A Lean, Mean User Experience Machine

Considering User Experience (UX) design is a business imperative in today’s customer-centric environment. While some view it as cost-prohibitive, this article outlines a “lean and mean” approach to UX that still delivers results. Since the economic downturn, we’ve worked with plenty of tight budgets at Rhythm Interactive. For us, that has never meant compromising our process or devaluing UX. We’ve just had to adapt.

A primary consideration when working on a tight budget is to limit the scope of a project. How many functions and features are really necessary in order to achieve business goals and objectives? First we try to eliminate any nice-to-haves or “Wouldn’t it be cool if” items. Many of these “cool” features don’t matter if users are not going to be able to find them or have difficulty using them in the first place. The directive here is to allocate the necessary resources towards the User Experience during the first phase of your initiatives. Later, once your tactics are working for you in the marketplace, add the nice-to-haves in later phases.

Another consideration is to utilize experts in the field of User Experience design. Utilizing testing labs and large user evaluations are great tools when budgets allow for it. However, the initial User Experience design can prove to be extremely effective when contracting experts with deep expertise in this discipline. Although this has a price tag associated with it, the specific time and resources can be less than alternative methods.

The process of User Experience Design is critical to containing costs. Although various steps and components are necessary for a successful outcome, the trick is to scale these efforts appropriately with budgets. At Rhythm Interactive, we typically conduct our process utilizing the following milestone deliverables:

Content Outline - This document serves as an important integration point between team members developing content, both on the client side and agency side.

Wireframes - This allows stakeholders to analyze a visual representation of the solution. Reviewing wireframes thoroughly is critical to saving time and money.

Mood Boards - This deliverable establishes the visual aesthetics applied to the solution. While this seems like an extra step over standard comp designs, it can save time. Potential long-term style directions can be established quickly and ineffective attempts can be ruled out early.

Beta version - At this point, most issues should have already been worked through and it’s a matter of finishing touches. However, some issues can rise to the surface at this stage. Most likely though these issues can be addressed with minimal efforts due to proper planning and the best-practices User Experience design approach employed.

Good UX doesn’t just happen and without it, quality suffers and money starts hemorrhaging in one way or another. The process is the process but you can be creative about how you approach it. Keep the outlay to a minimum while still delivering quality results. Just remember, taking the User Experience into consideration is imperative in today’s marketplace.