How do we manage a project for InDesign? Let’s look at making dinner in a product design and product development context.

When you’re managing dinner, you know you want to get the food on the table by a specific time, and you know everything that’s going into the meal, from the starter to the entree to the dessert.

You want everything to be done by 6 o’clock, you’ve got that deadline, and you’ve got multiple things in play. You’re often doing things simultaneously or in parallel. You’re not making the appetizer, then the main entree, then the dessert. You’re making several parts of the meal at the same time.

You have a set deadline because people are hungry and don’t want to wait. You don’t want to have a starving kid, trust me!

You understand that you need to start by a certain time and run these processes in parallel, depending on where your resources are. Do you have a microwave? Do you have a stovetop? A toaster oven? An oven? How many different processes can you run at the same time to get dinner on the table at a certain hour?

Running a product design process is kind of similar in terms of having a launch date and an optimal deadline. Unlike the deadline hour for dinner, the launch date for a product is often determined by the time of year.

If you’re launching, let’s say, a new toy you expect to be a big seller, then you want that toy out in time to get to the retail trade buyers that are going to launch it. You’ll do everything you can to get that toy into their stores for Christmas.

Something product design education tries to do is to get you to think through all the decisions and planning that happen in a case like that. You think through the process, and you know that you need to have this toy finished and ready for the buyers to look at by a certain date.

It has to be ready by the time the trade show is happening (if we still have trade shows after COVID).

Here’s where good product design education is so important. You have to learn to work backward from your deadline to consider production timelines. You need to be able to produce the prototypes and the finished product in factories around the world. You have to think about how you’re going to get those processes going.

This includes not just finishing the design, but also finishing all the tooling and manufacturing. It also includes anticipating all the problems that might come up in going from a prototype to something that’s ready for manufacture.

When your product is ready to go to a retailer, will the retailer want a special version of that new toy? Sometimes retailers want an exclusive version for their stores, and you have to bake extra time into the process for that.

Your online product design education needs to help you figure out how to do all the anticipating and planning and still be able to get your product ready by Christmas to take advantage of the holiday shopping season.

To go back to the example of making dinner, you’d want to get your bread in the oven first. Then you’d cook the fish before you worried about the dessert. You’d do things in a certain order, but the tasks would overlap rather than be one after another.

You have to plan the order of your tasks and how you’ll handle them so that all the food is ready at the same time. This is the same thing you’ll do when you figure out the sequence of processes you need to design and create a product by a deadline.

Online UX design education is imperative for web designers to become great at what they do and improve the UX. Whenever you design accessible interfaces, you’re making the experience better for every user, not just for those with certain disabilities or handicaps.

There are a ton of things to consider when creating an effective UI design. How large is the text, and is it easy to read? Is there enough contrast between the text and its background? How large are the buttons, and are they clickable?

To create the best UX design, we really have to place ourselves in the shoes of our users who have more specialized UI needs by reading up on books to help us think them through. But more importantly, it is a must that we actually go out into the field and speak with those users ourselves so that we can fully understand their needs and capture them accordingly.

This is my method for doing research analysis for UX and UI design.

After I have observed my users and the task they’re doing, and after I’ve spoken to them, I’ll have a bunch of qualitative data that I want to analyze. After analyzing the data, hopefully I’ll understand some really meaningful insights about those users’ needs.

The first thing I would do to go about finding those insights is to gather all the data I have, which will include recordings and notes.

I always recommend you record your interviews, and good online UX design education will suggest that, too. Record the interviews and take notes. If possible, have someone else with you during the interviews who will also take notes. This is helpful because two people will hear and see different things, so you’ll get a second perspective on the interviews.

Once I gather the data, I’ll look at it to see what different data points are there. By data points, I mean that I would go over the interview and circle key ideas or key words that come up. Then I would write each one of those on a different Post-it note and stick it to the wall.

Today, we use Miro a lot, or other similar online and digital platforms. We have digital Post-its! Those are great collaborative tools. So, just write those ideas or those data points that are coming up on your board, digital or physical.

