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How To Use Affinity Mapping For UX Research?

Mar 9, 2023 | User Research | 0 comments

Sometimes, cross-functional UX teams are required to analyse substantial amounts of research data and synthesise their findings to achieve the desired user experience outcome. One tool that helps facilitate this process is affinity mapping.

This article will delve into the basics of how to create an affinity map from scratch and exploit it to enhance user experience.

What is an affinity map?

Also known as affinity diagramming, or collaborative sorting, affinity mapping is a synthesis tool employed to quickly surface common themes in UX research findings, and visually present them in a way that almost anyone can interpret.

For all intents and purposes, an affinity diagram can be simply referred to as a visualisation of the relationships between concepts. It helps to identify patterns in UX data, and can be used to make sense of large amounts of information.

Overall, the advantage of using an affinity map over other types of UX research is that it allows one to see how two user groups and categories are related and how they differ from one another.

For context, imagine two groups where Group A consists of users who like tea, whereas Group B contains users who enjoy coffee.

By creating an affinity map for these two groups, you’ll be able to see that there’s likely some common ground between them—in other words, where both groups have similar interests.

But what about differences?

Let’s say one group drinks five cups per day while another group drinks only three cups per week. This difference might not seem so significant at first glance, but when viewed through an affinity map lens, the differences become clearer.

What is the purpose of an affinity map?

Affinity mapping aims to organise information like field notes or surveys into groups of themes based on relationships and commonalities during UX ideation sessions.

As such, the core purpose of an affinity map is to first streamline data collected through user interviews, surveys, and other research methods into one centralised location. This is where one can easily find information as needed when creating prototypes or building out new features within a product roadmap.

So, utilising affinity maps, UX research team can create a visual representation of their UX research findings. They do so by mapping users’ preferences for features, functions, and interactions with a product. This will give them valuable insight into how people are using their apps or websites and what they like about the solution compared to other products.

When to use affinity mapping?

Affinity diagrams help multiple UX teams across various disciplines to iteratively analyse substantial qualitative data and plot a meaningful path forward. In fact, affinity maps help make large research data more manageable and digestible, and thus, more actionable.

Bottom line, affinity mapping can be used to turn user research into actionable insights that drive product decisions. However, they shouldn’t be used as a brainstorming tool but instead as a way to reconcile and act on the ideas derived from the brainstorming exercises.

So, affinity mapping should be used when:

You are solving a complex problem.
After your brainstorming session.
You have many ideas or substantial research data to work with.

How to create an affinity diagram?

The most effective way to create an affinity diagram is by collaborating with all members of your UX design team. In practice, the diagram structures are relatively straightforward to facilitate the easy breakdown of sophisticated information.

This allows any team member to understand the disparate elements of the concept. It also enables UX teams to streamline their processes, reach consensus within a group and create new and innovative solutions.

Here are the main steps involved in the creation of an affinity diagram:

Idea generation

The affinity diagramming process starts with the generation of ideas one would desire their findings to revolve around. In practice, these ideas shape the direction of the team’s questions and notes. However, this should happen after the team has brainstormed the main product ideas.

Make notes

In the next step, teammates create sticky notes detailing the problems observed from their research or the questions they are seeking to answer.

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch

Find patterns and themes

After having a number of sticky notes to work with, they are organised into common themes, groups or categories. The next steps is to continually iterate this process whilst evaluating each sticky note to add it to an existing category or create an entirely new one.

Ensure to name these groupings by their key identifying factors, but remember that you may need to make slight adjustments as you proceed.

Subsequently, you can choose to input this information into a spreadsheet, or a tool like Miro, Mural or FigJam to visualise everything at once, then move to the next step.

Explore findings from groups

This step involves exploiting your affinity diagrams to create action items and timelines that drive you to solve the problem at hand. You do this through exploration by identifying which groups and categories are related to one another—or not.

Try using arrows to visualise these connections to indicate potential relationships between themes.

In essence, the goal of the exercise isn’t just to find correlations between multiple UX variables. It is also to analyse patterns across multiple UX variables so that the UX research team can make better decisions about how those variables affect each other and what they want each variable to represent.

After identifying these groups, you can introduce some additional filters and organisation tactics, such as:

Prioritisation: Here, UX teams can prioritise the groups based on the project goal.
Hierarchy: If there is a clear hierarchy between stickers, UX teams can group them based on the level of idea.

The fundamental premise of the above steps is to help UX teams derive major insights, understand user needs, pain points and identify gaps in UX data. These insights can be translated into empathy maps, personas and problem statements to aid the design process.

Generally, UX research team should see their data come to life as they iterate through these steps and get a better understanding of the scope of the problem.

How to use affinity mapping to analyse UX research?

Affinity diagrams essentially provide an excellent way for any UX team, especially product teams, to organise and synthesise their ideas. They help in turning qualitative user research—from thematic analysis to ethnographic research— to derive actionable insights that drive UX product decisions.

However, affinity mapping isn’t suited for quantitative data or research from sources like focus groups. This is because focus group participants tend to render disparate perspectives concurrently, eliminating the affinity mapping requirement.

That being said, affinity mapping is well suited where UX research has lots of contexts and is required to consider various experiences. For example, in-depth interviews (IDIs).

The outcome of effective affinity mapping can then be exploited to:

Build personas that clearly represent one’s target audience.
Inform the creation of empathy maps.
Synthesise insights to create a problem statement for one’s design process.
Provide a stronger foundation for ideation.

Affinity mapping UX example

Photo by Yan Krukau

UX teams can organise their ideas by colour-coding, using different coloured sticky notes to organise ideas. They can choose different colours to represent ideas, customer feedback or even label each cluster with a different colour. Sub-categories can also be a different colour from the main categories.

Subsequently, teammates can reorganise the sticky notes into new groups, while retaining the colour from the original organisation.

teammates can reorganise the sticky notes

Affinity mapping vs card sorting

Both affinity mapping and card sorting are tools employed during information architecture organisation. Card sorting is a usability technique in which participants are asked to categorise cards based on their assigned labels (e.g., “categories” or “functions”).

