What goes into building a successful product or service people enjoy using? By enrolling in Quinnipiac University’s Principles of User Experience Design, I was able to gain a deeper appreciation for all of the research and energy brands put into creating a quality product. The class focuses on human-centered design thinking and how empathizing with a user and understanding their problems can help create a better, more valuable product. 

Below, I will take you through the various concepts explored and the knowledge I gained. The class starts with getting to know what exactly Design Thinking is. 

Gaining An Understand of Design Thinking

With a crash course from Stanford d.school, I gained a quick understanding of the five stages of Design Thinking. During the ninety-minute course, I had fun interviewing my partner and getting a more profound sense of her needs. Once I got a feeling for the things that matter to her most, I was able to dream up several unique ideas to solve the gift-giving problem of the experiment. The crash course taught me these main steps of Design thinking:

1. Empathize- Ask questions, conduct studies, observe and research the user. 
2. Define- Figure out what the core problem is.
3. Ideate- Brainstorm and sketch various solutions to the problem defined.
4. Prototype- Create an actual prototype of the best idea
5. Test- Share the prototype and get feedback, then go back and refine the design.

These steps can be repeats as often as necessary to find the best possible solution. Overall, the crash course pushed me to understand the user, which helped me create a better solution for my partner. 

Understanding User Psychology

What drives people to perform a particular action? Why do people prefer one product over its competitor? Understanding human behavior and motivations can help UX researchers create a more enjoyable experience for a customer that could result in the customer using the product or service again. To grasp the importance of user psychology, I analyzed two websites. One I use frequently, Stop and Shop, and the second was its competitor, Shop Rite.

In my analysis, I described my experience with more positive feelings such as energetic, confident, and inspired. I found the reason I preferred Stop and Shop was because all of my needs were met, and there was no emotional friction. 

Gaining Empathy

When trying to gain a sense of a user, the best place to start is by taking the time to learn more about them through empathy. Observe, interview, survey to immerse yourself in the user’s daily activities. Then organize all of these findings and put them into a cohesive empathy map.  

During the third week of my Principles of UX Design, I created empathy maps for various employees featured on the show Undercover Boss. I observed what the employees thought, heard, saw, and said. Additionally, I captured their pain points and what their goals were. The empathy map helped me explore the user from various angles and gain a true sense of who they are and their struggles. 

Creating A Persona

From all of the information gathered while creating an empathy map, plus additional user research, I made two personas for the Stop and Shop grocery store. Instead of focusing on one individual in an empathy map, I now had to broaden my thinking to include a group of users. The two personas I created included a middle-aged, time-strapped working mom and a more mature woman who had an underlying condition and was fearful of contracting the Covid-19 virus while grocery shopping. Because it was my first time creating a person, I started with a template to capture all pertinent information. Then, I designed two unique persona posters that included photos, quotes, and other descriptive qualities to capture these users’ essence. The posters could be put on display to remind designers and developers who they are creating for. The purpose is to keep the user front and center during the entire product development process. 

Problem Definition

Empathy Maps and Personas provide the analysis of what a user is feeling and experiencing. However, the Define stage of Design Thinking is when all of the problem’s pieces can be synthesized and creatively put together in a problem statement. There is a craft to put together a problem statement, and it should follow these basic guidelines:

• Be human-centered
• Be broad enough to allow for creative freedom.
• Be narrow enough to make it manageable.

An excellent template to follow is: ________is a challenge for __________because____________. From my empathy map exercise, while watching Undercover Boss, I created five different problem statements surrounding ways the TGIFriday’s restaurants could improve their business. I took everything I learned from the empathy maps and constructed problem statements specific to the employee needs and the betterment of the business. 

Ideation Methods

I found the Idea step of Design Thinking to be the most fun. Here all the past research, including personas and problem statements, are gathered, and the team can begin to ideate various solutions. There are a variety of ways to ideate, but all follow these guidelines:

• There are no bad ideas. In other words, no one is allowed to discredit any idea or cast judgment.
• Document everything. Use sticky notes, dry erase boards, construction paper, play-doh, or whatever medium to capture all ideas.
• Collaborate with a group to help spur a diverse set of ideas. It’s also great when the group begins to build an idea off each other. 

During my experience in my class, I found I enjoyed the SCAMPER brainstorm method. I generate my most unique ideas this way. Below is an example of the problem I was ideating for as well as my SCAMPER results. 

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SCAMPER Brainstorm Results:

• Substitute- Instead of collecting characters, users collect superpowers such as super jumps, wings, or airplane rides.
• Combine- Bring duplicate characters together to start building a family
• Adapt- allow players to paint their own characters
• Modify- Players can create characters by swiping through various heads, torsos, and feet
• Put to another use- The player becomes the character and a life- sized game. Instead of tapping the screen, users have a special stomp pad that they have to jump on to move in the game
• Eliminate- Instead of presents, users could shop at a store and select their characters. With the coins they collect they can buy the characters they want.
• Reverse- Get a blank character, and players have to jump to collect their features such as eyes, wings, horn, etc.

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Documenting a Customer’s Experience Through Journey Maps

The process of journey mapping is to help understand the steps a person goes through as a customer. It is a visual representation of each touchpoint a customer has with a brand, including the customer’s thoughts and feelings and the channels and actions the brand took. I documented my journey in repairing my water-damaged laptop and found areas where the company could improve. For example, I wished for a thorough explanation of the machine’s damage, especially since it was such an expensive repair.  A Journey Map is an excellent way to find areas of opportunity to improve the customer experience. The improvements could be as simple as better communication. Taking the time to explore the customer journey and making it better is an excellent way to build brand loyalty. 

Final Thoughts

After seven intense weeks, the Principles of UX Design gave me a deep understanding of the detail level that goes into researching users. Each exercise was very eye-opening. From empathy to problem-solving to ideating, all of the concepts reviewed made a lot of sense and made me feel each step was critical in creating the best user experience. I enjoyed learning about how people think, then stretching my imagination with new brainstorming techniques. The concepts learned would be beneficial in any career, not only User Experience.