The next thing that I would do is start to cluster things that are similar in themes or ideas. By doing that, you’ll start to see patterns. You’ll start to see recurring themes and similar things that are coming up from many different people.

Once you understand that an issue has come up from different people, you can start to analyze it and ask what that action means. From there you would start to derive insights. This stage is what I call unpacking the data.

Getting the insights is one of the trickiest parts of analyzing the research for your UX design, but the process is only these simple steps. The more you analyze your UI data in this way, the easier it should be to find those important insights.

UX is user experience design. Daniel Holtzman informs us that it’s a big field and it encompasses a lot of things. It comes from a few older practices, some of which form part of what UX is and some of which have been more or less replaced by it. Back in the day, it was more commonly referred to as HCI, or human-computer interface.

There are elements of it which touch UI. There are elements of it which touch technology. There are elements of it which touch business. But really, it’s about understanding how a product or an experience is going to affect a user’s life. How can you create the product or experience in a way that allows someone to use it better, get more out of it, find more delight in it and ultimately engage with it more successfully?

UX design has grown from a lot of things, and it’s at a point now where it’s really exploding. There is a lot going on as interfaces and technologies evolve.

We’re seeing voice interfaces. We’re seeing VR, AR, all of these emergent technologies, all of which are going to require that people not only understand how to bring those experiences to life but also do it in new ways. We’ll have to take all the things we traditionally do in a more digital format and bring them to these other types of formats.

We’re finding that people are specializing, but more people are also becoming generalists. The industry is at a point where it’s diverging. Before, we had a convergence of a bunch of different practices coming together under the helm of UX. Now, what we’re seeing is people specializing and diverging into these different areas.

As these areas become richer and more complex, we’re going to need people who are paying more and more attention to these specific things and are able to specialize in them.

If you have interest in learning more about both UX design and UI design, an excellent place to start would be online UX design education. It’s a convenient and accessible way to gain a much deeper and more complete understanding of these topics and many others.

As we move away from motion pictures in the 20th century, we see the emergence of digital UI and UX design, right, and new worlds. Those were the first times we were confronted with the promise of digital technology and the kinds of new interfaces it would enable us to create, and where our creativity, combined with the complexities of the hardware and software, led us to consider other approaches to UI design.

When we have the mouse, we are already engaging with content that’s given to us on that same screen within which then there is hyperlinking for example, right, the idea of a click where you can go from one side to another, the idea of a keyboard where you can write and what you’re writing, the commands you’re putting; the input then translates into some understanding, some level of computation that takes place that then takes you to somewhere else. It’s really opened up a fissure into the linear narrative formation into one that’s based on decision trees with multiple possibilities.

So, although technology was advancing, we were reverting to interfaces with which we were extremely acquainted. And, as an example, consider my father, who is from the Caspian Sea. And he, I believe he loved fishing. And the size of his catch was always determined by the size of his audience.

So, depending on the engagement he had and the amount of absorption and enthusiasm, he would sometimes tell the same tale in 30 seconds and other times it would go on and on. And the fish of this size would eventually grow into a monster that he had captured, right? So, these new technologies are assisting us in transitioning from linear storytelling to interactive stories with decision trees, and then with augmented reality and immersive technologies, we are transitioning from screens to scenes where you are totally involved in an environment that you are in, which is known as UX.

And the ramifications are numerous. But what I find interesting is that we are attempting to return to that fundamental desire that we have to communicate with one another in ways that are more demanding of the audience, and that there is an expectation of what I term cohabitation cooperation, cohabitation, and cohabitation and co-creation.

The artist’s position is no longer one of “I will direct everything, and then I will present it in front of the public, and they will consume it.” I will always be co-creating with my audience, a little like the street magician who must always account for how the audience connects with the tale that is being delivered. These skills can be acquired through online UX design education.

When I do a project, I consider the composition of my team. We have to understand the socioeconomic components of the market. The components within these technological areas where they’re created, researched, produced, mass-produced, and consumed are how we can understand the contributing factors of the markets we’re designing for.

