In UX, there are different approaches and strategies to systematize and simplify the work on the project. Different approaches have a different focus and different objectives, so it is important to choose the approach that is right for your particular project when you start.
There are no ironclad rules here: to choose the right approach in UX design, you must identify the goals and objectives of the project, as well as the primary problems that need to be solved.
What are some approaches?
User-Centered Design (UCD) is one of the most well-known and basic UX approaches. It is an iterative method of work whose main goal is to ensure that the user’s needs are understood at each stage of UX-design.
UCD does not define the stages of the project! Regardless of how your UX design process is structured, in order to implement this approach, a set of actions will need to be implemented at each stage of the work:
Understand the context: how users will use the interface we are designing
Identify the needs and concerns of the users who will use the interface
Select solutions that meet the needs of the users
Evaluate the implemented solutions in terms of user needs and problems
Depending on the result of the evaluation in the last point, the process can be repeated again in the current step. When moving on to the next stage of the project work, the process is also repeated.
Design Thinking is an approach that allows you to solve user problems by quickly and cost-effectively adjusting functionality. This is a “quick response” approach that is best suited for finding and solving point problems in the interface.
5 levels of UX-design is an approach that structures the process of working on the project. As you can easily guess from the name, this approach proposes to divide the process into 5 stages and move from the abstract aspects to prepare a specific solution.
The first level, the lowest one, is strategy. At this stage, the goals and objectives of the project and the basic needs of users are defined
The second level is the boundaries of the project. At this stage you flesh out what user problems the project will solve, define the key functionality and key content
The third level – the structure. At this stage, different elements of the interface are organized – functionality, pages, and content. Also key user scenarios are defined
The fourth level – Layout, or “skeleton” of the project. This stage is used to build the internal logic of the project, how it will work and how the various elements will interact with each other
The fifth level – external. This stage determines how the project will look to the user, how it will be perceived by the user.
Based on this five-level approach, you can construct your own workflow, making each level more specific to your project goals and objectives.