On the other side of the spectrum, affinity mapping analyses how users interact with products and how they think about those products through their past experiences and current expectations.

Despite sharing similarities, affinity mapping is more free-flowing and less structured than card sorting. In fact, card sorting is more structured to help UX designers better understand what content types might work together on a specific page or feature.

Furthermore, card sorting is a better tool for understanding how users categorise information, while affinity mapping is better for understanding how users think about things.

What is the difference between affinity mapping and empathy mapping?

You may have heard the term affinity mapping and empathy mapping used interchangeably. However, there is a clear distinction between these two techniques.

Affinity mapping is a technique for organising and visualising the data collected from user research. It helps you to understand how your users relate to each other by identifying themes and patterns across all users’ behaviours. Affinity maps encourage different ways of thinking for UX teams to break ingrained assumptions.

On the other hand, empathy maps are considered a temporary container for the insights gathered during user research. For example, some UX researchers would save time by writing insights from user interviews directly onto an empathy map. Thereafter, the UX researcher would start the affinity mapping activity to organise the information they have on the empathy map.

Conclusion

In summary, affinity maps are useful for turning user research into actionable insights. Affinity maps are typically used by product teams to synthesise their findings from user interviews in order to identify pain points related to the design elements that were discussed during UX research interviews.

If you’re new to UX research or haven’t done much of it before, affinity mapping can also help you get started with this type of work.

In fact, it’s important to note that affinity maps aren’t just for UX researchers—anybody can use them! For example, designers might map out which elements they think are most important when designing an app.

On the other hand, marketers might map out how users interact with certain sections within an e-commerce site during shopping trips online before making any changes based on this information.

In summary, affinity maps work:

When you want to group ideas together. Especially, as a great way of getting an overview of the pain points that affect your users and their needs.

When you have too many ideas to organise. Affinity mapping is a quick way to see where they overlap and where they’re not connected at all.

If you have a substantial amount of data (or if your team is just having trouble prioritising). Affinity mapping can help you find commonalities between different types of information—and help prioritise which pieces are most important for further research or development.

At NetizenExperience, we’ve helped create affinity maps for various user research services projects. Reach out for a discussion on how they can be useful for your UX design project

What is a UX Case Study? (+5 examples)

Mar 1, 2023 | User Experience | 0 comments

UX designers should be able to articulate their ideas in a clear and concise manner. Creating a comprehensive UX case study for a UX design portfolio is one intuitive way to stand out from the crowd. It is straightforward to create one, but there are specific factors a UX designer must keep in mind while doing so.

What are UX Case studies?

UX case studies are detailed examinations of specific design projects focusing on user experience. They describe the design process and outcomes that include information about user research that was conducted, design decisions that were made and the impact of the design on the end users.

UX case studies can be used to showcase the design process and the outcomes of a project, as well as to provide insights and lessons learned for future design projects.

Elements of a UX case study

UX case study typically includes the following elements:

A description of the design project, including the goals and objectives.
Information about the user research that was conducted, including any user interviews, surveys, or usability testing that was performed.
A description of the UX design process, including the design decisions that were made and the rationale behind them.
A description of the resulting product, including any sketches, wireframes, or prototypes that were developed.
Information about the usability and effectiveness of the product, including any data or feedback from users.
Insights and lessons learned from the design process, including any challenges or obstacles that were encountered and how they were overcome.

In addition to these elements, the UX case study may also include images, screenshots, or videos of the product to help illustrate the design process and the outcomes. Ideally, it ought to be presented as a story. The reader should always be taken on a journey of understanding your work and skills.

A smart way to come up with a story structure is to use Aristotle’s 6 Elements of Storytelling.

Plot (Mythos): In the UX Case Study context, this spells an objective or aim. A poorly constructed case study might ruin an otherwise excellent narrative—and the same is true of UX experiences. Your case studies ought to tell the story of your creative workflow. In other words, it should highlight your inspirations, who you are, your skills and your work (output) in a cohesive manner.
Character (ethos): A UX case study should emphasise your character as a professional. Essentially, showcasing how good you are at your work, how reliable you are, and how consistent you are. Character is also about how you, as the lead player, work with your supporting characters, and your teammates.
Theme: Your case study should always have a theme. You can provide your readers with a project’s context by describing your objectives, your obstacles and the motivations that led you to take on the project. However, all these elements should be consistent with a theme. This will make your readers appreciate your project more and have a clear goal around it.
Diction (Lexis): Diction is the language characters use in a play to convey ideas to each other (an adaptation of the Oxford English Dictionary). That being said, ensure to get your point across effectively by using the right words—and not trying to outsmart your audience with fancy words. Choose simple, clear language and choose a friendly tone of voice to help your case studies impress your prospective clients.
Melody (Melos): This element revolves around an audience’s emotional response. Your case studies’ emotional reading experience is affected by your tone or sentence structure, to the same degree. Be certain to write with plain language, avoiding technical jargon and choosing a friendly, professional tone of voice to help prospects to value your UX case studies.
Décor and aesthetic design: This refers to what your UX case study feels and looks like. Just like stage design in a play, decor in a case study would be the visual design. Use compelling graphics and shots of your previous finished work to convey your story. Make sure your portfolio includes legible text. Your portfolio should be user-friendly, efficient and pleasant.

How to build a UX case study?

An effective UX case study is not just a string of nice flows, visuals and prototypes. You need to curate it in an organised flow to bring out all the important details.

1. Overview

This is the introduction to the case study. It gives the necessary context for the readers to understand what your work is all about. This is usually the part that is read the most, and it is, therefore, important that you put your best foot forward as you write this section.

2. Defining the problem

Make a good case for why a project exists after introducing it. You mentioned this in the overview, but now is your chance to make a good case for it.

Photo by Christina Morillo

Does a competitor analysis or market research demand a new product?
Was there past user research in your company that suggests a need for the redesign of the product?
Remember to lay this out such that it presents your work as the solution to the problem.

