Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Olivia Putri (sok sokan pake banner biar terlihat offisyel)

I wrote this story after 90 days being a “user researcher” or “UX researcher” in one of growing marketplace startup in Indonesia.

As a post-graduate student with no experience of working in UX field. I used to think: “Shit, how can I do this?” All the time.

How can I do this? How can I make the research plans? How can I do a usability testing to a person I never met before? How can I interview person I didn’t knew? What should I do when my Project Manager asked me to do a research on something I didn’t even familiar before?? My mind goes blank. The first 7 days of work is the most chaotic experience I ever had.

But believe me, as the time passed, you’ll be okay.

And this is what I learn after 90 days being a UX Researcher.

P.S: I’m not an expert, yet. I’m still learning, so correct me if I’m wrong, okay? (and pardon me for my bad grammar and my weird english idiom, please correct me lol)

UX is all about the process

When I was in college, I used to think that UX is all about the design. I’ve been entered a UI/UX competition in my college before, and we were lost, three times. Me and my team was so sad and we asked to ourselves “What did we do wrong? The design we made was so good!”.

And now I realized what did we do wrong: we design, but not tested it to our users. That was the mistake, the fatal error we didn’t realized before. We design things we think would work. But we didn’t validate it to our users.

UX is all about the process before the design. You can’t design something that you think that was good for you, or something that you think would work for you. Remember that it’s not about yourself. We design to our target users. As long as it works for our users, and it is easy for them to use and understand our products, then that’s the best design.

Always ask ‘why?’

Why?? Because when working in a startup or company, as a UX Researcher, you’ll receive a lot of request, like

“Olivia, can you do a research for this?”

Always, ask them back, “Why we should do that, Mister?”

It is always good to know what they really want, because sometimes, they didn’t know what they want. Sometimes they jump into the conclusions (like: “We should redesign this!!!”) without knowing the background and their goals.

Always do the “detailing” : when you received a request from your manager, remember to ask their goals + their background. It might really help you to define the research plans.

Assumptions is good, but always validate it!

Assumptions is good. When we’re going to make something new, or redesigning something, we should always list down our assumptions.

For example, my Project Manager asked me to redesign a page and delete some informations to make the page ‘clean’. He assumed that the users didn’t need the informations on the page so we can delete it right away. So, assumption number #1: the users didn’t need the info because it is a minor informations.

But our assumptions is not always right.

We should always, and always validate it to our users. So I conduct a usability testing, and a little bit of interview. And it turns out that our assumption was wrong : the users still need the info, and we can’t delete it right away.

See? It is good to playing with our assumptions, but always, validate it to your users

Always do The Usability Testing

So, let’s say that you’re done. You have been detailed the request your PM gave you, you list down the assumptions, you validate your assumptions and you made the wireframe. Are you done? NOPE!

Always and always do the usability testing. This is the most important thing, to see if our products really works. Always test it to your users with prototype. And if anything goes wrong, you can always fix it right away after the usability test.

Recommended link: https://uxplanet.org/turning-usability-testing-data-into-action-without-going-insane-9f364a683076

Well, actually there are a lot of things I learned here. But I think that’s all for today! Please correct me if I’m wrong, I’m still learning.

Should I make another medium story about UX like this?

<a href="https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href">https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href</a>

What I Learned After 90 Days Being a UX Researcher was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What I Learned After 90 Days Being a UX Researcher

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