When you need to perform research for product design and product development, how do you go about it? What are things like ethnographic research, and what does it all mean?

What that fundamentally means is putting yourself in the shoes of somebody else. So, I think many of us often are inspired by our own experience and what we’ve learned from our product design education, but we can also be inspired by other people’s experiences.

This is true even when we watch a movie. Why do we watch movies? We watch movies because they tell stories about other people’s experiences or other characters’ lives, right? So, imagine trying to put yourself in the shoes of somebody else. And we do that through talking to people, through interviews, through surveys, and through designing experiments.

Let’s say you give somebody six different cards with six different words on them, and you ask them to prioritize, or you ask them to put them in order of what they think is important. Then that helps you understand what that person thinks is important.

It’s really important for us to understand not just our own experiences but the experiences of others. Ethnographic research and other research methods that look into users’ needs can help us do that. What we learn about in online product design education can help us understand how to use those types of research to create products people need and want to use.

Because it’s important, again, to design not just for ourselves, but to design for other people.

At larger companies, it’s harder to push the boundaries of UX design and UI design. It takes a lot more justification to create something new because so much has already been invented.

A big way to do that is to really just make sure to audit all of the UX and UI design patterns within the company to see if there is something that you can reuse. If there isn’t, you can look at a variety of other companies that are doing something similar. Look across different industries and find best practices and introduce them in a way that shows that you’ve already looked at these other existing patterns, and they just don’t fit.

For example, I worked on an e-commerce project in augmented reality, and there just wasn’t enough existing patterns of behavior in a large retail company like Williams-Sonoma. Then I started looking across at Pokémon to see what was out there: in the app store, in the market, etc. That really helped to inform some of these new decisions and new technologies that we are creating.

So, really just expanding your horizons, oftentimes, and introducing that to the company in a way that is about collaboration and bringing on new technologies—I think that’s a big part of it.

There’s visual design in the corporate world, so you’re probably entering a space where there is branding and a design system has already been created. So your job would be to understand that system, whether it’s UI or UX design, and make sure you’re aligned with it. This might be a little bit different from creating a visual design system from scratch.

If you were thinking about creating a visual design system from scratch, then you still would want to consider the brand and how it wants to be perceived. For example, if you know there are three adjectives that the brand wants to express, you might choose different colors. You might choose different typography. You might lay out your page in a different way if your company wanted to be playful.

If your company wanted to be more professional, then you might also pick a different grid structure. You might pick typography that leans a little bit more toward sans serif. All those visual choices are going to express your company’s brand in a certain way.

But then, there are also visual design choices that should follow more universal principles. This is more of a personal taste, but I do always want to make sure that when I see a well-designed page, I know what the primary actions on that page are. And it should be the most highly contrasted item on that page because all my attention will be drawn to this particular button, for example.

There are some basics to UX or UI design that you should adhere to and some personal principles that you’ll develop over time, but that’s how I would explain it.

I think one of the things to think about when we’re designing cultural spaces such as museums is that they’re competing with other types of entertainment or places to go. And museums can’t just be “go up and look at art.” And the Museum of the Dog has got a wonderful body of work, and it’s a subject matter that nobody cannot like. But we needed to create more meaning and depth. And what was essential to that is, how do we do it in a joyful way? And how do we do it in an information-based way, as well as the mobile UI component-discovery through your phone?

So, there were several UX design elements that we did in the museum that were appropriate and placed at the right place at the right time. You could still enjoy the visceral effect and experience of beautiful, cool arts with a great UI design narrative. But you could also go up to a kiosk and have your face scanned and get matched to a breed. And it was those moments of fun that became where you become more engaged with the brand of the Museum of the Dog and AKC. You learned about not just the shape of the dog that you matched, but the temperament of the dog, its personality, and all the UX elements that you could enjoy alongside the fact that you just got matched to a breed.