3. Understanding the users and audience

After defining and explaining the problem, be specific about the problem you are addressing and how it affects your users and the way they use your product. If you need user research-oriented work, include interview scripts, affinity maps, and spreadsheets to demonstrate your UX methodology.

Setting up the user research insights which the design work would be relying on should be a key goal of this section. Your findings here should help you set up that connection, so focus more on describing your users and their needs than on your process.

4. Roles and responsibilities

Here, you should delve deep into what role each team member played and the impact of these roles on the final outcome. For example, how you and each team member resolved identified UX problems.

5. Scope and constraints

Next, having defined the problem, and shown who the users are, and roles of the team members, it is important to show the constraints within which you had to work to solve the problem. This puts your skills, including the soft ones like critical thinking, on show.

6. Process and what you did

Develop a rough outline of the steps you would follow when working on the user problem. If you are working as a team, then all the better. Discuss how and what steps you took to approach and solve the problem.

Your case study should define and explain the UX design process so that the reader knows how you solved the user problem.

7. Outcomes and lessons

Often ignored by junior UX Designers, this section is very important. Whether it was a good or bad experience, whatever you did in life adds up to your life experiences. Why not take the opportunity and write for the readers about what you learned while working on the UX project?

5 UX case study examples for inspiration

The examples shared below all follow the below-mentioned template with some minor adjustments:

UX Case Study Sections:
Introduction: Introduce the project concept, team, and used tools.
Project Overview: Share the main concept and the motivations behind it.
Exploration: The problem the platform will solve, preliminary research, and conclusions from the research, i.e., the project scope and problem statement.
Demonstration: Explains the decision to feature specific capabilities in non-technical terms.
Design Process: An extensive explanation of the discoveries and the exact steps.
Design Studio: Visualisation process with wireframes, sitemap, and prototypes.
Design Iterations: Style guide elements like typography, colors, and visual elements breakdown.
Propositions: Challenges and solutions.
User Flow: Altering the user flow based on testing and feedback.
Prototype: Highlighting features on a high fidelity prototype in Figma.
Takeaways: Conclusions.

Jambb Social Platform by Finna Wang

Jambb is an emerging social platform where creators grow their communities by recognising and rewarding fans for their support. Currently, creators monetise fan engagement through advertisements, merchandise, and subscriptions, to name a few.

Image from: https://www.finna.wang/jambb

However, this only represents 1% of fans, leaving the other 99% (who contribute in non-monetary ways) without the same content, access, and recognition that they deserve.

Strat VR by Jiacheng Yang

Strat is a hardware and software system designed for productivity in a virtual workspace. It constitutes a portable VR headset, a foldable keyboard, a stylus and various modules, including a power adapter, game controller and more.

Image from https://www.jyang.io/strat

It is designed for creatives, programmers, journalists, and video editors, as a new way of working that is immersive, powerful, portable, efficient and affordable.

Perfect Recipes App by Tubik

Perfect Recipes combines the functionality for cooking and purchasing what’s needed for users’ meals.

Image from https://tubikstudio.com/works/perfect-recipes-app

Databox by FireArt

Databox by FireArt is a provider of consulting services and expertise for building and implementing large-scale distributed reactive backend systems for processing massive large-scale datasets.

Image from https://fireart.studio/

An Approach to Digitisation in Education

The TINIA online platform enables students to interactively and playfully create solutions to real-world challenges through Design Thinking, all based on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Image from: https://www.moritzoesterlau.de

Conclusion

Every UX case study is a distinctive narrative about your venture and previous works. Beginning with the framework outlined in this article will reveal who you are as a UX designer and how you solved a problem.

At NetizenExperience, we’ve covered a wide range of UX design and UX research services. Reach out for a discussion on how they can be useful for your UX design project.

Top 12 Malaysia eCommerce Websites

Feb 27, 2023 | Ecommerce UX | 0 comments

eCommerce (electronic commerce) is essentially a series of activities that revolve around the buying or selling of products or services over the Internet. It is underpinned by technology-driven activities like electronic funds transfer, data interchange, transactions processing, supply chain and inventory management and digital marketing.

In addition to facilitating traditional wholesale and retail, eCommerce also plays an important role in digitising a variety of services. For example, travel, legal, research, and educational services.

For the most part, eCommerce has created an unprecedented opportunity for sales across continents to reach disparate buyers through the internet, especially for small and medium enterprises. And Malaysia is no exception, with eCommerce providing a medium for many new businesses to thrive whilst offering customers convenience.

How big is the eCommerce market in Malaysia?

According to Statista, eCommerce revenue in Malaysia is predicted to peak at US$9.08bn in 2022. It also projects an annual eCommerce growth rate of 16.93% between 2022 and 2027, resulting in a predicted market volume of $19.84bn by 2027 with 56.0% user penetration.

According to e-Conomy SEA multi-year research programme, the Malaysian eCommerce market grew by 68% in 2021. This demonstrates a 47% year-on-year growth of online shoppers, as approximately 14.43 million Malaysians bought consumer goods online in 2021.

Relatedly, according to the Global Data Research Institute, Malaysian eCommerce payments are forecasted to increase to US$13.8 billion by 2025. This forecast is landed credibility by the fact that Malaysia’s internet penetration rate currently stands at 89.6% as of 2022.

According to eCommerceDB, Malaysia was ranked 35th globally in 2021, with a collective revenue of US$6.3 billion in 2021. In fact, the average annual revenue per online shopper for consumer goods in Malaysia is estimated at approximately US$566.

Top 10 eCommerce sites in Malaysia

The websites shared below constitute Malaysia’s most profitable eCommerce stores by revenue, popularity and traffic metrics. In addition to the growing popularity of eCommerce in Malaysia, factors like simplified site designs, mobile responsiveness, strong UX/UI, etc also contribute to their popularity.

