same component, just through a different lens. Designers see the visual elements in UXPin, and engineers work with code in their IDE. This single source of truth reduces friction because designers and engineers work within the same constraints. These constraints also prevent design drift, technical debt, and inconsistencies, creating a more harmonious product development process.

Build better high-fidelity prototypes faster and with more interactivity to enhance user testing and streamline stakeholder collaboration. Learn more about hi-fi prototyping with UXPin Merge.

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Top Methods of Identifying User Needs

User needs are the specific requirements and expectations of users that a product or service should fulfill to provide value and enhance their experience. These needs represent users’ perspectives, goals, motivations, pain points, and other human factors.

By identifying and addressing user needs, UX designers can create relevant, usable, and possible solutions for the target audience. User needs help define the scope and direction of the product development process, influencing key decisions such as functionality, features, layout, and interaction design.

Understanding user needs also enables designers to prioritize design elements, allocate resources effectively, and make informed design decisions. Make better design decisions with UXPin’s interactive prototypes. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced features.

Desk research

Desk research (secondary research) is valuable for gathering information and insights to understand user needs based on existing data from various internal and external sources. This data can come from published materials, academic papers, industry reports, social media, online resources, and other third-party data sources.

User interviews

Interviews are a widely used user research method that involves direct conversations with end users to gather insights, understand their perspectives, and uncover their needs.

Researchers ask questions and prompt participants to share their experiences, opinions, and expectations about a product or service. Interviews provide rich qualitative data and allow researchers to delve deeper into users’ thoughts and emotions.

Structured interviews: follow a predetermined set of questions and a fixed order, allowing for consistency and comparability in data collection. They help gather specific information from participants systematically.
Semi-structured interviews: offer more flexibility, combining predefined questions with the freedom to explore additional topics and follow up on participants’ responses. This approach encourages participants to express themselves more freely, providing richer insights.
User story interviews: focus on understanding users’ goals, motivations, and behaviors by having them narrate their experiences through storytelling. These interviews capture the user’s journey and provide valuable context for understanding their needs and expectations.

Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular user research methods that systematically collect data from many participants. Surveys typically consist of questions designed to gather quantitative or qualitative data about users’ preferences, opinions, behaviors, and demographics.

They provide researchers with a structured approach to gathering insights from a broader audience, allowing for statistical analysis and identification of trends.

Surveys: allow researchers to reach a wide audience and collect data efficiently, providing quantitative insights. Surveys are beneficial for gathering feedback on specific features, user satisfaction, or demographic information.
Likert scale questionnaires: use a series of statements or items with response options, allowing participants to rate their level of agreement or disagreement. This method provides researchers with quantitative data to statistically analyze user preferences, perceptions, or attitudes.

Observation and field studies

Observation and field studies are user research methods that directly observe users in their natural environment to gain insights into their behaviors, needs, and experiences.

Researchers can gather rich qualitative data that helps uncover user needs and understand the context in which people use products or services.

Contextual inquiry: combines observation and interviewing techniques to understand users’ workflows and the context in which they perform tasks. Researchers observe users in their work or living environment and engage in conversations to gain deeper insights into their needs, motivations, and challenges.
Ethnographic research: involves immersing oneself in the users’ cultural or social context to better understand their behaviors, values, and norms. Researchers spend an extended period with the users, observing and participating in their daily activities, to uncover deep insights that influence design decisions.
Diary studies: involve participants documenting their experiences, behaviors, or interactions over time. Participants record their thoughts, activities, and emotions in a diary or journal, providing researchers with detailed and longitudinal data. Diary studies offer insights into users’ daily lives, habits, and pain points, helping to identify patterns and uncover unmet needs.

Focus groups

Focus groups are small groups of participants engaging in a guided discussion about a specific topic or product. This method allows researchers to collect qualitative data by leveraging group dynamics and participant interactions.

Participants can share their opinions, ideas, and experiences in a focus group, providing valuable insights into user needs and preferences.

Plan and conduct effective focus groups by defining clear objectives, selecting appropriate participants, creating a discussion guide, and facilitating the session effectively. Creating a comfortable and inclusive environment encourages participants to express their thoughts and opinions freely.
Analyze and synthesize focus group data to identify patterns, themes, and key insights. This analysis involves transcribing or reviewing the discussion, extracting meaningful data points, and organizing them into categories. Researchers can use affinity mapping or thematic analysis techniques to make sense of the data and draw meaningful conclusions.

Usability testing

Usability testing evaluates a product or interface’s usability and user experience. It involves observing users performing specific tasks and providing feedback on their interactions. Usability testing helps identify usability issues, understand user behavior, and gather insights for improving the design.

Moderated usability testing: a researcher facilitates the session and guides participants through predefined tasks while observing their interactions and gathering feedback. The researcher can ask follow-up questions, clarify uncertainties, and delve deeper into participants’ thoughts and experiences.
Remote usability testing: researchers use video conferencing or screen-sharing tools to observe their interactions and gather feedback.
Thinking aloud: participants are encouraged to verbalize their thoughts, feelings, and decision-making processes as they navigate a digital product. This narration provides valuable insights into users’ cognitive processes and helps uncover usability issues.

Data Analysis and Synthesis

Data analysis and synthesis is a crucial step in user research that involves organizing, examining, and interpreting the collected data to derive meaningful insights.

Qualitative analysis

UX researchers use qualitative analysis methods to analyze and make sense of qualitative data, such as interview transcripts, observation notes, and open-ended survey responses.

Thematic analysis involves identifying and categorizing recurring themes, patterns, and concepts within the qualitative data. Researchers review the data, generate codes or labels to represent key ideas, and then group similar codes into broader themes to identify meaningful patterns.
Affinity diagrams organize qualitative data by grouping related ideas or concepts. Researchers write each finding on sticky notes and then arrange and rearrange them on a wall or board to discover connections and identify patterns or themes.
Narrative analysis examines the structure, content, and meaning of individual stories participants share. Researchers analyze the storytelling elements, underlying themes, and narrative arcs to gain insights into users’ experiences, perspectives, and motivations.

