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.

Once you’ve finished a product design moodboard and you present it to someone, they might say, “I love this idea, I want to see more. I’ll give you five days to come back with something more distinctive and worked out.” In that case, you go back home and start thinking about how to do this. You have to search for materials. You have to find some way to create the prototype, which could be anything that represents this idea. At this stage of product development, it could be a paper roll with something on top of it. It doesn’t have to be a complete, thoroughly worked-out prototype because they do come with a hefty price tag most of the time.

Visualizing your idea is a great next step because that gives you a sense of proportion. How big will it be? Are some details more important than others? With prototyping, if you have the money, do a 3D mock-up, as that’s the best way to do it. A combination of a prototype, a physical representation, and a moodboard with material swatches is a really good way to go.

There are lots of services around the country that do the prototyping for you, which you might have heard about in product design education seminars or classes. It comes down to your budget. How much money do you want to invest? How picky is the client to see how distinctive your idea actually is? It’s really up to you to judge what is best for this moment. Maybe you can do a very rough, basic prototype and say: “Here’s my first thinking,” and then ask for a couple more days. At that point, maybe they can help you with some money to provide a better prototype.

Negotiations in Online Product Design Education

In many ways, the next step in product development, after moodboarding and design processing, is negotiation. You need to negotiate with the client or the manufacturer about how far to go in detail. How distinctive does it have to be? Sometimes they want to take it to a focus group, so you would have to do a super polished prototype. Then you may get some financial help from them to do that.

Everything is allowed in the whole spectra for this representation. It’s OK for you to come with a crummy prototype as long as you can talk about it, as long as you can justify why you are showing this paper roll and nothing more. It comes back to you to find a language and explain why you didn’t do more. Alternately, maybe it’s enough, and then you support your idea with other materials around it.

Designing your website and the written content thereon is extremely important for the success of your ecommerce business.
When a customer buys from you online, they don’t really have a reason to trust you, especially if they’re a first-time buyer. With the visual content on your website, the language you use, and the content you produce, you can create a sense of trust to make it easier for customers to make the leap to buy from you.
So, what is the importance of content design as compared to the actual text on your ecommerce website? Understand that writing is essential to ecommerce. People tend to emphasize the visual content, especially if they work with design a lot. Visual content is important, but you can’t forget about writing.
Where you place the text depends on how easy it is for someone to quickly get information or not. One of the biggest components is knowing when to put more text on a page, but not too much.
If the images are center stage, you might have less text to keep the webpage from crowding or looking too busy. You might need to develop a separate webpage where there’s more text about the product that the customer needs to know.
You don’t have to hire a bunch of specialists to write everything for you. Consciously think about what you write, where you put it, and how it represents your products on your e-commerce store, as well as on social media and any other place where you put your content.
You also want to make sure there are no spelling mistakes or inconsistencies. If these items exist in your content, it can subconsciously create a feeling in your customers that your ecommerce website cannot be trusted. Having another person read and review your content can catch some of these items for you.

As designers, we must know what context we’re designing for to reach the right customers. In the past, UX design teams would target specific elite audience sets. Now, we design products for all levels of users, regardless of whether they’re experts or novices using the item. It’s our job to think of how users will feel and act when using a product. We must “put ourselves in the position of the user” to develop a desirable user experience.

There are many factors to consider when designing a UX or a UI product for a particular demographic of society. For example, an aspect of your design might mean something different across different cultural, geographical, and demographical customers. Online UX Design Education can give you the tools you need to design a universally compatible product for many people to use.

Take a television remote as a simple example. Each button on the remote will have a specific function, but a symbol on the remote might be interpreted differently, depending on the demographic details of the user. Without giving an easy and intuitive interface or UI, the customer could become frustrated and decide against the product. That is a vital consideration for a designer because even a simple product like this should make things easier for the customers, not cause them frustration.

Designing complicated systems meant only for experts is not a good idea. If you do so, you’re likely going to lose millions of customers that could use your product. This is why it’s essential to figure out who is using your product and who you are trying to reach to gain more business opportunities. In addition, many countries worldwide don’t use English as a first language, so you’ll want to internationalize or localize your product to these areas, as well.