Shopee

Shopee is the leading eCommerce marketplace in Malaysia, with recorded revenue of $139 million in 2021. The platform has a relatively large product assortment comprising imports from China, and also multiple local sellers

For the most part, Shopee focuses more on delivering a mobile shopping experience for its diverse users. This mobile-first ethos is demonstrated across its UX design, which spells simplicity whilst maintaining good navigation and icon responsiveness.

In fact, the site offers a commoditized and algorithm-driven ecommerce environment—from the moment customers initially discover products, to when they make their first purchase.

Image Credit: https://shopee.com.my/

eBay

Originally from the US, eBay began as an auction and used products marketplace. However, later on, eBay became the world’s third-largest general eCommerce marketplace.

The eBay Malaysia iteration is well established and has grown since its inception in 2004. eBay’s UX theme is minimalist, with a central focus on the user. For example, the site’s header image is simple, and its search bar is consistent with the rest of the site.

Image Credit: eBay Malaysia

Lazada

Launched in 2012, Lazada is one of the largest eCommerce platforms in Southeast Asia. Later acquired by the Alibaba Group, Lazada maintains an advanced fulfilment and shipping options, with a comprehensive product assortment and multiple flexible payment options.

For example, buyers can employ everything from bank cards, over-the-counter (OTC) payments to cash-on-delivery (COD), etc.

Image Credit: https://www.lazada.com.my/

Lazada’s UX experience is mainly centred around a desktop experience and mobile experience to facilitate advanced cross-border selling. With that theme, it maintains an easy user flow with advanced search functions. For example, algorithmic auto-complete suggestions that allow for in-depth search by product name and model number

Lelong

Lelong is one’s Malaysia’s most popular local eCommerce websites. Launched in 2007, the B2C marketplace, recording an average monthly traffic of 5.4 million visits.

The website charges sellers commission for every sale and also sells sponsored ads for product promotion. This business model guides its intuitive UX theme that focuses on ensuring visitors do not get disrupted by ads whilst shopping. It also exploits eye-catching imagery and compelling copy to immediately tell visitors what the site is for.

Image Credit: https://www.lelong.com.my/

GoShop

The Go Shop marketplace provides its visitors with a multi-channel retail UX experience. The UX design focuses on delivering home shopping convenience, supplemented by a 24-hour television channel.

In practice, customers can place orders either via their mobile application or phone call at home. In addition, the marketplace offers a wide range of products, including electronic appliances, kitchenware, beauty, health & fitness, and fashion accessories.

Image Credit: https://www.goshop.com.my/

Zalora

Established in 2012, Zalora is considered amongst the largest online marketplaces for fashion products in Southeast Asia. The website maintains a stylish and modern aesthetic whilst catering to different fashion buyers’ needs when shopping for Gucci, Michael Kors, and Longchamp products.

Image Credit: https://www.zalora.com.my/

With a presence in Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Brunei, Zalora’s simplistic luxury theme focuses on remaining seamless to navigate for the users.

For example, the site maintains a ‘quick view’ feature where a small pop-up appears with extra images to save the customer time clicking back and forth.

Hermo

Launched in 2012 to sell Korean skincare and makeup products, Hermo later expanded its product range to non-Korean brands. Currently, Hermo is recognised as an eCommerce platform to purchase general beauty products. Furthermore, the website’s monthly traffic is average 718,000 user visits.

Famed for offering discount coupons to enable buyers to purchase products at attractive prices, Hermo’s UX exudes a clean design with the user at the centre. The website’s clean graphics do a lot to complement its call-to-action directing you to exciting offers seamlessly.

From the outset, users are immediately given the option to either ‘SELL’ or ‘FIND’. As such, users engage in a smooth flow to find what they exactly need, supplemented by advanced search capabilities.

Image credit: https://www.hermo.my/

Mudah

Established in 2007, Mudah is the biggest eCommerce website in Malaysia for classified listings. The Monthly traffic of the website is approximately 12 million visits.

Because Mudah doesn’t run the process of buying and selling products, its UX theme focuses on connecting buyers and sellers.

Image Credit: https://www.mudah.my/

Taobao

Originating from mainland China, Taobao is a popular eCommerce marketplace and retail platform utilised across various southeast regions. With over 500 million registered users and 60 million active visitors, Taobao provides access to a large variety of products at fairly competitive prices.

For example, electronics, home appliances, and lifestyle products.

The eCommerce site’s UX offers convenience for users through intuitive icons that help them to find goods categories quickly. Additionally, users can easily scale product photos for better decision-making.

Image Credit:https://world.taobao.com/

PrestoMall

Rebranded from 11Street Malaysia, PrestoMall is a popular C2C and B2C online marketplace in Malaysia. The company’s business model involves charging traders a commission for successful sales. The company also deploys sponsored ads to gain additional revenue.

The website’s UX has intuitive search features that enable customers to see the most relevant and helpful reviews immediately, with minimal effort. Furthermore, it is observed that its design principle limits navigation choice to give the user clear but restricted options. This ensures they aren’t overwhelmed.

Image Credit:https://www.prestomall.com/

Qoo10

Founded in 2010 in Singapore, Qoo10 offers a wide variety of products like food & dining, baby & kids, home & living, women & men’s fashion, beauty & health, and digital & mobile products.

The main aim of the UX theme throughout the website is to magnify sellers’ competencies with quick access to fastshipping, integrated logistics solutions, and advanced fulfilment solutions.

Image Credit: https://www.qoo10.my/

Furthermore, Qoo10 focuses on small and medium-sized merchants whilst offering clever graphics and interactive galleries to facilitate the user journey.

Ezbuy

Ezbuy enables Malaysian buyers to buy products that do not usually ship to Malaysia. Essentially, it acts as a third-party bridge to receive products typically sold on sites like Amazon US, Amazon Japan, and Tmall. In practice, the website charges buyers a service fee from the retail price of the item they have bought.

Fundamentally, the site’s UX is effective since it focuses on the product and avoids unnecessary distractions. It also deploys a unique box layout for browsing quickly through products, with many dynamic images that move to interact with the customer.