Quantitative analysis

Quantitative analysis methods analyze numerical data and metrics collected through surveys, questionnaires, and quantitative research studies.

Statistical analysis applies various statistical techniques to analyze and interpret quantitative data. Researchers use measures of central tendency, dispersion, correlation, and statistical tests to identify data relationships, trends, and patterns.
Data visualization represents quantitative data using charts, graphs, and other visual representations. Visualizing data helps researchers and stakeholders easily understand patterns, trends, and relationships within the data.
Pattern recognition helps identify recurring patterns, trends, or anomalies within quantitative data. Researchers look for clusters, outliers, or other patterns that can provide insights into user behavior, preferences, or trends.

Combining multiple methods

Combining multiple research methods enables researchers to validate ideas and identify user needs from various sources, providing more accurate and reliable data.

Triangulation: Combining multiple user research methods, such as interviews, observations, and surveys, to cross-validate findings and increase the reliability and validity of the data.
Mixed-methods approach: Integrating qualitative and quantitative research methods, such as combining interviews with surveys or usability testing with analytics, to comprehensively understand user needs and obtain richer insights.

Integrating User Needs into Design

Designers analyze and interpret user research findings to identify specific design requirements that address user needs. These requirements serve as guidelines for the design process, ensuring that the resulting solutions align with user expectations and user-centered design principles.

Designers create several documents and visualizations to guide the design process, including user need statements, personas, case studies, and other UX artifacts.

Design teams also meet with stakeholders to integrate business goals and user needs. They must consider user feedback, conduct usability testing, and incorporate iterative feedback loops to achieve the right balance. This iterative approach allows designers to continuously refine their solutions based on user needs, preferences, and feedback.

Advanced Prototyping and Testing With UXPin

UXPin’s advanced prototyping features enable design teams to build accurate replicas of the final product. These fully interactive prototypes allow designers to observe and analyze user behavior, preferences, and pain points, validating whether designs effectively address user needs.

Users and stakeholders can interact with user interfaces like they would the final product, giving designers meaningful, actionable insights to iterate and improve.

Whether you’re a startup looking to validate a new product idea or an enterprise team looking to scale your DesignOps, UXPin has a solution for your business. Sign up for a free trial to explore the world’s most advanced UX design tool.

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90s Websites – Key Characteristics & Examples

Trends have a way of repeating themselves. This is perhaps most apparent in fashion – the 1970s drew inspiration from the 1950s, and in a cycle that repeated itself about every 20 years. That said, this design cycle is not exclusive to clothing trends – it can also be seen in other areas, including website design.

In recent years, we’ve seen quite a few references to the early days of the world wide web. In this piece, we discuss the main traits of 90s-inspired digital design and give you a few most prominent examples. If you’d like to give your designs that 1990s ‘feel’, you’ve come to the right place.

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90s Website Key Characteristics

The early days of the world wide web were iconic, but not nearly as efficient as today’s Internet experience. This breakdown of the most eye-catching and enjoyable aspects of 90s website design is intended to be used as a muse.

When the right amount of nostalgia is mixed with decades of advancement, beautiful and functional websites can be created.

Patterned background

The 90s were a lot of things, but they certainly weren’t minimalistic! Bright colors and patterns were a staple of the decade, especially when it came to website backgrounds. The night sky, studded metal, bright geometric patterns, and repeating logos were just a few of the bold backgrounds that would catch your eye some 20-30 years ago.

The busy nature of these backgrounds might make them seem unreasonable, especially when streamlining website design for ease of use. In cases where these designs overwhelm other factors on the web page that might be true. Still, the human brain loves patterns. Research suggests that looking at repeating patterns can reduce stress, since they are a form of visual stimuli often found in nature.

So how can you create your own 90s-inspired website background? You have a few options, with the most simplistic being a search for “free repeating background”.

If you find something you like, add it to your site, and if you don’t, check out sites like Pixabay. A search for repeating patterns will provide you with hundreds of options. If you’re still not satisfied with your findings, create your own design or you hire an artist to bring your background pattern ideas to life.

For some extra 90s magic, you can incorporate an animated background. Sites like Textures Town offer 3D animated designs to fit a variety of themes. The site itself is also a great source of retro inspiration.

Navigation

Today, website navigation is a core factor when it comes to user experience and attention retention. But that wasn’t always the case. In the 90s most websites were cluttered with links and options that lacked clean categories.

AliWeb, the world’s oldest search engine, is an interactive example of this navigation style. You’ll quickly notice that the navigation of this site is “stacked” unlike navigation on similar search engines, like Google.

Sub-navigation systems, most commonly identified as drop-down menus, were not invented until the late 90s to early 2000s. As a result, the most iconic 90s websites used lists of links, icons, or flash animations. User-friendly navigation and 90s-era navigation don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Research suggests that the order of website menu items has little effect on the ease with which people locate their options, but the best results come from menus with 10 or fewer options. This suggests that the right balance of 90s-designed menu options can be both, functional and fashionable.

Clickable icons

Menu icons and banners are a common sight on most webpage templates. These simple navigation tools allow words to guide visitors through sites, but icons used to be a preferred method. Embedding images with links allowed early websites a creative and eye-catching alternative to simply listing links with uniform text.

CSS, or cascading style sheets, used to simplify the structure of current web pages was not available in the 90s. Icons offered a simplified and stylish form of navigation that was easy to identify. In some cases, the icons would be suited to their background as if they were interacting with it, or they would stand in stark contrast to it.

Apple offers a great example of the effectiveness of well-placed image icons. The icons used today for Apple’s clock, calculator, and notepad are reminiscent of their original forms because their design supports ease of use.

Bright, bold, and boxy icons may be the closest to authentic 90s website design styles, but this form of navigation can be designed with a modern twist to suit your style.

Animations

One of the most unforgettable, and arguably enjoyable, aspects of 90s website design was the animations. A cursor with a trail of hearts, shooting stars, swimming fish, and a myriad of other whimsical animations brought web pages to life.

Animations came about through the use of Flash. They were cutting-edge and accessible during a period when there were limited resources to make web pages stand out. Animations were most commonly incorporated into mouse movement and clickable icons, but they could also be a part of the background.

The goal was to make interacting with a website more exciting, and early designers were on to something. Human eyes are drawn to movement, especially when other items in view are unchanging.

Design aspects and preferences may have changed over the years, but eyes and perception have not. This makes animations a valuable tool to this day. Through (the still available) Flash animation software, you can create animations unique to your site’s needs.

The color palette of the 90s

Some periods in history can be defined by popular colors that appeared in everything from fashion to furniture, and the 90s was one of those eras. The color palette of the 90s, especially that which appeared on websites, was split into the two main groups listed below.

Memphis Style

The brighter designs apparent in the 90s fell into a category known as Memphis style. This included bold primary colors, pastels, and neon colors that were often used in contrast with black and white. Geometric shapes were commonly incorporated into Memphis design and a main focus was creating a visually stunning contrast.

This style originated in the 80s and is apparent in the fashion of that decade. Memphis style went on to inspire many web designers of the 90s, and it is still occasionally referenced in modern design.

Grunge Style

The darker side of 90s web design fell into a color pallet known as Grunge style. In stark contrast to Memphis, Grunge is neutral and dark. Black, grey, brown, and beige took center stage in gloomy designs. Inspiration was drawn from the rising alternative rock scene, also known as Grunge bands.

These two styles may feel mutually exclusive, but they can be blended together to create unique designs inspired by all color pallets of the 90s. By mixing bold colors in muted forms or creating brutal designs with geometric aspects, Memphis and Grunge can create a spectrum of 90s style.

Fonts

Based on all the other attributes of 90s website design, it’s safe to assume that font styles would be anything but simple. Fonts were used like another form of art, and regardless of what color pallet a site followed, fonts tended towards being bold. Bubbly, boxy, and brushed fonts were common for titles while smaller texts tended towards playful fonts like Comic Sans.

Finding the ideal combination of color, animation, and font for your design can seem daunting, but with a functional prototype, 90s-inspired visions can come to life. With UXPin, you can work on creating web designs reminiscent of the era and revive the nostalgia of the 90s in every detail. With an interactive prototype that behaves like a final product, it is possible to test every aspect, including those 90s animations. Sign up for a free trial.

Website Examples From The 90s

Descriptions are great, but some of the best inspirations for designs are visual. Let’s look at two iconic websites in their 90s era to see how they stood out.

NASA

Being at the forefront of science and technology, NASA had to create a webpage that centralized relevant information in an iconic way. Their first webpage, from 1994, did so with a textured grey background. Colorful but grainy images on buttons intended for navigation stood out against the dull background.

The drop shadows and embossed logo across the screen made this webpage as modern as it could appear in the 90s. Most importantly, its design made it possible for students, educators, and scientists to reference all things NASA in one place.

Lego

The colorful and creative nature of Legos fit perfectly with design trends in the 90s. When their first site was released in 1996 it incorporated texture with a Lego-studded background. The site also incorporated motion with many of its Lego person icons being animated.

The icons on the Lego page may have been pixilated, but the color contrast and creativity worked into their web design captured their audience’s attention regardless.

Design your 90s website in UXPin

Drawing design inspiration from 90s trends is natural, especially as more and more aspects of 90s design resurface in modern culture. Luckily, the technological barriers that restricted web design of that decade have since been simplified. But the ability to experiment with nostalgic patterns, colors, fonts, and animations is just a few clicks away thanks to powerful prototyping tools like UXPin.

Today’s trend toward simplicity and user-friendly design can be skillfully blended with iconic characteristics of the 90s in any way you choose. UXPin allows for web design that is detail oriented and fully functional even in its prototype phase. This way, you can interact with every retro design aspect prior to launch to ensure they are as functional as they are fashionable. Ready to blend retro style with modern UX and UI capabilities? Try UXPin today.

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What is Desk Research? Definition & Useful Tools

Desk research typically serves as a starting point for design projects, providing designers with the knowledge to guide their approach and help them make informed design choices.

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What is Desk Research?

Desk research (secondary research or literature review) refers to gathering and analyzing existing data from various sources to inform design decisions for UX projects. It’s usually the first step in a design project as it’s cost-effective and informs where teams may need to dig deeper.

This data can come from published materials, academic papers, industry reports, online resources, and other third-party data sources. UX designers or researchers use this information to supplement data, learn about certain markets/user groups, explore industry trends, understand specific topics, or navigate design challenges.

The importance of desk research in the design process

Desk research gives designers a comprehensive understanding of the context, users, and existing solutions. It allows designers to gather valuable insights without conducting primary research which can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.

Desk research helps designers better understand the problem space, explore best practices and industry trends, and identify potential design opportunities without reinventing the wheel while learning from others’ mistakes.

Primary Research vs. Secondary Research

Primary research: new and original data from first-hand sources collected by the team, such as questionnaires, interviews, field research, or experiments, specifically for a particular research project.
Secondary research: utilizing existing data sets and information that others have collected, including books, articles, reports, and databases.

Primary and secondary research complement each other in comprehensively understanding a topic or problem. While primary research provides new first-party data specifically for a project’s goals, secondary data leverages existing knowledge and resources to gain insights.

What is the Purpose of Desk Research?

Understanding the problem or design challenge

Desk research helps designers comprehensively understand the problem or design challenge. By reviewing existing knowledge and information, designers can grasp the context, identify pain points, and define the scope of their design project.