Looking at the statistics between 2018 and 2019, you can see there is demand for all engineers. However, the need for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) engineers has grown by 1,400% compared to all other engineers. So that’s 14 times the amount of all other engineering capabilities. There’s a lack of UX design engineers to help make programs and systems for everyone. Online UX design education can give you the tools to understand your users’ wants and needs effectively.

And if you look at some other statistics, I think it’s fair to say that probably less than 10% of our engineers–software engineers–know what AR is and how to program and code within that environment. It’s more troubling to me that, unfortunately, the engineers who have the needed access to these technologies to learn about them are of economic privilege. This economic privilege only allows them to know this information within their economic boundaries and learn how to code within that. Ultimately, these boundaries prevent them from learning about other economic classes of society and how these technologies might benefit them as well.

This highly tech-centered environment doesn’t help our current generation of storytellers. These people are our educators, teachers, journalists, communication students, and filmmakers, and they don’t have the power to bring these new knowledge sets to their students, the next generation of artists. Essentially, UX and UI skills are highly in-demand technologies, but few people are training for them. Only those from a particular kind of environment are being trained in this field. That is from a creation standpoint.

In terms of usership, there are also incredible amounts of disparities. For example, if the next iPhone allowed you to obtain the kind of AR and VR information you need, but the glasses needed come at an enormous cost, who would be able to access it? Most people would not be able to because they cannot afford the astronomical price. HoloLens is one of the best AR glasses available currently on the market. If the cost for a pair of HoloLens glasses were $5,000, no schools could access them since their funding is limited.

These are the major conversations that we have when designing new UX and UI products. Who has access to the latest technology? Who do we want to create it for? And who is making it already? We strive to provide an answer to all of these critical questions. Essentially, we need to train more UX design and UI design individuals to supply the demand for these technologies. Online UX design education can teach you how to provide this technology to more people worldwide.

Let’s think about UX design in the 1940s with Toyota and the Japanese automobile industry. This was a revolutionary milestone in the history of UX because it was the first time that the human input was taken into account throughout the entire development of these autos. Toyota designed his factories around the principle of optimizing the working environment by adding human input. In online UX design education today, we’d call that usability testing.

He was so conscious of the value of the human input that he would even allow the employers to suddenly stop the supply chain if they had some feedback about something to improve the workflow. Again, it was usability testing at its finest.

Moving on to the 1950s, we come to Henry Dreyfuss. He’s basically famous for his statement “Designing for people.” Dreyfuss was an American industrial designer who designed iconic products. Even though they’re iconic, you might not know about them or why they’re relevant to our history and today’s lifestyle. Examples include the Hoover vacuum cleaner, the tabletop telephone and the Royal Typewriter, including the deluxe model for companies.

For him, the focus of UI design was the point of contact between the product and the human being who was interacting with it. If there was some sort of friction in this interaction, then the design was completely bad and unsuccessful. However, if the point of contact — the interaction between the user and the product — was memorable, easy or happy, then that was a success. It was a particularly successful UI experience and design if it prompted the user to buy more.

Continuing into the 1960s, Walt Disney was a key figure. Disney is considered one of the very first UX designers without even owning that title. He was a visionary who envisioned a world in which the latest technology could improve human lives. He was obsessed with creating magical, immersive, authentic and seamless experiences. That was how Disney World started.

We learn from Agnes Pyrchla that online UX Design Education teaches you to put yourself in your user’s shoes. Who is your ideal user? Who should you be focusing on? You can use some different tools to get to know your users and focus your energy and attention on those people. The first tool to use is called behavioral archetypes. It’s a broader concept that describes a group of people who share the same characteristics, the same behavioral patterns and the same value systems. It’s different from typical traits like gender or socioeconomic status, and it goes deeper into people’s beliefs and actions.

Behavioral archetypes are helpful when thinking about your UX design strategy. One way to approach this is to set up a spectrum of users who take these behavioral archetypes to the extreme. For example, with social media, you can think about who is a creator and who is a lurker (someone who likes to consume content). When taking this approach to your design strategy, you can really start to form a notion of what types of people you’re designing for.