Image Credit: https://ezbuy.my/

Why are good UX/UI important for ecommerce platforms?

UX consideration is essential for an eCommerce website that desires to increase brand awareness. In practice, an intuitive UX is critical to ensure website visitors can seamlessly navigate one’s website, find what they exactly need, purchase it, and move on.

Enhance your platform’s performance with our UI/UX design agency, dedicated to refining user experiences for better customer engagement and increased conversions.

The smooth flow of a user journey is imperative to ensure repeat visits and drive conversions. This, in turn, translates into increased engagement and customer loyalty.

Conclusion

With technological advancements leading to high internet dependence in Malaysia, the eCommerce space will only expand by leaps and bounds. More Malaysians are seeking to avoid going to crowded supermarkets, and want to get everything at their doorstep.

With many services and products now being purchased online, it’s imperative for emerging and existing e-commerce players to deliver satisfactory user experiences to their target audience.

An intuitive UX design fosters trust in users, and thus, leads to repeat visits as it renders a shopping experience that customers will not forget.

Additionally, a user-friendly and easy-to-access eCommerce site can improve SEO rankings as search engines consider indicators like user engagement and resting time on a site. In turn, the better one’s SEO rankings, the more traffic one can attract.

Reach out to us at NetizenExperience for UX based web development for your ecommerce platforms.

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Expert in integrating popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify and implementing essential features such as product catalogs, shopping carts, payment gateways, and inventory management
Optimization techniques to ensure fast loading times, smooth user experience, and improved search engine rankings

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What Is UX Strategy And How To Create An Effective One?

Feb 27, 2023 | UX Strategy & Planning | 0 comments

Most people expect any conversation about UX to focus on ease of use and usability.

Unfortunately, this often leaves many user experience questions unattended to by web designers. For example, how does the product add value, and save time whilst providing a truly user-centric experience? Partnering with a professional UI/UX design agency can ensure that these critical questions are addressed, leading to a more effective and user-centered UX strategy.

It is more vital now than ever for UX designers to maintain well-defined goals and guidelines whilst navigating UX projects. Fortunately, a UX strategy can help with this. So, let’s find out what it is, why it matters, and how to actually create one.

What is UX strategy?

A UX strategy is a comprehensive plan of actions that guides the execution of a user design project over time. It primarily seeks to foster a shared understanding of the direction of UX activities whilst designing and implementing user experience solutions. This is all done with the goal of reaching an enhanced user experience over a period of time.

A UX strategy can cover a single product, service, or even feature to ensure that user-centred insights are integrated into an organisation’s business strategy.

This consequently enables UX practitioners to articulate clearly how executing the desired UX-related design activities will make the business more successful.

What does a UX strategist do?

A UX strategist is someone who curates the UX plan, leveraging their understanding of UI design, wireframing, journey mapping, and user research. So, UX strategists fundamentally exploit their practical UX skills, such as triangulating multiple UX inputs and sources of information, to design a high-level plan to improve user experience.

What is a UX roadmap?

A UX roadmap is a high-level artifact that acts as a single source of truth to help UX designers, developers, and stakeholders to align around a single vision and priorities. Roadmap is used by the UX team to communicate future work (to their stakeholders as well as within their own team). UX roadmap should help to answer this question: What should we solve for?

UX roadmaps can be in the form of spreadsheets, slide decks, visualisations, sticky notes, or a mix of media. These forms generally share the same central structure — they are organised by context (scope and time) and theme.

UX design

Components of UX strategy

Essentially, three core components make up a UX strategy to reflect the needs, constraints, and concerns of both users and the organisation.

1. Goals

Without clear goals, it’s impossible to report any meaningful UX progress and results along the way or to identify opportunities that impact your current business model. Furthermore, your user-experience goals and metrics will end up seeming irrelevant and disconnected from the business priorities.

For the most part, goals are usually set by leadership. However, the goals should tie directly back to end-user needs.

2. Vision or statement of intent

A UX strategy requires a user-centred vision or a mission statement with guiding principles regarding key-value propositions and differentiation statements. This information summarises the product or service’s strategic value and positioning.

3. Plan

A plan in a UX strategy is required to accomplish each UX goal. Such a plan is usually broken down into multiple objectives that describe the actions to take to reach the desired UX goal over time.

These objectives could focus on solving a problem in the user experience, exploring new ideas, or performing additional user research.

Nonetheless, completing these objectives should enable a team to demonstrate incremental progress toward the UX vision. Additionally, the UX plan can also include information regarding activities, timing approximations, uncertainties, prerequisites, and potential dependencies.

UX strategy framework

Steps to create a UX strategy

Before we delve into the creation of an effective UX strategy, there are four key elements that work in harmony to make a strategy effective.

Validated user research: This revolves around getting direct input from target users before starting UX design.
Business strategy: This encompasses the company’s guiding principles, competitive advantage, revenue streams, and high-level objectives.
Value innovation: This tenet scopes how the company seeks to pursue differentiation and lower costs.
User experience design: This focuses on delivering an effective user experience to seamlessly bring value to the customer.

Once the above tenets are understood, the key steps to create an effective UX strategy are:

1. Define the business strategy via stakeholder interviews

It is imperative to get the business stakeholders involved early in the UX project. Despite predominantly focusing on the user, a competent UX designer should not forget the business side.

To get insights from business stakeholders, subsequent interviews should focus on determining how the product is positioned in the market? It is also important to figure out the company’s objectives and how stakeholders measure the success of the product. Answering these questions ensures the UX design process keeps the brand and business in mind.

2. Product differentiation through competitive research and analysis

Once the UX design process is aligned with the company brand and strategy, you need to understand where the product lies in the existing competitive landscape. Essentially, you’ll need to research how the product tallies in comparison to comparable products (i.e., its competitive advantage).

3. Remain user-centred with validated user research

Ensure that you’re designing a product people actually want to use by getting feedback from target users early. This can be done via surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, card sorting, A/B testing, or field studies.