You also have to think of other constraints, such as what is pleasurable to particular people. Another example is colorful products. If you’re trying to attract children, you’ll want to use bright and bold colors that’ll appeal to them. On the other hand, a senior citizen will probably not like that type of product, so they will not want it unless they’re giving it to a child. Our opinions and actions can change based on the generation we were raised in.

If you’re designing an educational product for kids, however, you need to make sure you use enough colors to keep their interests. With that, some may like a lot of colors, while others may not. Or some cultures prefer specific shapes in their products, while others will not. An example of this is the culture of people of Native American heritage. Many people of Native American heritage will be more attracted to the geometrical shapes and styles of products than other cultures.

There are no right or wrong answers when designing UX and UI designs other than you have to imagine yourself in the shoes of your ideal user. Maintain diversity in your design team to prevent incorrect assumptions. When you’re expanding your audiences, you should complete detailed research on the areas you plan to target. Then you can ensure no culture will be offended, no particular place experiences frustration and the product will be compatible with the different classes of society. Take the first step, and choose an online UX design education that will help you to attract your ideal customers.

What is it that makes e-tail design meaningful? It’s about how you use images and how you place them so that the customer who visits your site understands what you want them to feel and do. How do you want them to interact with your brand? Think of e-tail design as the flagship of your company. Even if you were only on an e-commerce platform, it’s still the flagship of your brand because everyone has access to it.
So, how do you use images to evoke a feeling? What types of images do you want to have? Even if it’s only a single shot of the product, that shot of the product needs to be so beautifully done that it compels the buyer to click and transact with you. Or, if you want to use people, how does your image represent how your brand views the community as a whole or to your shoppers? So, it’s really important how you think about the image.
The next thing is to understand how you want those images placed on the page. One important aspect you’ll learn about is the symmetry and balance of the actual website pages. How do you want the customer to navigate through each page? Do you want your customer to view an ad campaign upon their first visit to your website? Do you want to ask them for their email from the moment they click on your website?
You really have to think about the design of what your e-tail business will look like. All these factors play important roles to ensure your success.

There are so many different UX and UI design programs out there to choose from. It really depends on what you’re designing for. For print design, I use Adobe Illustrator, and I use Adobe InDesign for different pages. Web designers might consider also creating elements in Photoshop or programs like Sketch.

You need to pick good programs that are right for the job that you’re doing. Do a bit of research. Find out what it is that you need to achieve, and find the best program. To create elements, Adobe has so many programs you can use nowadays to do different things. It’s quite in-tune, so it’s very good. It’s a good place to start.

You can use just one program, but generally, you want to really dip into another one and carry on using it. There’s other print software out there. There’re a lot of things that you can pick up for your UI or UX design, and I think it’s really important that you’re using the right ones.

As part of your online UX design education, ask other people in the industry what they are using. Make sure you are using the industry standards, and really submerge yourself in the language of the industry as well. You’ll get to know what people are talking about when you communicate, which will make it easier for you to move and progress within the industry.

Why is it necessary to first build the skeleton of your website using wireframing? One reason is that we expect all websites to conform to a certain standard. Maybe, the menu bar is always on the top left, and the search magnifying glass is always on the top right.
If you disrupt this, you also disrupt how the user navigates your site. You don’t want to deviate from how everyone uses a website because it becomes frustrating for the customer. By conforming to existing standards on your site, you make it easier for your customers to navigate your site and buy your products.
Wireframing is a process that we use at the beginning when designing a website. A wireframe is a stripped-down version of your website design in which you focus less on what the site looks like and more on what the user experience will be. You can use it to sketch out ideas quickly and share them to make sure that everyone agrees. If you need to make changes, you can easily update the wireframes because they are low fidelity and don’t contain minor details.
You can use wireframes during the design phase to share ideas instantaneously with project stakeholders. If you want to share your site design with friends and get feedback before going into details, wireframes are a great idea. Wireframes help you move expeditiously, confirm that the user experience is pleasing, and generate actionable ideas. They affirm that you’re designing the right thing before investing a ton of time in a detailed design.

A good UX designer is highly skilled in observation. And this is something that you should start implementing in your practice. Open your eyes. Open your perception about your environment, and start questioning not only the physical but also the digital space.

What do you notice in the apps that you interact with, in the websites that you scroll through, or even in social platforms? Start identifying examples of good UX versus bad UX. It’s important that you start educating your eye in identifying what good and bad UX are.

