For the second part of this course, we're going to get practical. We're going to add some more skills to our toolkit and revisit some that we've already talked about. I'm also going to walk you though some preliminary concepts for an app , all of which were inspired by an interview I conducted. But first, let's get a sense of the big picture of when wireframing comes into play.
Wireframing in context
Lean UX, Agile, and design thinking are processes for moving quickly and iterating on your work. In this part of the course you'll get a sense of how rapid prototyping can be effective as you put to use all the skills you've been building in the UX path so far. You're not aiming for perfection the first time. It's about moving fast, testing early, and testing often through UX design.
You've talked to users and conducted interviews, observed them in the field through ethnography, and anyalzed your findings. (This is covered in Conduct Design & User Research). From there you were able to define the problem to solve (see Dive into UX Design). You then start ideating and coming up with tons of ideas. Thinking through the user experience , you create initial sketches and prototypes, which you test with people, either in person or remotely (see Test Products on Users).
Now it's your turn to be the designer! We're going to keep building additional steps in each chapter.
Step 1: interview your user and define the problem
The first step in wireframing your first app is to come up with a concept. In order to do that you're going to conduct a short (15 minute) interview to learn about the user of your choice.
Based on that interview your goal is create an app to solve an actual problem. We'll cover more tools on how to do that in the next chapter. For now, conduct your interview. We're going to move quickly through this process so make sure you set your timer! Don't start designing any solutions just yet...
After the interview is over, take 10 minutes to summarize what you learned in the form of a problem statement.
It may be helpful to come up with 5-10 bullet points of key takeaways and things that you learned about your user. From there, look for themes. Then narrow it down to one sentence, and keep it simple. You don't want to overcomplicate the situation. You'll want to continue to refer back to this problem statement throughout the rest of this project to ensure you're designing for the user. (Remember that mantra, "you are not the user"!)
Here's what I came up with after my interview:
The user works a lot and doesn't have a lot of free time, but he/she is trying to find more time to be creative.
As we explored in Dive into UX Design, you want to make sure you're only defining the problem at this stage, and NOT trying to create solutions. We have a bit more exploration before that happens.