4. Set detailed design goals to get where you want to be

After exploiting the information gathered from both users and stakeholders, proceed to define specific metrics that will serve as a baseline to gauge the success of your UX design.

It is required to be highly specific about what you seek to achieve, and how you plan to accomplish it, and how to determine if you have reached the desired outcome.

5. Conduct methodical experiments and iterate on the results

Continuously employ your UX strategy guide to direct your efforts. Additionally, consistently validate both the UX strategy and your design. As you iteratively work to create a minimum viable product, test it with real users, and improve it based on feedback.

Why is UX strategy important?

It fosters a user-first mentality. A UX strategy helps teammates to better understand the prospective user’s pain points and goals. Thus, it helps in keeping designers, company executives, developers, and even customer service representatives aware of user needs.
It helps to connect all touchpoints by helping UX designers to understand the different ways a user interacts with the product or brand.
UX strategy can be the bridge between user-centred product design and overall business goals. This helps to create user-friendly products whilst remaining aware of metrics like ROIs, profit, and total revenue.
It can help build brand trust with clients and stakeholders alike.
It helps deliver a clear initiative and measure of success and what the company seeks to achieve, and a quantifiable way to assess when defined goals have been met.

Tips for creating a UX strategy

Remain user-centred

Many exciting technology companies, unfortunately, design products with their own profit-oriented goals and preferences in mind. And while ROIs and total revenue are crucial, it is vital that users always be at the forefront of any UX strategy.

An effective UX strategy puts the user’s current and future needs, and perception of the brand at the centre.

Photo by Fabian Wiktor from Pexels

Maintain specific goals

The more particular your goals are, the easier it is to establish when they’ve been met or not—or to even track how effective one’s UX design team is. Avoid vague goals like “augment user engagement.” Rather aim for a more specific target like “a 25% increase in both mobile and web user engagement.”

Always optimise for speed and accessibility

Keep speed and accessibility in mind, as it highly affects a user’s experience. Today’s consumers will judge the quality of a product on how quickly and smoothly it operates.

Define your business strategy

Define business objectives within your UX strategy by combining user experience goals with the overall goals of the business. For example, define the financial targets the organisation wants to hit or the improvements the company seeks for its processes, structure, culture, and performance.

Overall, this means getting the decision-makers in the company involved in the project during the early stages. While focusing on the user is important for a UX designer, it is equally important to pay attention to the business side of things.

Consider how your product is positioned within the market or how the stakeholders would measure the success of the product? Answering questions like these would help you create a business objective that stays at the back of your mind while designing the product for the users.

Take a holistic approach

Always take a holistic approach and consider all user touchpoints before and after a user interacts with the product to deliver more satisfying user experiences and brand perception.

User touch points can range from things like customer service support, advertisements and marketing, and purchasing processes.

UX strategy examples

Here is a sample example of a UX strategy for an online language learning service:

Vision: To provide a convenient tutor-pupil pairing experience.

Goals:

User goal 1: To enhance users’ access to language tutoring support.
Business goal: To increase the number of individuals signing up for membership.

Key result: 30% increase in new user sign-ups.

UX strategy:

Review current marketing initiatives
Review the current process for pairing tutors and students.
Conduct competitor research
Conduct user research to identify product gaps
Review tutor vetting and quality assurance processes

Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels

Concluding Remark

A UX strategy details how to keep a user’s experience with a brand in alignment with the overall company goals and objectives. Thus, ensuring that an organisation’s vision of what they want their customers to experience becomes a reality whilst staying within predetermined guidelines.

All things considered, an effective user experience strategy should be holistic and customer-centred with steps to make it better in the future. This means getting a detailed understanding of users’ behaviours, expectations, and needs through extensive qualitative and quantitative user research.

Leveraging a well-curated UX strategy can help prevent development errors and miscommunication between team members.

So, deploying a clear and comprehensive UX strategy can be the difference between delivering a product with long-term success and one that falls short of user expectations.

Need help to create a comprehensive UX strategy for your upcoming project? Contact us to initiate a discussion.

Card Sorting: Understand Your Users For Better Information Architecture (+Best Practices)

Feb 24, 2023 | User Research, User Experience | 0 comments

Have you ever been on a website where you’re looking for something, you click on a category but it’s not there, so you try a different category.

Nope, still can’t find it.

Most people will give up and leave if they visit a site and can’t find what they are looking for.

This is why card sorting is important, it helps your users find what they want and easily navigate through your website, this is especially important if you have a complex information architecture.

What is Information Architecture (IA)?

Information architecture focuses on the organization, structure, and labelling of content in an effective way so that users can find information and complete their tasks easily. The best way to figure out the information architecture is to involve your users in the planning stage by conducting a user research method: Card Sorting.

What is Card Sorting?

Card sorting is a UX research method to derive users’ perceptions of information space. This is done by recruiting a group of people, that are reflective of your target users, to arrange individual labels according to groupings or criteria that makes sense to them. They can be asked to label these groups as well.

Photo by Pixabay

By doing this, we can discover how your target users’ domain knowledge is structured, and an information architecture that meets your users’ expectations is created as an end result.

For example: You’re designing a car-rental website, and there’s an offering of about 100 cars for customers to choose from. How would you best organize all the vehicles into suitable categories for customers to easily browse and find what they are looking for?

Technical terms such as family car, full-size luxury car, and executive car for categories may not make sense to your users, and they may not be able to differentiate between these categories. The best way to find out what terms and categories make the most sense to your customers is to conduct card sorting: ask your customers to organize the vehicles into groupings that make sense to them and see how the patterns emerge.

This technique aims to uncover how a target audience’s domain knowledge is mentally structured. Consequently, this insight is then employed to create an information architecture(IA) that matches users’ mental expectations.

For all intents and purposes, card sorting isn’t a collaborative method for creating navigation. It is, instead, a tool that helps UX designers to better understand the people they are designing for.

