A beginner’s guide to UX problem solving
Designers in their formative years greatly struggle to get through the problem solving phase especially because they are too many design standards and processes, that overwhelms them. Young designers are heavily dependent on their PM’s or design mentors to guide them, sometimes it can get frustrating to be instructed.
I often get asked “How do I get ahead and be a strategic partner rather than being viewed as a mere designer. What do you think I should do?” This reminds me of myself when I started off my career in UX, I greatly struggled through this phase and even thought I made the wrong career choice. But, after all these years of experience I can tell a thing or two about ‘UX problem solving’ and I wish someone demystified this to me when I started off. Here are some tips for those who are looking for some guidance on how to go about UX problem solving.
But first, validate the problem!
Many young designers I work with are good designers but bad problem solvers, this is a serious problem, if you ask me. Think about the last time you were asked to solve a problem, what did you do? Did you think about how to solve the problem or why are we solving the problem? Many a times, whenever a problem is presented to us, we immediately enter a ninja mode by thinking how should we solve it, but do we take a step back and think is this even a valid problem to solve?
“Engineers and business people are trained to solve problems, designers are trained to discover the real problems”- Don Norman in his book, The Design of Everyday Things
We will fail if we are trying to solve a wrong problem no matter however right your solution is. Resist the temptation to converge upon a solution rather diverge your thoughts onto why had this problem occurred in the the first place. A simpler way to do this is to use the ‘5 why’s method’- this helps to unearth the root cause and identify the right problem.
Demystifying the problem
To understand any problem, we need to first break it down to gain better understanding, this helps to identify pitfalls. A user journey or a customer journey would be very helpful in gaining insight over user actions in a product. A user journey puts focus on pain points and helps uncover any blindspots that we may have missed while validating the problem. Similarly, if your goal is to ascertain possible impacts of the particular feature on other areas of the product, draw out an information architecture map, which is essential to know as it will prevent any potential experience breakages in the product.
At first drawing out an user journey/IA map may seem daunting but once you start applying it, you will realise how valuable it is. There are many templates available on the internet to help you get started quickly, however I personally use Lucid Chart for drawing out these maps. If none of these interests you, you can always use your trusted pen and paper.
Unearthing the story behind the numbers
If you are not already looking into the analytics, I suggest you better get started. Often designers shy away from numbers but numbers are where the meat is.
As soon as you have some data, you can start looking for trends and patterns. It might be a little overwhelming at first, but this a sort of direct feedback. And bonus, is that decision makers love data, so make data your best friend.
However, merely getting the numbers aren’t enough, you need to understand and question it. In order to meet the real user needs, facts are not enough, we need to tell a story.
Being grounded with your users
Throughout your project lifecycle where ever possible, get yourself updated with the user context constantly. There are various channels through which you can ascertain your customer feedback/pain points like customer forums, support tickets, your Customer Service Representative, CAB (Customer Advisory Board) meetings or by talking to your customers directly.
If you are working for a product company it is imperative to do all of this regularly. This way you stay on the ground with your users and helps increase empathy. Empathy helps you solve problems better.
UX problem solving is less about design and more about the ecosystem
Very often designers find difficulty understanding complex business problems. This is because we care less about the business problems and worry more about growing our design expertise. We were wrong the whole time, being a UX designer is knowing more than our users.
One needs to understand business, statistics, tech and roughly the whole ecosystem of our product in order to be able to design better.
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Bharghavi Kirubasankar