For example, when tasked with designing a new mobile banking app, desk research can provide insights into user preferences, common challenges in the banking industry, and emerging trends in mobile banking.

Gathering background information

Desk research allows designers to gather background information related to their design project. It helps them explore the domain, industry, target audience, and relevant factors that may influence their design decisions.

For example, when designing a fitness-tracking app, desk research may involve collecting information about fitness activities, wearable technologies, and health guidelines.

Exploring existing solutions and best practices

Desk research enables designers to explore existing solutions and best practices. By studying successful designs, case studies, and industry standards, designers can learn from previous approaches and incorporate proven techniques.

For example, when creating a website’s navigation menu, desk research can involve analyzing navigation patterns used by popular websites to ensure an intuitive user experience.

Identifying trends and patterns

Desk research helps designers identify trends and patterns within the industry or user behavior. Designers examine market reports, user surveys, and industry publications to identify trends, emerging technologies, and user preferences.

For example, when designing a smart home app, desk research can involve analyzing market trends in connected devices and user expectations for seamless integration.

Informing decision-making and design choices

Desk research provides designers valuable insights that inform their decision-making and design choices. It helps designers make informed design decisions based on existing knowledge, data, and research findings.

For example, when selecting a color palette for a brand’s website, desk research can involve studying color psychology, cultural associations, and industry trends to ensure the chosen colors align with the brand’s values and resonate with the target audience.

Secondary Research Methods and Techniques

Researchers use these methods individually or in combination, depending on the specific design project and research objectives. They select and adapt these based on the nature of the problem, available resources, and desired outcomes.

Literature review: gathers and analyzes relevant data from academic and research publications, government agencies, educational institutions, books, articles, and online resources (i.e., Google Scholar, social media, etc.). It helps designers gain a deeper understanding of existing knowledge, theories, and perspectives on the subject matter.
Market research: studying and analyzing market reports, industry trends, consumer behavior, and demographic data. It provides valuable insights into the target market, user preferences, emerging trends, and potential opportunities for design solutions.
Competitor analysis: examines and evaluates the products, services, and strategies of competitors in the market. By studying competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and unique selling points, designers can identify gaps, potential areas for improvement, and opportunities to differentiate their designs.
User research analysis: User research analysis involves reviewing and analyzing data collected from various user research methods, such as surveys, interviews, and usability testing. It helps designers gain insights into user needs, preferences, pain points, and behaviors, which inform the design decisions and enhance the user-centeredness of the final product.
Data analysis: processing and interpreting quantitative and qualitative data from various sources, such as surveys, analytics, and user feedback. It helps designers identify patterns, trends, and correlations in the data, which can guide decision-making and inform design choices.

How to Conduct Desk Research

Defining research objectives and questions

Start by defining the research objectives and formulating specific research questions. A clear goal will inform the type and method of secondary research.

For example, if you’re designing a mobile app for fitness tracking, your research objective might be to understand user preferences for workout-tracking features. Your research question could be: “What are the most commonly used workout tracking features in popular fitness apps?”

Identifying and selecting reliable sources

Identify relevant and reliable sources of information that align with your research objectives. These sources include academic journals, industry reports, reputable websites, and case studies.

For example, you might refer to academic journals and industry reports on fitness technology trends and user behavior to gather reliable insights for your research.

Collecting and analyzing relevant information

Collect information from the selected sources and carefully analyze it to extract key insights.

For example, you could collect data on user preferences for workout-tracking features by reviewing user reviews of existing fitness apps, analyzing market research reports, and studying user surveys conducted by fitness-related organizations.

Organizing and synthesizing findings

Organize the research data and synthesize the findings to identify common themes, patterns, and trends.

For example, you might categorize the collected data based on different workout tracking features, identify the most frequently mentioned features, and analyze user feedback to understand the reasons behind their preferences.

Limitations and Considerations of Secondary Research

Considering these desk research limitations and considerations allows designers to approach it with a critical mindset, apply appropriate methodologies to address potential biases, and supplement it with other research methods when necessary.

Potential bias in sources: Desk research heavily relies on existing information, which may come from biased or unreliable sources. It is essential to critically evaluate the credibility and objectivity of the sources used to minimize the risk of incorporating biased information into the research findings.
Limited access to certain information: Desk research may have limitations in accessing certain types of information, such as proprietary data or sensitive industry insights. This limited access can restrict the depth of the research and may require designers to rely on alternative sources or approaches to fill the gaps.
Lack of real-time data: Desk research uses existing data and information, which may not always reflect the most up-to-date or current trends. It is essential to consider the data’s publication date and recognize that certain aspects of the research may require complementary methods, such as user research or market surveys, to capture real-time insights.
Necessary cross-referencing and triangulation: Given the potential limitations and biases in individual sources, it is crucial to cross-reference information from multiple sources and employ triangulation techniques. This due diligence helps validate the findings and ensures a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the subject matter.

Test Research Findings With UXPin’s Interactive Prototypes

Secondary research is the first step. Design teams must test and validate ideas with end-users using prototypes. With UXPin’s built-in design libraries, designers can build fully functioning prototypes using patterns and components from leading design systems, including Material Design, iOS, Bootstrap, and Foundation.

UXPin’s prototypes allow usability participants and stakeholders to interact with user interfaces and features like they would the final product, giving design teams high-quality insights to iterate and improve efficiency with better results.

These four key features set UXPin apart from traditional image-based design tools:

States: create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like dropdown menus, tab menus, navigational drawers, and more.
Variables: create personalized, dynamic prototype experiences by capturing data from user inputs and using it throughout the prototype–like a personalized welcome message or email confirmation.
Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
Conditional Interactions: create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to replicate the final product experience accurately.

Gain valuable insights with fully functioning prototypes to validate UX research hypotheses and make better design decisions. Sign up for a free trial to build your first interactive prototype with UXPin.