Sometimes, it’s more of a minimal interaction to something more in depth. For example, we created these interactive tables-essentially like going up to a dinner table-where four people could stand at a time and look at different breeds. They learn about different breeds and get into a deep understanding of the 365 breeds that the AKC currently has and capture that information to take home. So there’s an education component that’s really important. The history of the breed, where it came from, its personality, and how it behaves. Is there art in the collection that actually features that breed? So we’re connecting it back to the arts. All of this becomes all connected as a component. Learning and education have always been very important to the AKC, so we needed to bring it in a smart and compelling way.

And then finally, we worked at developing an interactive, motion-activated experience for young kids to train a dog. By movement, they were basically teaching this dog how to fetch, pick up a ball, stop, sit, etcetera. Simple moves, but it’s a great experience for young people to learn a little bit more in a medium that they’re very familiar with about how to train a dog. I think it’s really important to point out that experience design just does not only involve the digital world. We created analog moments focused around families and children where they could sit down and draw and color and create their own art version of a dog. And that’s something that’s a nice analog balance to some of the more digital experiences.

And then we created one last element that was really built into the phone for adults, and also for kids. For kids, we had “Arty” who was your pet and your friend that would, in an AR state, come out of his dog house on your phone. And you could follow him to find and discover key paintings. And with that was a reward for the child. Engaging with the physical, but using mobile as a tool. And then it was also being used as a tool to get more information on specific paintings. So you could hold your phone up, it would push content to you, tell you more about the artist, the breed, its origin, and whatnot. We’re looking at all these overall touch points in a holistic way. So it’s not just a museum with art on a wall. It’s something that’s really more of an experiential thing around the notion of the joy of the dog.

When we develop the personas, we really do it in a very highly narrative way, thinking about who they are, where they came from, what their interests are, and what their needs are. If we think about human experience, we can think about task-based activities, discovery-based activities, or entertainment-based activities. We start looking at those behavior and experience modes modes against the persona. A 60-year-old woman is going to have a different need-case scenario of how she will do whatever activities that we’re looking at than a different type of user would.

We create these great narratives, and sometimes they’re done as “simply” as quotes. This morning when I got up, I needed to get to x, y, or z and take care of this. I walked or I got on the high-speed train and started creating these sort of emotional narratives that our clients can picture in their brain. Essentially, it’s the narrative of how their customers are going to get to a location or activate or engage online.

It’s easier to understand that than speaking in the abstract, so these personas become really important. Often, we have names for them or descriptions about them in terms of their behaviors. Those things help. They lend a little bit more insight to the uniqueness of the persona.

In UX Design, you’ll learn about developing personas based on user data research. These personas are important when creating UX design and UI design. UX and UI is only effective when it’s based off of the needs of real users, and those needs are seen through the personas.

“Let’s talk about soft skills and hard skills. You may probably own some of them already, but you just didn’t know. It is important to look back at your personal experiences and your professional experiences,” explains Tiago Valente. “I am sure that if you look back and you reflect on your journey, on your personal and professional journey, you will find out not only the skills that I’m about to mention, but many others that can inform your practice in UX and UI, [or UX design and UI design.] Those are your superpowers. And like I said, I’m sure you already own most of them.”

“When you talk about product design, at least from a product design perspective,” Daphne Lin adds, “you have to be comfortable learning all these new hard skills. Yes, you have to know user experience design. You have to know interaction design, interface design, etc.”

But research is something that you should be interested in diving into. Visual design, or creating visual design systems, should be something you’re interested in. All those things will definitely make you a better designer.

“When I say hard, they’re not that hard. You will learn them. And that’s why we’re here,” says Valente. “The first skill within this category is user research. User research involves creating surveys, interviewing people, handling focus groups, and market research. All that user research — it’s very important.”

And, it’s a crucial part of this process because it is what will give you actual valuable data, data to create user personas. Later on, these user personas will give you an even more detailed information that summarizes your findings throughout your user research.

Active listening is truly the most important ability that professionals need to have when interviewing someone in UX design. When I say active listening, there are a few characteristics that must be involved in UI design.

