The practice of User Experience (UX) Design has been around since 1990s when the founder of the practice, cognitive psychologist and designer Don Norman, coined the name. Over the past 3 decades, it has become apparent that UX design is a diverse and manifold discipline: challenging and exciting to the novice UX designer. The process is as inherent as the aspect of graphic design and other forms of design, and knowing the various phases can be the key between success and failure.
Project Overview
The UX design process contains user research. It forms the beginning of a UX design project by all UX designers. Research informs us of who will be using it, how, what, why and what. It also opens to us how they go round our system, where they are experiencing problems and most importantly how they feel when they come in contact with our product.
User research is a mandatory part of becoming a UX designer and, whether you work in a big company, and can afford to pay a team of researchers to conduct it or you are a UXer in a start-up, this is a part of the UX designing process which you cannot afford to neglect. Being the UX designer, you are an expert in your product by definition.
Nevertheless, your perception of intuitivity may not be relevant to your users, and that is why it is so crucial to have real life users do the research that will define what your project will be like in reality.