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Advanced Search UX Done Right — Powerful Examples and Tips

Where basic search displays a list of results, advanced search enables users to refine their search queries for highly targeted results using filters, facet selection, and other parameters. This filtering lets users find specific information faster than sifting through queries–especially when there is vast content.

Advanced search is crucial for user experience because it gives users more control while increasing efficiency. A well-implemented advanced search can dramatically improve the usability of a website or application, leading to increased user retention and conversion rates.

Design advanced search prototypes that look and feel like the final product. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s interactive prototyping features.

What is Advanced Search?

Advanced search is a feature of websites or apps that allows users to narrow down the content they’re seeing by using specific filters. It is widely used in eCommerce to help users find items that have specific colors, fabric, ingredients, and other factors they may look for.

The Impact of Advanced Search UX on User Behavior

Advanced search plays a major role in user experience, as it directly influences how users interact with a website or application. Users want to locate information and complete tasks quickly.

Advanced search UX facilitates this efficiency by enabling users to locate information faster, keeping them engaged, and increasing overall user satisfaction.

According to a study by the Nielsen Norman Group, users who successfully apply advanced search filters are more likely to find what they’re looking for and feel satisfied with their experience.

“That’s always helpful, the information on the side, the filters. I appreciate that when I shop, especially when I know what I’m looking for.” Usability-test participant from a 2018 NN Group study.

In short, good advanced search UX streamlines the search process while boosting user satisfaction by providing a sense of control and efficiency.

Key Elements of Advanced Search UI

Search bar design and placement

The UI design and placement of the search input field are fundamental to an effective advanced search UX. The field must be large enough to accommodate typical queries and located prominently in the user interface–typically at the top of the screen.

This prominent location ensures users can quickly find the search feature functionality and start searching.

Predictive search and auto-complete

Predictive search and auto-complete (auto-suggest) are significant components of advanced search UX. As users type into the search input field, these features provide real-time suggestions based on initial input, accelerating the search process.

Some sophisticated predictive search technologies can even identify spelling mistakes and other inaccuracies and suggest corrective actions or results, reducing errors while increasing efficiency.

Use of filters and faceted search

While filters and facets help refine search results, they do so in slightly different ways. Filters typically apply broader categorizations, like date ranges or content types. Conversely, facets are more granular and often used in contexts where items possess multiple attributes, such as eCommerce sites where products may have various sizes, colors, and brands.

Filters and facets are critical tools in an advanced search system. They enable users to refine search results based on specific criteria, such as product attributes, content types, or date ranges. Narrowing results empowers users to find precisely what they want with minimal effort.

Handling of ‘No Results’ scenarios

Even with a comprehensive search system, there will be times when a user’s query yields no results. In these situations, providing a friendly, helpful response that encourages further exploration rather than frustration is crucial for effective UX design. Designers can design an empty state for no results, including alternative search suggestions, a prompt to revise the query, or links to popular or related content.

Using data from a user’s device

Using data from a user’s device, such as location and language settings, can significantly enhance relevance and personalization. Tailoring search results to a user’s context increases the likelihood of meeting their needs and expectations, fostering a more satisfying and efficient search experience.

The Role of AI and Machine Learning in Advanced Search UX

We couldn’t write an article on advanced search user experience in 2023 and not mention AI. AI and Machine Learning are revolutionizing advanced search UX, bringing in a new level of intelligence and personalization.

These technologies analyze past user behavior and search patterns, use natural language processing to understand intent and provide more accurate, context-aware results.

For instance, Google’s search engine uses AI and Machine Learning for features like autocomplete, spell check, and understanding synonyms. Amazon employs machine learning technology for its search and offers an AWS enterprise search product called Amazon Kendra.

AI and Machine Learning enhance advanced search by making it more user-friendly, responsive, intelligent, and efficient, ultimately elevating the overall user experience.

Common Advanced Search Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Overcomplicated interface: Providing too many options can overwhelm users. Stick to essential filters and options relevant to your audience. Conduct user testing to streamline your advanced search features.
Hidden advanced search: Users may not use advanced search features if they can’t find them. Ensure the advanced search option is easy to locate and intuitive.
Poor auto-complete suggestions: These can lead to irrelevant search results. Improve this by utilizing user data and machine learning to offer more accurate, personalized recommendations.
Not catering to natural language search queries: This can cause frustration when users use conversational phrases. Implement natural language processing to handle conversational queries effectively.
Ineffective ‘No Results’ empty state: Inadequate empty states can lead to user abandonment. Enhance your ‘No Results’ page by providing helpful suggestions or alternatives when a search yields no results.
Lack of guidance: Users can struggle using advanced search without explicit instructions. Provide tooltips, help text, or a brief tutorial to guide users.
Ignoring mobile experience: The search experience should be seamless across all devices. Design your search with mobile responsiveness in mind, ensuring the same functionality is available on all platforms.

5 Examples of Excellent Advanced Search UX

Airbnb

Shifting through millions of listings to find your ideal stay would be excruciating without Airbnb’s advanced search. Airbnb’s advanced search has many filtering options to refine results. Even with all these options, the design team has done an excellent job making the UI user-friendly and intuitive.

Airbnb’s advanced search uses various UI elements, including checkboxes, dropdowns, text, graphics, icons, and a price range slider. Users can modify results to find a listing in seconds.

Instagram

Instagram’s advanced search offers predictive search, displaying personalized results, including prominent accounts. If the predictive search doesn’t render the desired result, Instagram displays five tabs:

For you: personalized content recommendations
Accounts: list of Instagram accounts
Audio: audio clips associated with the keyword
Tags: relevant hashtags
Places: locations where people have posted content

These categories enable users to navigate the results and find relevant content quickly.

