Devil is in the user flows
Why designing and testing user flows makes you a better UX practitioner.
Daily work occurs always in a hurry, a succession of meetings, interruptions, last-minute changes and so on take place while deadlines are always around the corner, staring ruthlessly at us. We don’t always have the chance to invest as much time to craft and refine our work as we would like to, and sometimes we have to put some pieces of work aside.
Let’s face it, no one would ever put UI processes aside because you just can’t walk into a meeting to sell a design without having a gorgeous interface. But you can leave almost 99% of those meetings without speaking about user flows.
You just can’t walk into a meeting to sell a design without having a gorgeous interface. But you can leave almost 99% of those meetings without speaking about user flows.
But you and I know, how problematic it is when “invisible” stuff like user research is dismissed due to a lack of time, because usability pitfalls hide that behind the scenes.
The same happens with user flow design: skipped or poorly designed user flows combined with no testing, will lead to a usability snowball effect.
Skipped or poorly designed user flows combined with no testing , will lead to a usability snowball effect.
So, the challenge is to turn flows into something visible and meaningful for those business folks who walk into a room demanding all about the visuals but nothing about everything else.
To do so IMHO I find flowcharts diagrams are a great alternative, maybe it’s because of my technical background but I find them really useful and you should consider to add them to your UX toolkit.
The benefits of focusing on user flows
So, let me play Jiminy Cricket for a while, and try to persuade you to add flowchart creation in your UX processes.
- You’ll detect if something’s missing → As we usually work in a hurry, we are more than likely to forget the definition of some parts. By creating flowcharts, we can double-check and detect missing elements like: status, screens, validations, decision points… Flowcharts make our designs more complete, consistent and precise.
- You’ll get better insights from usability tests → Ask people to replicate the whole process you want to test. Don’t skip any steps, ask them to fill forms, check emails, make online payments…and if it’s difficult/ boring/wrong they will most certainly complain. Good news, the usability snowball effect has been stopped and you’ll be able to fix the problem before it hits your users.
- Users get features faster → I can assure you that if you provide flowcharts along with the requirements and UI design, you will be enabling developers to code faster and so, users will get features faster as if by magic. You can measure this and put that in front of your company board.
- The development team will love you → Someone is going to work over your work. In most companies, development comes right after prototyping and testing processes. Tech people will really appreciate the fact you have learned the basics of their language to express what you expect.
- Less interruptions while working→ I bet you have had a developer by your side asking questions like “What happens when/if…?” more often than you would have liked. Guess what? Points 1 and 4 will dramatically decrease that kind of interruptions.
If you have arrived at this point and you are still skeptical about introducing flowcharts on a UX daily basis, then you should check this video:
