Deeson Online's guide to getting your UX rightBy Mike Jongbloet | 23rd May 2014

Mike Jongbloet is Deeson Online’s new UX designer. With a background in agency and client side work, his specialities include user experience design, brand experience and information architecture.

Here Mike outlines 10 key considerations to getting your UX right:
1. Use the right tools for the job

As UX professionals we have a huge toolkit of methods to help us understand, analyse and validate. Don't get stuck in a linear approach; for each project assess particular needs and pick the best methods for the job at hand.

2. Listen to our stakeholders

One of the biggest pitfalls in digital projects is mis-aligned expectations. During the discovery phase of the project your job is to facilitate the dialogue with your stakeholders and listen to their needs; probing deeper where necessary.

3. Be creative with data sources

You can learn a lot from a good analysis of web metrics from sources like Google Analytics, but other sources such as active social channels (including competitors' channels) can unearth some great insights into the target customer base.

4. Speak to real users

Speaking to end-users is the best way of understanding who you are designing for. This can be done via focus groups, phone interviews or contextual studies. For some user bases it can even be done at the local coffee shop – an offer of free cake helps!

5. Don't assume, when you can validate

There are plenty of quick and low-cost ways to test with users, from grabbing 15 minutes of a friend's time, to using an online service. But wherever possible you should be testing to validate your assumptions.

6. Benchmark before, measure after

With your goals and objectives set, you should benchmark to create a baseline, from which you can effectively measure on completion of the project and post-launch. Benchmarking also offers the best place to identify what improvements should be focused on, moving forward.

7. Understand the problem before you try and solve it

How can you fix something if you don't understand why it's broken in the first place? The simple answer is you can't! So before you get to work on tangible deliverables like wireframes, ensure you are comfortable with your understanding of the problem at hand.

8. Socialise your findings

The research and data mining you do at the start of each project will help inform your UX deliverables, however it should also be socialised with the project team. Sharing with other disciplines will get them bought into the strategy and direction, while also helping build an understanding of UX within your organisation.

9. Overcome time and budget restrictions

In an ideal world each project would have hours of detailed research to help you design the best possible solution, but we know this is rarely the reality! Instead you need to find workarounds on a project by project basis; perhaps there are internal staff who match the demographic? Use them for interviews, or have a look at low-cost online testing solutions and use those to validate.

10. Put the effort in to keep it simple

There is a high chance that the best solution will not be the first one you come up with. Armed with the data and insights you have gathered through your research and analysis, keep iterating on your first attempt and have peers review your work. Then test it on others to aim for the best solution to make it intuitive for end users.

Have we missed anything? Let us know in the comments below!