From there, you can get more technical and create a persona of the ideal person who fits into your behavioral archetype. This persona is what you’re going to base most of your design elements on. So, as you’re painting this picture of your ideal user, imagine yourself as that individual. You’re almost with them on their journey as you’re designing for them. Do a mental check in which you ask yourself, “If I were this person, would I like this product?”

You can get creative and wander in the mind of your imaginary user. That way, you can really embody them and figure out how they will react to the UI product or another product like it. It’s also important to know what function this person would serve. If you’re designing something for a family, are they the parent or the child? If you’re designing something within a school context, are they the teacher, or are they the student? If you’re designing something within an organizational or a business framework, are they the buyer? Are they the user? Are they an engineer? Are they a business person? These details can give you the context of what they’re trying to do.

After creating that persona, you can imagine what is going through that person’s mind and embody them, almost as if you were them. It’s a shortcut for trying to walk a mile in someone’s shoes, to the best of our ability, given that we never will be them.

The research process is quite sophisticated and nuanced when done right. There are steps that I always think we should take before we dive into any data. One of these steps is to understand the goal. What is the purpose of the research? We must ask ourselves this because the research itself is just a basic definition. It applies to every research education, including online UX design education.

It’s only meaningful when it’s there to be a means to an end. It’s not the end itself. We should always ask ourselves the big question of what are we trying to achieve? What is the research going to help us do?

Often, by the way, it takes much longer to figure out the challenge. It also takes time to home in on the question than to do the research. We often must wrestle our clients to the ground to say, what is it that you’re trying to understand?

I often find that the hypothesis is the most critical part of the research. It is because usually, the questions are not that hard to answer but, they need validation. In this case, when you come up with a great hypothesis, you know which direction to follow. Otherwise, you’re just bombarded with so much data.

You go in, and you try to validate the hypothesis. Or, as I said, elaborate on that hypothesis. Maybe say, no, that was the wrong hypothesis. We’ve got to start again, and that’s very valid too. It is because you want to nip it in the bud if it’s wrong. You do this before you proceed to spend many months of work and money developing something that’s wrong.

There are two key steps to take if you can before you dive into research, including UI design. One is to ensure you figure out what you’re trying to solve. For example, you are investigating UX and UI improvement. What is the ideal research question? Then, the other is where do we think is the answer? Could it be here? Maybe not.

Sometimes, I’ll tell the teams to go in with a blank slate; they should not have a hypothesis yet. Go in like you’re an anthropologist in a foreign culture, and you want to discover. Because if you’re too myopic in your thinking, you may discount other avenues. Sometimes, it depends on the timing, or how much information you have, to go down the route of having a hypothesis or two and trying to confirm it.

Online UX design education will teach you to always consider your user’s journey and what your user is using this app for. As designers, we can go a little bit off on a tangent and want to create something for ourselves, but that’s not what UI design is about. So you really need to consider the final outcome and who is using and engaging with this product.

Before you even start working on design, it’s really important to have a good background knowledge of who the person interacting with your product is. We will always try and engage with our readers’ feedback. We get people who contact us and tell us the difficulties they might be having with the app. I think UX is an important thing to consider and try and make those changes where you can. But it’s also a good thing to consider early on when you’re designing the UI and creating the code, that these problems might arise.

So you need to go back and be able to adjust things. Some things can be really easy fixes, and some things could be more difficult. But you’ve got to constantly be considering feedback, comments, and your readers to keep adjusting and refreshing your product to make sure it’s right for them, it’s what they want, and it’s something with which they can engage.

You can get a mix of feedback about your app, and I think you just have to be really sensible and consider what the information is. Some people will be unhappy with what you’re creating, or their comments just have value for them. It might not be something you can fix. There are limitations in what you might be capable of doing in your UX design. If you can go away and consider it, and think, “Yes, this is something I think is going to make it easier,” and it’s easy to implement, then just go on and do it.

It’s those sorts of little changes that can make a world of difference to someone interacting with your product. It’s not always easy to make changes. It depends on your company. It depends on what you’re making and what you’re producing. But you can go and make minimal changes, and they can make a big difference.