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.

Steph Mantis gives this advice on product design education: “Once you have a rough sketch and you’re starting to know the direction you’re moving in, you want to start thinking about materials. You want to start thinking about ‘How do I refine this?’ And ultimately, you want to think about ‘How am I going to communicate this to my fabricators, and my audience?'”

She goes on to explain, “If you can communicate it to your fabricators really clearly, you can use a number of tools. It can be auto-card; it can be solid works. I’ve designed stuff where I just put together a mood board. I say, ‘Like this, not like that.’ And I give that to a factory, and it communicates enough for them to get to the next sketch, which then comes back to me so I can critique that.”

Mantis makes it clear that at the end of the day, it’s about how you are communicating this idea of yours. You can use various tools for product design and product development. Pinterest, for example, is great for mood boarding. The Internet itself is a plethora of images that you can easily just start pulling out and organizing. It’s a source of online product design education. She personally likes things like Google Drive to organize concepts and uses spreadsheets to start her sourcing and pricing. Steph says she also likes Keynote.

“I think Keynote is really easy,” she continues. “It’s an Apple-based product. It comes on every Mac product basically. It’s cloud-driven, so it’s super easy to pull presentations together, share them, edit them, get them on your phone, get them on a tablet, get them on a desktop.”

Usability tests in online UX Design Education come in two broad categories: moderated and unmoderated.

A moderated UI usability test is when the researcher or you, as a designer, work with the user, either in the same space or online, to take them through the prototype. You ask the questions while the user completes the tasks answers the questions.

In an unmoderated test, the users work by themselves. There is no one there in the room, or in the virtual room, to help them, prompt them, or ask the question in a different way. This really tests the UI design. So, unmoderated tests can be challenging for users, but, equally, can give you really good insight into where those UX challenges are. If the users are struggling to complete the test, then that is a clear indication that something with your solution isn’t quite right, and may need some extra attention.

The double diamond ideation product design process starts as literally a drawing of two diamonds sort of placed next to each other. It’s a process diagram that explains the ideation methodology. It’s also known in product development as the design method.

Double Diamond Basics

We start with divergent thinking in the first diamond. We broaden ideas related to discovering insight into a problem and defining a focus area from one outside tip of the diamond to the other. In the second diamond, we develop and deliver potential solutions.

You’re not trying to think about the exact thing that you want to design but everything around it. No idea is a bad idea when you’re using this process. Your goal is to have ideas converge by taking all of the ones that you’ve written down and narrowing the list by placing them into groups of ideas that make sense together by category or theme.

The design process is really, really cool because you go through this a couple of times so that the ideas in the double diamond diagram are diverging, converging, diverging, and converging again. This process works because you’re really thinking out of the box. The diagram also promotes good discipline so that you can narrow down and focus on the things that you’re supposed to focus on.

Product Design Education

You can learn about the double diamond process and other ideation workshop tools with a formal online product design education. Formal training covers this and many other important product design and development processes that you need for a successful career.

Learn how live shopping and community building can provide you with the information and context needed to enhance your ecommerce shopping experience.

With live shopping, something that is incredibly valuable is understanding your communities on a deeper level. Communities are changing every hour, every minute, and every day.
I think one of the most beautiful things about live shopping events is that you’ll be able to understand what your audience is thinking, what they’re asking from you, and what they’re doing in real-time. In a way, that feels holistic and allows you to put context to the situation.

For example, we had one women’s health brand that used our solution a few months ago. We wanted to understand a little bit more about this customer. People think that live shopping events and live shopping are only for digital-first brands that are innovative and easy to sell. Such as a makeup or skincare company. However, what we’re noticing is that if you can build a community and engage, live shopping is for you.

This brand made use of a lot of our engagement modules. They asked a lot of questions and triggered a lot of polls within the live shopping experience. One of the great takeaways was they found out that 54% of their audience was first-time moms.

Now that not only is insightful information to target the rest of your live shopping event but is helpful for future events and to figure out what kind of products you want to launch later on.

Data is something that I think we’re all a little bit wary of. However, insights, context and information from your community, especially in real-time, really are priceless.

With product design, we start by trying to understand user needs and behaviors. Once we have this important information, we then move on to the ideation stage of product development.

The ideation process usually takes place in a workshop. We gather a bunch of people in a very specific room or other type of physical space for a condensed period of time to brainstorm problem solutions and other ideas. It’s critical to select a very good mix of people for a great ideation session. We never concentrate exclusively on designers or technology-focused people. Instead, we select a cross-functional team of people who can think about the product topic from all types of different angles.

An ideation workshop team is normally composed of people who pursued a formal product design education, received hands-on training and possess extensive professional experience. If you don’t think you can afford to spend the time or money pursuing a degree in this field, you should consider an online product design education.

“A product design project begins a number of different ways,” says Alicia Tam Wei. “Sometimes it’s about something that annoys you. Sometimes it’s about something that’s a big dream of yours. Sometimes it’s about something that you wish existed. It’s often kind of like the ultimate wish fulfillment.”

Stephanie Mantis states, “I think it’s important to figure out why you’re doing something. So for me, oftentimes, my product development starts with a need, be it functional and physical, or emotional and more personal.” “First,” she continues, “identifying what am I trying to do and why, is an amazing place to start. If it’s your problem, it’s probably somebody else’s problem. And if your solution works for you, it probably works for somebody else.”

Mantis further explains, “When I graduated college, I kind of looked around my apartment, and I was like, ‘Oh, you’re a college graduate like maybe it’s time to upgrade some of your choices and fixtures.’ One of those things were my necklace racks, which at the time were literally thumbtacks in the wall. You know, there’s five or six of them. I said, ‘You can do better than this.’ I happened to have a collection of small plastic animals on my bookshelf. I looked at them, and I said, ‘Sorry guys, but I’m going to cut your heads off and mount them to a piece of wood.’ That kind of touch upon what was happening at the time with an animal trophy trend. And that’s how my first product post-graduation was born. And that is the pack rack.”

Online product design education reiterates the importance of producing an organic and believable product. “It became this sort of organic situation where I’ve had this problem and decided to make my own solution. Over the course of time, I refined that solution so that it would be producible, and scalable, and sellable,” Stephanie Mantis concludes.