The first thing an interviewer should do is to be very present with the other person in UI. Many times when someone else talks, we tend to think about our own thoughts, how we can relate to the story that person is telling as well as any similarities our own lives may have to the person telling the story. So, active listening is really putting oneself outside of that tendency and being truly there in the moment with that person, with no agenda other than really hearing their story.

The first thing that I would recommend is be present with the UX employee. Put away all your to-do list for the day or the week aside. Put all your own personal agenda aside. Just really be there listening the person.

The second thing that is an important component of actively listening is observing body language. A person says so much more in one’s non-verbal language than in their verbal language. One would observe body language in order to see when the person is opening up, when they’re closing, when their voice becomes lower or higher, or when they’re talking really quickly or really slowly.

All these things indicate if the person is talking about something that excites them, about something that they’re ashamed of, or about something that is vulnerable to them. Body language is a great indicator of such emotions, and actively listening involves observing this nonverbal expression.

The last component of active listening is to look for stories. We constantly, as design researchers, want to look for stories because they depict the values of that human being. They hold the motivations for whomever you’re talking to. Once we understand a person’s motivation, we can create a solution that is really powerful. So, the components of active listening include being present, observing body language, and looking for stories.

My biggest advice when designing UX or UI is to not get too into the weeds. It really just comes down to this: don’t overthink things. Don’t get too caught up on the technical details of UX design or UI design. It’s something that not everyone can be taught.

What you do want to do is leave a lasting impression. You want to create something helpful or enjoyable for people using it. It’s about just having what I call “The vibe.”

The vibe is super important. Having the vibe drive what you’re designing means not getting caught up in numbers or technical details. In the end, the people using it don’t care about any of that. They really think about how they feel after using what you’ve designed. You want to make sure that what you’ve designed is leaving a really great impression on them.

Vibe can’t be measured. It’s one of the things that makes designers irreplaceable. A lot of people think that at some point all these vibes are going to be replaced by robots. However, when you’re designing something for people, the vibe is what people remember.

You really can’t measure it, but it is something that comes from a feeling. It has to come from passion and inspiration. It’s something that you just notice when you look at something. You just feel that it has a certain sort of personality to it. I think that’s going to have a lasting impression on the world, and it’s going to be what makes designers irreplaceable.

UI, or user interface, refers to the complement, the look and feel, and the interactivity with the product that you are designing. In other words, UI design refers to the visual components of your experience and how those visual components are going to make your journey or the user’s journey as intuitive as possible.

In the same way, we can describe UX as the foundation, structure and frame of a house. The difference between UX design and UI design is that UI refers to the wallpaper, the furniture, and all those elements that make this environment more pleasant and overall more intuitive to navigate. This ranges from the buttons, iconography, colors and all aesthetics that are involved in the interface or that adorn the interface.

One of the big things to keep in mind while pursuing online UX design education is that no matter how “usable” you think what you’ve designed is, if it doesn’t look good, people are not going to want to use it at all. It’s super important to keep in mind when actually building something.

I like to say that UX without UI is just not really a great product. You see it all the time, too. You see some products and programs that have been around for years, but they just look so outdated that no one wants to use them anymore. There are hot, fresh, new products out that just look a lot slicker, and people are gravitating towards them. Never forget that UI is always going to be very valuable to your UX.

Visual design should really follow functionality. UX and UI are kind of a complement to each other. You need to make sure that the program performs well but also looks good. The UX design and UI design elements should go hand in hand.

When designing, make sure that you don’t only have the UI part but also that the user experience is embedded in it. Also try to optimize that for consistency. If you use certain UI elements, make sure they look the same throughout your website and everything that you put in your interface and that they actually makes sense and have a reason to be there.

Things like simplicity and color, which really identify certain functionality, are like accents that you can put in your interface. For example, I really love the Gestalt principles. I try to always have the designers that I work with present not only how things look but also how they work. They need to make sure that everything they put in the interface makes sense and has a reason to be there. Everything must also be tested with users so you can make sure the functionality is right.