Is card sorting good for UX?

As we have established, card sorting helps when creating the foundation for a robust information architecture. Fundamentally, a good IA forms the building blocks of efficient system navigation that closely matches users’ expectations.

As a result, with insights gathered from a card sort, UX researchers and designers have sufficient information to:

Build optimal structures for their websites
Decide on what to put on their homepages
Label categories and navigate

Generally speaking, card sorting is mainly useful in two cases:

When UX designers want to dissect how people understand and group disparate concepts. This understanding can help them to design better products for users.
When UX designers seek to dramatically improve an existing design. Fundamentally, in such instances, they will seek to make their information presentation more predictable for users.

Is card sorting qualitative or quantitative?

Though relatively straightforward, card sorting is a very powerful technique. It can unravel different dimensions of how users think about categories and concepts. Or how they describe them, and this can be incredibly useful when organising information in a manner that is easy to find for general users.

That being said, card sorting is predominantly a quantitative user research method for measuring the similarity of how users group their sets of information.

How to Conduct Open Card Sorting?

As we have established, card sorting is used to discover how people group concepts into categories in a manner that is logical to them. The grouping data is then analysed with cluster analysis to offer a visual representation of the correlated groups or categories.

This information is shared with the design team and developers to meaningfully structure the content and navigation of the website to support user goals.

In practice, the process of card sorting is fairly straightforward. The participants are given a set of cards (typically paper index cards) with example content written on them.

They are then asked to sort the cards into piles based on what they perceive is similar— and then describe the groups they make. This can be done with predetermined categories (closed card sort), or without predetermined categories (open card sort). Regardless, results are recorded, analyzed, and applied.

Choose a set of topics: There should be 40-80 items that represent the main content on the site, each topic should have its own individual index card. Note: Do take care to avoid topics that contain the same words as the users will tend to group them together.
Organize topics into groups: Shuffle the index cards to remove any possible bias and give them to the user. Ask the user to look at the index cards one at a time and to organize the cards together in groups that make sense to them. The piles can vary in size, and if the user isn’t sure where to place a card, it’s okay to leave it to the side in an “unsure” group.

Note: Do take care to reassure users that they can change their mind as they go, they can move the index cards from one group to another during the process or even to split off a pile into several new piles. False starts are to be expected since card sorting is a bottom-up process.

Pro Tip: Ask users to think out loud during the card sorting process: to speak aloud or verbalize their thoughts. Doing so allows you to understand the user’s thought process better, it provides detailed information and allows the user to take their time to analyze.

Label the groups: Once the user is done sorting all the index cards into groups, give them blank cards to write down a name or label for each group they have created. This will help to reveal the user’s mental model of the topic space, and possibly provide new ideas for navigation categories. Note: It’s vital that this step is done only after all the groups are created. If this step is introduced earlier, the user may lock themselves into categories whilst trying to sort the cards into groups.
Debrief: Ask the user to explain the rationale behind their thinking and the groups they have created. You may even follow up with questions such as:

Were there any items that were especially easy or difficult to place into groups?
Were there any cards that you felt belonged to two or more groups?
What are your thoughts about the items left in the “unsure” pile?

If needed, ask the user to break down large groups or group together small groups: Avoid doing this during steps 1-4, only do this once the user’s preferred grouping has been defined to their liking and after the initial debrief. You may ask the user to break down a large group into smaller groups or even ask them to group small groups into a larger category.
Repeat the steps above with 15-20 users: Conducting the card sorting with sufficient users is important in detecting patterns, we recommend at least 15 users to derive enough reliable data.
Analyze: Look for common groups, categories, themes and items that were commonly paired together. In analyzing the data, if you notice that there were some items that were repeatedly left off in the “unsure” pile, think about why that is. Perhaps the cards weren’t clear enough or it seemed unrelated, that’s why it’s helpful to ask the user why they have left these items in the “unsure” pile.

Also, read: How Many Test Users Are Enough for Card Sorting?

Types of Card Sorting

Open vs Closed vs Hybrid Card Sorting

Open card sorting is the most common, and it follows the steps described above, where users are free to assign the group labels for the groupings they have created.

Closed card sorting is when a predetermined set of categories are provided to the user, and the user is asked to organize the individual index cards into the predetermined categories.

Closed card sorting is useful in evaluating whether an existing category structure supports the content well. It doesn’t exactly reveal how users conceptualize a set of topics. Rather, it’s exploited to evaluate how well an existing category structure supports the website’s content, from a user’s perspective.

However, a drawback is that it isn’t reflective of the users’ mental model. Instead of closed card sorting, tree testing is a good alternative for evaluating navigation categories.

Hybrid card sorting is a combination of open and closed card sorting where the user can start by sorting cards into predetermined categories but have the ability to create their own categories if they want to.

Moderated vs Unmoderated Card Sorting

Moderated card sorting includes the debrief step, which provides an opportunity to gain qualitative insights from the user by asking questions, and investigating for further understanding. Moderated card sorting takes a bit more time and is more costly compared to unmoderated card sorting, but it’s a small price to pay for further insights. It is usually guided by a facilitator wherein he/she asks questions, probe for further understanding, and ask about certain cards— as needed.

Unmoderated card sorting entails users organising content into groups independently— with no interaction with a facilitator.

It is faster and cheaper compared to moderated card sorting as the moderator doesn’t need to speak with each individual user but unmoderated card sorting lacks qualitative insights.

This form of card sorting is suitable as a supplement to moderated card sorting, for highly distinct audience groups where there are 3 different audience groups with 20 users each, it will be very costly and time-consuming to conduct moderated card sorting with all the users. It would be a good idea to conduct moderated card sorting with 5-10 users of each group followed by unmoderated card sorting for the rest of the users of each group.

Paper vs Digital Card Sorting

The traditional way of card sorting is using paper where topics are written on index cards and these physical index cards are given to users to create groups on a large table.

