What do you do if your User Experience Design (UED) innovations are sacrificing practicality?

User Experience Design (UED) is a creative and strategic process that aims to enhance the usability, accessibility, and enjoyment of a product or service. However, sometimes UED practitioners may get carried away with their innovative ideas and neglect the practical aspects of their design solutions. How can you balance your UED innovations with the real needs and constraints of your users, clients, and stakeholders? Here are some tips to help you avoid sacrificing practicality for innovation in your UED projects.

1 Identify the problem

Before you start brainstorming or prototyping your UED innovations, you need to have a clear understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. Who are your users, what are their goals, pain points, and preferences? What are the business objectives, requirements, and limitations of your client or stakeholder? What are the technical, ethical, and legal implications of your design choices? By conducting thorough user research, stakeholder interviews, and competitive analysis, you can define the problem and scope of your UED project and avoid wasting time and resources on irrelevant or unrealistic innovations.

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Yuvaraj Elumalai

Manager- Creative at XERAGO E-BIZ SERVICES PRIVATE LIMITED
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If UED innovations sacrifice practicality, gather feedback, prioritize usability, and collaborate with cross-functional teams for feasible solutions. Iterate designs based on user testing until balancing innovation with usability. Remember, innovations should serve users' needs effectively.

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Tony .

UI/UX Designer at Gemraj Technologies Ltd | Intuitive design 🦾 | User Experience Designer
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Identifying the problem is akin to laying the foundation for a successful project. It's about understanding the context and constraints within which we'll be working. Before diving into design solutions, we need to grasp the needs and pain points of our users, as well as the goals and constraints of the business or organization we're designing for. This involves conducting thorough research, engaging with stakeholders, and analyzing the competitive landscape. By doing so, we can ensure that our design efforts are targeted towards addressing real issues and delivering meaningful solutions that resonate with both users and stakeholders.

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Yogita Chauhan

Product Designer | User Experience Designer | User Researcher | User Interface Designer | Ex Reliance | Ex Amazon
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If your User Experience Design (UED) innovations are sacrificing practicality, reassess your design goals, prioritize user needs and usability, conduct user testing to validate concepts, iterate on designs to find a balance between innovation and practicality, and involve stakeholders in the decision-making process.

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2 Test your assumptions

Once you have a problem statement and some UED innovations in mind, you need to validate them with your users and stakeholders. Don't fall in love with your own ideas and assume that they will work for everyone. Instead, test your assumptions and hypotheses with real or potential users using methods such as surveys, interviews, usability testing, A/B testing, or analytics. Gather feedback and data from your users and stakeholders and use them to refine, iterate, or discard your UED innovations. Testing your assumptions will help you avoid investing in innovations that are not practical, desirable, or feasible.

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Tony .

UI/UX Designer at Gemraj Technologies Ltd | Intuitive design 🦾 | User Experience Designer
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Recognize that our assumptions about user needs and preferences may not always align with reality. Testing these assumptions is essential to ensure that our design solutions actually meet the needs and expectations of our users. By conducting various testing methods like surveys, interviews, and usability testing, we can gather valuable insights and feedback from real users. This allows us to validate our assumptions, identify any discrepancies between our ideas and user expectations, and iterate on our designs accordingly.

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3 Prioritize your features

Another way to balance your UED innovations with practicality is to prioritize your features according to their value and complexity. Not every innovation is equally important or difficult to implement. You can use frameworks such as the Kano model, the MoSCoW method, or the Value vs Effort matrix to rank your features based on how much they satisfy your users' needs and expectations, how much they contribute to your business goals and outcomes, and how much they cost in terms of time, money, and resources. By prioritizing your features, you can focus on the most essential and impactful innovations and avoid overloading your design with unnecessary or impractical elements.

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Tony .

UI/UX Designer at Gemraj Technologies Ltd | Intuitive design 🦾 | User Experience Designer
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When we're designing something, we can't include every idea we have. We have to choose which ones are the most important. So, to prioritize features means to decide which ideas or functions are the most essential and should be included first. We do this by considering what users really need and what will benefit our project the most. This helps us focus on what's really important and avoid making our design too complicated.

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4 Communicate your rationale

Finally, to balance your UED innovations with practicality, you need to communicate your rationale and reasoning behind your design decisions. You need to explain to your users, clients, and stakeholders how your innovations solve their problems, meet their needs, and deliver value. You also need to justify why you chose certain design options over others, how you tested and validated your assumptions, and what trade-offs or compromises you made. You can use tools such as personas, user stories, journey maps, wireframes, prototypes, or design systems to communicate your UED innovations in a clear and convincing way. By communicating your rationale, you can gain trust and support from your users, clients, and stakeholders and avoid misunderstandings or conflicts.

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5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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What do you do if your User Experience Design (UED) innovations are sacrificing practicality?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Identify the problem

2 Test your assumptions

3 Prioritize your features

4 Communicate your rationale

5 Here’s what else to consider

User Experience Design

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What do you do if your User Experience Design (UED) innovations are sacrificing practicality?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Identify the problem

2 Test your assumptions

3 Prioritize your features

4 Communicate your rationale

5 Here’s what else to consider

User Experience Design

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