GitHub

GitHub’s advanced search will appear confusing and technical to non-developers. The repository platform has a sophisticated search syntax enabling engineers to locate specific code, repos, issues, languages, etc. The user interface also provides a sidebar with multiple filters and facets to achieve similar results.

Zalando

Efficiency is crucial for eCommerce stores to capitalize on a shopper’s “buyer intent state.” If shoppers can’t find something fast, they will likely abandon the process and spend their money elsewhere.

eCommerce giant Zalando uses predictive search and multiple filters to help shoppers narrow results, including size, brand, color, price, and material, to name a few.

Amazon

Amazon’s advanced search adapts to the shopper’s query, providing highly relevant filters. For example, this search for ‘brown boots’ displays typical eCommerce filters, like brand, price, department, etc., but Amazon provides additional filters relevant to the keyword. For our ‘brown boots’ query, these filters include:

Boot style
Boot shaft height
Heel type
Heel height
Boots special features
Shoe outer material

If you search for a TV or toolkit, Amazon won’t show you heel height or boot style. Instead, they’ll present options relevant to those products. This personalized, adaptive, and highly relevant filtering enables shoppers to get super granular in the ocean of products available on Amazon.

Advanced Search Design and User Testing in UXPin

User testing is essential when designing advanced search features. It provides valuable insights into how real users interact with your search functions, what works well for them, and what doesn’t. You can use these insights to refine your design, ensuring it meets user needs and expectations.

Importance of interactive prototyping

Interactive prototyping is a vital step in the design process. It allows you to test and refine your design before development, saving time and resources. Interactive prototypes can provide a realistic representation of your final product’s appearance and function, enabling you to identify and address usability issues early.

Interactive prototypes are essential for testing UI components like search and other user inputs, but traditional design tools cannot perform this type of testing.

UXPin is powered by code, giving designers the tools and features to build realistic prototypes indistinguishable from the final product. Designers can even mimic interactions like predictive search or connect APIs to create dynamic prototype experiences using real data.

Enhance your prototyping scope with interactive prototyping from UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced features.

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How to Scale Design Systems with UXPin – A Practical Guide

A design system serves as a single source of truth, grouping all elements that allow teams to design, prototype, test, and develop a product. This system includes pattern libraries, coded component libraries, code samples, APIs, and documentation.

Organizations use the four-level design system maturity scale to gauge the evolution of design systems.

The ultimate goal for many organizations is to attain Level 4 maturity in a design system, a stage characterized by fully integrating coded components into the design process.

However, most linger indefinitely at level three because they lack the tools, systems, knowledge, and resources to achieve level-four maturity.

UXPin Merge aims to simplify design system maturity by translating coded UI components into visual elements designers can use in the design process, thus bridging the gap between design and development.

Transform your design workflow with UXPin Merge and embrace the future of component-driven prototyping. Achieve level four design system maturity faster and with fewer resources. Visit our Merge page.

Reach a new level of prototyping

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The Design System Maturity Scale

Design System Product Owner and Regional Head of Product Design at Iress, Nick Elliot, got the inspiration for this design system maturity scale from TJ Harrop, Design System Product Manager at the NSW Government.

UXPin offers tools and features to support organizations at every level of maturity. The comprehensive toolset also enables organizations to accelerate progress toward level four.

UXPin for levels 1 and 2

Level 1: The organization doesn’t have a design system but might have common assets defined and some documentation.
Level 2: The organization has design components and can provide HTML and CSS guidelines. These are not yet coded components but patterns that require development.

UXPin Merge for levels 3 and 4

Level 3: The organization has two libraries with design and development still operating in separate silos:
- A code component library for developers
- Design pattern libraries for designers
Level 4: The organization has a fully integrated system with a single source of truth where designers and engineers use the same design system components and documentation. There is no design drift and no coding or interpretation required to build interfaces.

Scaling a Design System from Levels 1 to 3 in UXPin

Navigating the platform

UXPin is a code-based, full-stack UX/UI design platform that removes constraints in collaboration between designers and developers. UXPin covers the entire UX process from ideation to handoff, including high-fidelity prototyping.

Designers can access UXPin’s Design Libraries without leaving the canvas, which includes colors (tokens), text styles, assets (icons and logos), and design elements (components).

Documentation is a crucial aspect of design systems, but it’s challenging to create and maintain. UXPin automatically generates documentation for each library, including colors, typography elements, assets, and pattern libraries. Designers can edit these pages and add information, such as use cases and tips for each component’s usage.

UXPin also includes a component spec tool, allowing devs to explore its properties and grab CSS. This tool is essential for developers who need guidance on recreating patterns in code.

This inspection tool is essential for maturity levels one and two or when teams release new elements and patterns, as it enables developers to convert design mockups into functioning components for the UI library.

Building the design system’s foundation in UXPin – levels one and two

Designers can create components from scratch using UXPin’s Forms, Shapes, Text, and Box tools as a foundation. They can also edit master components in isolation, including adding interactions.

Unlike image-based tools, designers don’t need to create multiple frames or duplicate elements to add component interactivity in UXPin. For example, they can design several button states, like default, hover, active, disabled, etc., simply by editing the master component’s interactions and properties to change based on user or system actions.

UXPin’s Documentation provides space for the design system team to add code examples beside visual components, including CSS, Handlebars, HTML, Javascript, JSX, Ruby, and PHP, to name a few.

These features allow design teams to navigate levels one and two, giving them a complete pattern library with documentation in UXPin.

Level three maturity

Once the pattern library is complete and devs have successfully converted the components to code, the organization is at level three maturity.

Many organizations refer to this level as a single source of truth, but there are, in fact, two libraries and two sets of documentation to update and maintain.