The main advantage of this method is that there’s no learning curve for the user, and it’s also a flexible process where users can move cards around easily. It is also easier to move around physical cards on a large table compared to manipulating multiple objects on a computer screen where everything can’t be seen in a single view.

The main disadvantage of paper card sorting is the labour-intensive work where researchers have to manually document the groupings of each user and then input all the data into a tool for further analysis.

Digital card sorting is done using a software or web-based tool that simulates the card sorting process, the user can drag and drop the index cards into groups. There is a slight learning curve for this method as some users may not be very tech-savvy.

However, it’s most convenient for the research team as the software can analyze the results and generate the findings: revealing which items are commonly grouped together by all the users, the category names users created and the likelihood of two items being paired together.

The main disadvantage is that technical issues may occur, causing frustration and barriers for users in creating the exact groupings they want. Digital card sorting is often preferred in this time of remote work and remote user research and it also allows you to conduct card sorting with users that would otherwise be geographically unavailable.

Remote card sorting vs face to face card sorting

Remote card sorting involves participants sorting cards independently on their own digital devices. Generally, participants can perform open or closed card sorts remotely using dedicated programs that subsequently analyze the data for the company.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

Face-to-face card sorting involves in-person sessions with an observer present. In practice, users are given a set of cards to move around and then subsequently asked to talk through their thoughts, and the reasoning behind their decisions. As a result, the coordinator is given the opportunity to clarify any confusing observations to gain a better insight into why the user made their choices.

Card Sorting Tools

There are different tools available for conducting a card sorting exercise. For example, papers, cardboards, or an online card-arranging program for remote sessions.

Some examples include:

UserZoom UserZoom is known for its clean and intuitive user interface however you do need to buy the whole package that includes tree test, click test, survey, basic usability test and more. The card sorting tool has a feature in which you can invite users to your study in multiple ways, and it also allows you to segment your users into demographic groups. UserZoom allows you to invite your own participants or select participants from their database of over 120 million users. Pricing: Available upon request
OptimalSort OptimalSort has a simple user interface for users and unlike UserZoom, the card sorting tool is available as a standalone product. Stakeholders can be invited to view the data in the results interface. They have a card sorting demo for you to try for yourself and a free version available for card sorting tests but there’s a limit of 30 cards with 10 responses and 3 sessions per study. Price: Individual plan is $166 USD/month, the team plan pricing varies depending on how many people are in the team. For a team of 3+ seats, the price is $153 USD/month per user.
usabiliTEST UsabiliTEST offers a reliable card sorting tools for open, close and hybrid testing, with built-in data and analytics. They allow you to track all the answers the users give and even have a feature to send out automatic reminders to users. They offer a free trial for 48 hours where you can try out the tool without a limit on the number of tests you can do. Price: Premium plan is $24.95 USD/month, pro plan is $224.55 USD for a year
Proven By Users Offering a clean and simple user interface, this card sorting tool allows you to see them in preview before going live. It allows a feature where the user can create card subgroups or duplicate cards easily, and you can segment the users. The research data can be graphically represented in matrics and dendrograms and the data can even be downloaded in CSV format. Price: $39.95 USD for a month, $69.95 USD for 2 months, $399.95 USD for a year.
xSort xSort isn’t available on Windows or Linux, it’s only fully integrated with Mac (Intel and PowerPC-based Macs) and their user interface approach is to visually simulate a real-life table with index cards. It provides a variety of open, closed and hybrid card sorting, and the users can create subgroups. In addition, the statistics are updated in real-time. Price: Free

Best practices for card sorting

1. Understand the information available on the website

Similar to any research technique, it’s imperative to clearly establish the objective of the project and what you seek to learn. In this instance, such a goal-oriented approach will help you to determine whether card sorting is the best approach to learn from users.

Card sorting provides you valuable insight into the perspective of your users. It tells you about how they comprehend different concepts or ideas, and how they exactly feel about them.

This can be used during the selection of potential new features or different naming conventions to get prospective users’ first impressions and instincts of the product.

2. Number your cards

Always number each card to make analysis easier after the session. This consequently makes employing a table or spreadsheet for listing topics easy to understand.

3. Design your cards well

There are no hard or fast rules that dictate card design. However, it’s recommended to ensure cards are meaningful for participants. As such, it is imperative to always test cards with your audience to ensure that they understand the meaning of the information on a card. And can easily group them in a consistent and coherent manner.

4. Conduct a trial run

Always conduct a trial run with colleagues or friends before performing your first card sort to uncover any typos, errors or misunderstandings that may arise. This can prove valuable since missing any errors may adversely throw off the real user data.

5. Limit the number of cards.

While it can be tempting to desire that participants sort through all of your content. It’s important to be mindful of participant fatigue. So, limit the number of cards to 30 to 40, especially for an open sort.

6. Keep the topics short and to the point.

Strive for the topics to be to the point to ensure that the cards are easy to read— without compromising the content. In fact, consider randomising the order of presentation to ensure that content has a chance to be sorted earlier in the session.

7. Provide a time estimate

Always provide the participants with a clear estimate of how long the card sort might take to help them gauge the required time and effort.

8. Use both open and closed card sorting

Consider using both open and closed card sorting as one enables you to learn what goes together. While the other helps you to test out your labels to determine if they are intuitive enough for your participants.

What is reverse card sorting?

Reverse card sorting, also known as tree testing, is a technique for evaluating and validating navigation categories that involves users trying to find items by surfing through a hierarchy. But without the influence of navigation aids and visual design.

The technique validates the effectiveness of tags and the existing structure of the website.

Summary

Card sorting is highly useful in understanding how users think about your content, and in the arrangement of information architecture. It helps companies to organize their content in an effective way that is reflective of the users’ mental models, making it much easier for customers to find the information they want and complete their tasks with ease.

Remember to always consider the card sorting objectives, tools, content, and people, despite it being a relatively straightforward process. Ensure to perform it properly and pay close attention to each element.

Lastly, this user research methodology works best at the beginning of projects, especially if you’re working on redesigning a site.