7 More Tips to Improve Your UX Strategy
How to prioritize improving user experience
Here are 7 more tips to help you improve your product’s UX. See Part 1.
1. Be competitor saavy
Be aware of the product’s strengths and weaknesses relative to its competition. To stand out and win customers or your industry area, consider studying what the top aspects are that are the most valuable to your customers. If your competitors are beating you, consider what are the top things you can do to catch up. Learn how to distinguish your brand and stay engaged with your audience over a time.
2. Observe semantics
Users of your product come from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds. Consider your audience as you design, especially the meaning of colors and shapes. What is “good” or “bad” in one country may have a different meaning in another. Don’t assume your user has the same level of context to your symbol or color choices — here is the time to get a second opinion.
3. Personalization
Customization for users of different skill levels or different needs makes for a better personalized experience. For example, the use of cookies in web browsers can surface up relevant content. Collecting user data to give them views that they are most interested in would be a good application of customization and draw in more engagement than a general view that is for all users.
Another aspect of customization would be giving users the flexibility to adjust their interface or display in a way that would best work for them. This is highly desirable because users tend to have a diverse variety of needs that can’t always be discovered through initial research.
4. Protect white space
White space is self-explanatory. It surrounds an element or collection of elements and provides a buffer for the eyes to scan and parse. It provides emphasis and contrast. It is simple and necessary component for designs simply because it allows designers to build a grid.
Lack of it leads to clutter, disorganization and lowers comprehension.
5. Avoid clutter
Information presented to the user should be easy to understand and given at the right amount. Think of the tale of Goldilocks as a reminder, you don’t want to show so little as to not give context to the design element but showing too much can be incomprehensible and overwhelming to a user.
Clutter exists in the form of wordiness, lack of white space, too many elements, unnecessary animation, lack of contrast or organization and more. Reduce such visual or interaction clutter for a better design.
6. Persistent calls to action
Whether through a site map or journey map, consider the main call to actions for your product when first designing the product’s information architecture. Consider making them sticky or highly visible on the page, especially for mobile applications.
7. Consider context
A common UX pitfall is designing in a silo. That can mean a variety of things, whether your team doesn’t collaborate with others, doesn’t consider the competitive landscape of similar products or simply ignores the context of how the product will be used by a customer.
Use cases shed some light into the emotional or physical aspects of how your customer is using your product. Whether they are frequently doing a task or only encounter it every 4 months, establishing use cases brings a baseline context into mind for those on your team as you discuss what areas to prioritize in the future.