For this exercise, I suggest you to start taking notes throughout an entire week, or a weekend, or three days. I would suggest that you at least give it a week observing all these environments. And take notes every day. Don’t think about it too much. Just follow your intuition.

Remember, this is all about creating an intuitive journey. So if you want to create that journey, you should be implementing intuition in your vocabulary and in your practice. As such, I encourage you to write down not only the exercises and reflections that we will suggest to you throughout the program, but also your own personal experiences throughout this entire journey.

And for that, I propose to you the following exercise: We talked about soft skills and hard skills. And we talked about how you may have already honed those soft skills. I would love for you to look back into your life, into your personal life and your personal experiences. You can also include your professional experiences, or, if you haven’t started in a job, feel free to share your experiences as a student in whichever stage you are right now.

Go back and scroll and scan through all those experiences, and see if you can identify skills that could actually inform your practice as a UX designer. Do you tend to be tidy in your room? How do you organize your folders? How do you communicate with friends and professionals? And how do you write emails? How do you reach out to your peers in your field? Are you communicating your ideas clearly enough?

As you continue your online UX design education, this is a great opportunity for self-reflection, not only to identify which skills will be important for these UX careers, but also to reassess your values and how those can be implemented in moving forward in the field.

In your journey through online UX design education, you may have heard of “experience design” or “experiential design.” Many people mistake experience design for UX (user experience design) or UI design. I would like to explain the differences.

User experience relates mostly to the interaction between the user and an interface. The interface, or UI, can be anything and is not just limited to the digital environment. The aim of a user experience designer is to make experiences, conversations, and interactions present, efficient, and seamless.

In comparison, experience design and experiential design relate to a 360-degree point of view. Take the following scenario as an example.

Say you are walking into an event. Before going to the bar, you may need to download, install, or open an app on your phone. The app will enable you to generate a code that will give you access to the bar.

Alternatively, there may be a QR code that you need to scan to get a gift from these events. Both user experience and experience design are emerging fields, with each of them informing one another. User experience relates to the design of the QR code and what happens on screen.

Experience design, however, involves the entire process of experiences. Usually, experience design is multi-sensory; the five senses, or at least most of them, will be stimulated. In UX, meanwhile, designers focus on the senses of sight, hearing, and touch.

To bring your awareness to the concept, let’s discuss the role of the senses in greater depth. Sight comes into play because (obviously) we are looking at our screens. We work with what we hear from the sound of the screens. There may be music or sound effects or pushes with audio and tactile prompts.

“The tactile” refers not only to how we touch our screens or keyboards. It also refers to, for example, how our phone vibrates when someone calls us, or how an app sends you push notifications to get your attention.

We now move on to the experience design realm. There is an entire world that is created, where each element is meant to stimulate all of your senses. Going back to the event we described earlier, the experience includes how you arrive at the event. How are you greeted? What is the music, and how does it pair with the light design? Perhaps the experience is tailored to create a path of circulation or a journey.

If there is food or beverages around, what dishes are served? How do you drink the beverages? Do you interact with the host or event speakers? How are you seated? What is the color of the chairs, walls, and other elements in the event space? What else happens within that space? Experience design is meant to be 360 degrees — “omnichannel”, so to speak.

UX design and experience design are independent, but they can also coexist with one another. Yes, it is possible to merge both of them; but knowing the difference between the two will enhance your design processes and portfolios.

Your brand becomes a part of your store in various ways. If you understand this and your core customer base, you may ask yourself these questions:

* Who are you serving?
* What will connect with them?
* How can you make your brand more appealing?

If you know this, it will help you understand how to set up and run your store. For example, if your brand focuses on being fun and goofy, you may have a younger audience as your target demographic.

You should make sure your website’s color palette matches the brand. For example, if your brand focuses on being fun and funny, then grays and monotone colors won’t reflect that same voice.

This involves identifying your customers and matching what they want. You may want to avoid boring and dry product descriptions if you choose brighter colors.

You can use these descriptions to inject some humor and branding into your business. It comes into play in various parts of your e-commerce store. Look at every opportunity you have and make sure your store reflects the bigger brand.

Telling your story can help you create a more personable narrative to help new customers see the person behind the brand and understand it to build connections.

You don’t want your company to be a faceless brand. You should build a connection with your customers since it will help them connect with you, become loyal customers, and buy from you.