While level three is significantly better than level two, there are many DesignOps challenges when maintaining and updating separate libraries:

Double the time and resources
The necessity for many tools in the design process–i.e., a design tool, prototyping tool, documentation, etc.
Slow updates due to managing releases for multiple platforms
Errors and inconsistencies
Teams working with out-of-date design system versions
Design and engineers speak different languages
Lack of fidelity and interactivity for prototyping in the design process

Another challenge with level three is that the code is often not production ready. Some organizations have design system repositories, but many at this level rely on guidance code from documentation. The development process is open to errors and inconsistencies without a coded component library hosted in a single repository.

Fully Integrated – Level Four Maturity

At level four, designers use code components in the design process, pulled from the same repository developers use to build the final product. In UXPin, this component-driven prototyping methodology is made possible by Merge technology.

Merge fetches UI components from a repository and renders them in UXPin for design teams to build prototypes. The benefits of this workflow include:

High fidelity and pixel-perfect parity
Consistent user experience
Faster design and development
Code reuse
Simplified governance
Harmony between designers and developers
A real single source of truth

Merge Integrations

Organizations have three primary methods for importing components:

Git Integration: access to Merge’s complete feature set, including Patterns, Version Control, and JSX presets–only available for React libraries.
Storybook Integration: connect any Storybook to UXPin, including Vue, React, Angular, Web Components, and more.
npm integration: import components from open-source libraries through the Merge Component Manager.

Bridging the gap

Traditional design software provides prototypes, assets, documentation, and redlining, but this doesn’t fully bridge the gap. The prototypes are mid-fidelity at best and require translation and assumptions, which can lead to product drift and increased costs.

Level 4 bridges the design development gap with coded components from a repository, serving as a single source of truth. Developers leverage these components in code, while UXPin Merge translates the code and integrates the components with its toolset.

Using Merge results in high-fidelity prototypes that are fully functional and testable without assumptions. It ensures pixel-perfect parity between design and development, faster design processes, code reuse, and ultimately higher profits. It also leads to better collaboration and understanding between designers and developers.

Understanding Merge’s Capabilities

Component properties

Components imported into UXPin through Merge are driven by properties defined in the design system’s repository. These properties are the same as those used by developers. For example, a button component can have label, color, and variant properties, which designers can adjust in UXPin’s Properties Panel.

Real code components

The components in UXPin Merge are real code components. Component behavior, such as hover effects, is inherent in the code and doesn’t need to be configured by the designer. Using code in the design process ensures high fidelity between the design and the final product.

Atomic Design methodology

In the Atomic Design methodology, designers build components from the smallest building blocks, called atoms, up to more complex patterns (molecules, organisms, templates, and pages). In UXPin Merge, designers can compose components using other components, each with its own configurable properties.

Component composition

UXPin doesn’t restrict designers to the initial composition of components. They can modify components by adding or removing elements. For example, removing the header from a card component, adding a video player, and adjusting the typography are all possible in UXPin.

Spec Mode with JSX code

Spec Mode in UXPin provides clean JSX code as configured by the designer with properties. This JSX ensures that developers can access the exact code needed to recreate the component as designed.

Fully testable prototypes

Because the components are coded and have inherent behavior, the prototypes built with UXPin Merge are fully functional and testable without assumptions. This enhanced testing is particularly useful for components with states, such as dropdowns and tabs.

Collaboration and documentation

UXPin Merge facilitates collaboration between designers, stakeholders, and developers by providing access to documentation, properties, behavior, and rule sets for components.

Accessibility and configuration

Designers can configure components for accessibility by exporting ARIA tags as properties, allowing for screen reader testing. This configuration can also help achieve more complexity, such as enabling or disabling checkboxes or filtering a data table.

Data components

Dashboards and tables are near impossible to prototype in traditional design tools due to their complex interactivity. With Merge, designers can import a data grid component for sorting, selecting, and filtering. They can populate the data by copy-pasting from a spreadsheet or through an API connection within the component.

Inter-component communication

Components can communicate with each other in UXPin. For example, a button can trigger a dialog component, much like it would in the final product. The dialog has an ‘open’ property that controls its visibility, which designers can activate using a button (or any other element).

Version Control

UXPin Merge includes Version Control, essential for scaling and future-proofing a design system. Each prototype links to a version of the design system, and designers can switch between different versions or branches. This versioning is helpful in testing new versions, working with different themes, or managing multiple products that use the same design system.

Responsive design

If a component has responsive properties, its media queries will reflect in UXPin. This responsiveness allows designers to create a single prototype that is adaptive to different breakpoints.

Adaptability and scalability

UXPin Merge is adaptable and scalable, allowing for various use cases such as testing prototypes with new versions of the design system, managing different themes for different products or clients, and rolling out new design systems with new components.

Unlock the full potential of your design system by bridging the gap between design and development with UXPin Merge. Experience the power of component-driven prototyping and ensure consistency in your projects. Visit our Merge page.

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Best Examples of Product Design

As technology continues to advance, so do human expectations. The average person spends about 10 hours a day on devices while interacting with thousands of different platforms. When coupled with the downtrend in attention spans, little room is left for products that are not designed with the user experience in mind.

In today’s article, we are going to explore a curated list focused on iconic examples of product design. Our goal is to decipher the following:

What makes a design accessible?
How can ease of use be constructed?
Why are some products more user-centric?

Speed up product design, improve collaboration with engineers, and prototype fully functional interfaces 10x faster. Try UXPin Merge, powerful technology for advanced prototyping for designing with UI components. Discover UXPin Merge.

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Apple

As both an ecosystem and its individual products, Apple focuses on ensuring a diverse array of clients can enjoy its technology with ease. Apple accessibility features include adaptations for:

Vision. Individuals with visual impairment can go beyond bold text with a voiceover of what’s on the screen, zoom features that clarify what’s going on in the environment, and Braille integration. These features can be combined and customized with a variety of other visual adaptations that are constantly being improved.
Hearing. Accommodative aspects for people with hearing impairment include subtitles on everything from videos to real-life conversations. Apple has even designed hearing devices that are intended to further highlight their auditory assisting features.
Mobility. Aside from vocal navigation on their equipment, Apple also offers adaptive devices to suit various ranges of mobility. Some of them are also capable of pairing with eye-tracking software to make navigation possible without device contact.
Cognitive. Apple allows its users to filter their experience of the world in an accommodating way, all the way down to bothersome background noise and distractions on certain platforms.

