Oh, hello, you fellow startup enthusiast! I guess you came across this article because you are a part of a startup team that wants to conquer the world (or a part of it) soon! As a UX designer, I’ve worked with a lot of startups, and I’ll be honest – it isn’t easy! So be ready to make independent decisions and be jack of all trades.
Startups are believed to be quick, agile, and innovative. However, in reality, it is often about improvisation, lack of resources, and conflict of interests, including, but not limited to, interests of you, the team, your customers, and investors. It’s about the pressure of meeting every demand!, and making your product user-friendly isn’t an exception.
A good user experience is crucial for a successful startup. It is all about your product being intuitive and easy-to-use and solving your customers’ real issues.
Now that you know what UX design is, how do you do it in a startup? Well, the truth is, you don’t do it. At least not in the same way larger companies do it. With big budgets, a large team, and decades of experience under their belt, they approach things differently. As a startup, your job is to wear many hats, learn along the way, and pivot when things don’t go as planned.
That being said, the UX design process for startups can look something like this:
Create hypothesis: Talk to your customers and make an assumption that can solve their pain point. Involve product manager to this process to make sure you are not coming with crazy and undeliverable idea.
Prototype: Spend a day designing clickable prototype in Figma or Protopie. You don't have to cover all the cases, basic journey is fine.
Validate: Approach users and validate your assumptions with your Figma or Prototype prototype. If you're shy try with your friends first.
Iterate: Refine your design, and go through the process until users understand the journey and can perform required tasks.
Wondering which tools you’ll need to get started with UX design in a Startup? Here are some of my favorites:
Figma a digital design tool that’s perfect for creating wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs.
Webflow is a platform for website creation. This service has everything for both design and development. You can create a responsive website on it without using code, but you can also implement what you are interested in using code. By the way, at pixeldarts.com we're with Webflow development. ContactUs if you need any support.
ProtoPie is a program that helps to develop witty and intuitive prototypes of both mobile and web applications while.
Hotjar is a tool to analyze the behavior of the website users. It provides heat maps, session recording, surveys, and conversion funnels.
Ask Open-Ended Questions:
During the usability testing, it is vital to ask questions that do not lead or require a yes or no response. Rather, the question should prompt the user to think and express their opinion and experience. For instance, “What do you think about how you executed this task?” or “What is your opinion about the design of this page?” ; follow these links to the source for more information.
Avoid Biased Language:
In these two links, biased language refers to grayscale. Use of adjectives or any language in the question should not influence the participant’s response in any manner. Use impartial language that will not give participants room to provide biased feedback. Ensure No Leading Questions.
Follow Up:
After the question, change what could have been achieved in the key lesson provided above to provide more profound responses. These can be done by asking “Can you tell me more?” or “So that means a lot to you. How and why?”
Observe Behavior:
While observing participants execute tasks, it is important to closely monitor their activities to act as a red flag to areas such as confusion or frustration.
Take notes (recordings) or find observer:
While It's a tough job to follow a script, observe user behaviour, communicate and document results. So it's essential to record your interview and everything happening on a screen to make report afterwards. Alternatively, you can invite second person who will be documenting insights.
Whether you’re a startup founder, designer, or just an enthusiast getting started with UX: designing good UX is not just about creating a pretty interface. It’s about creating a product for your users that makes a real change for the problem they face.
Customer, customer, customer! In the end, that’s all that matters. Follow these tips to put the customer at the heart of design and create a UX design that truly changes the game for your business as a startup. I hope you informed the startup.