Google

It’s no coincidence that of all the search engines available, Google covers 90% of the global market. Aside from creating an iconic brand, Google has designed a user experience like no other. They played to the public’s attention span and susceptibility to information overload by trimming their platform down to the necessities.

Google’s clean formatting, simple search bar, and efficient algorithms have made internet searches easily obtainable without instruction. Even Google’s applications are neatly designed, both in their appearance on the search page and as a main page. When this ease-of-use design is combined with speed, an undeniably effortless experience is created.

Discord

Connection and collaboration are key when it comes to digital interactions, but not every product is designed to be shared. Discord bridged this gap in the gaming world where its ease of use has since popularized it as a mode of connection for many topics.

Discord is one of the best product designs for communication because of its functional simplicity. This platform is simple enough to navigate during gameplay, yet complex enough to be customized to a group’s specific needs. Customizations include:

Joining or creating a server, which can be a large public group or a small private group.
Creating channels within the server to ensure multiple topics can be discussed without confusion.
Sending direct messages and pinging individuals for quick communication.
Determining the format of preferred communication, verbally or through text.
Text, emojis, user names, and icons can also be customized to suit each player’s preference.

Netflix

Variety is a valuable tool for entertainment, but it can become overwhelming when too many options are on the table. Netflix addressed the choice overload dilemma presented by the ever-growing motion picture industry through intelligent design.

A compilation of thousands of shows and movies is made both easily navigable and seemingly endless through Netflix’s recommendations. Specific titles are chosen to fit each viewer’s interests through an algorithm that considers many changing factors.

Whether viewers select a title that is recommended or one that falls outside of their normal preference, they can access that title on multiple platforms with ease. Streamed entertainment is available on gaming consoles, phones, and many other devices with the same easy-to-navigate format.

The compatibility and customizations available through Netflix’s design have created an iconic user experience in the media streaming industry.

TikTok

Social media is a core source of connection, entertainment, and information. TikTok’s approach to social media created a format that has improved the user experience to a point worth emulating.

What is their design secret?

Full-screen media feed
Clear but non-obstructive options for interaction
Endless short-format content personalized for viewers by an algorithm
Accessibility options intended to foster diversity.

This curated and innovative design has boosted TikTok into a global sensation that can be navigated with a few simple swipes. With expanding accessibility options, like auto-captions and photosensitive warnings, the company’s user base can be expected to continue its growth.

With over 150 million users in America alone, TikTok stands as one of the best examples of product design.

Airbnb

The modern-day solution to stress-free travel planning required simplicity. This is exactly what Airbnb delivered. Booking a rental requires about 4 simple steps and can be completed on a variety of devices for travelers who are always on the go.

Renters simply check the availability of their desired lodging, click reserve, confirm, and pay in most cases. Some rentals may require a review of policies and contact with the owner before the reservation is completed. Still, either way, booking approval is very clear and concise.

With such a simplified reservation design, Airbnb’s point of sale is inviting and instills confidence in users who may be making an otherwise daunting purchase.

Zoom

As businesses continue to grow on a global scale and many industries shift to a work-from-home system, virtual forms of group communication are a pillar of success. However, a platform for communication is only as effective as it is accessible. Zoom shows great awareness of this concept through its user-centered design.

Colleagues working on a project or even entire classes can be held on Zoom because it is designed to function on an intuitive level. Each individual has access to a clear set of tools allowing them to start, schedule, or join a meeting with a single click.

Once in a meeting, users are also given a set of controls that are both uncomplicated and effective for communication at any group size. These controls include:

The ability to mute or shut off their video
Viewing present participants
Text chat during calls
Screen sharing
Recording the meeting
Reaction icons that do not disrupt the meeting.

Host-specific controls also exist and more unique customizations, like background filters, can be navigated with ease.

The Key To Prototype Success

All seven of the companies discussed in this article have obtained a strong presence in their industries through their unique designs. But how did they come to fruition? When it comes to large-scale products like these, trial and error are important, however, prototypes are the defining factor.

Without a prototype that allows for testing, editing, and constant improvement, an ideal design cannot be created. This remains true regardless of the product’s purpose. Careful prototyping allows for user testing and helps identify issues early on.

The key to prototype success is using the right platform that allows for the creation of every alteration needed to perfect and market a design.

Powerful Prototyping

With the proper technology, prototyping becomes a powerful tool for businesses. Much like the companies discussed above, the prototyping process itself should be accessible, customizable, and easily navigable for the best results.

In a way, UXPin is the eighth company on this list, but its product design is ideal for creating product design. Here, products can be refined down to the smallest details and displays can be created to tell every company’s unique journey.

Using code components in the design process lets you create interactive prototypes quickly, with no coding skills. The result is efficient editing that allows for user testing and interactive stakeholder experiences.

Collaborate, test, iterate, and display prototypes to hone in on your perfect product design through a single tool with UXPin.

Best product designs ace user experience prototypes

Today’s technology users are accustomed to designs that elevate the user experience in all aspects of life. Whether it’s searching the web or renting a vacation home, excellence in the area of user-focused design defines a company’s success.

The best examples of product design focus on three main points;

Accessibility
Ease-of-use
Customization

All the above are best accomplished through iterations and refinements of a product design prototype. The effort associated with creating a functioning prototype can be daunting, but not with an all-encompassing tool like UXPin.

Boost UXPin’s power of creating fully interactive prototypes and try its Merge technology. Bring coded UI components to design editor and build prototypes 10x faster. Discover UXPin Merge.

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