Don’t worry about it
You’re already doing a lot for UX. By being yourself in your daily engagements, a lot of your actions and reactions from carefully performed activities to spontaneous responses are monitored, measured and turned into valuable metrics.
Sounds creepy? Absolutely. But with all the unsolicited data mining and privacy breaching, the good thing is that some systems or agencies use your information as a basis to design better products and services.
While surfing the internet for example, tracking cookies generated from your internet browser send a log of your online activities to various statistical databases. These data are then analyzed by researchers, some of which could very well be UX designers and they review how you search, navigate and engage across different webpages. They then extract user behavior patterns to determine which setups are popular, efficient and effective and use that information to design better websites and user flows.
While UX designers are cast with these important and intricate roles, you are still the star of the UX show for as long as you’re engaging voluntarily or involuntarily.
Voluntarily. When you set up your things like your room, car, etc., your innate user-centered side naturally comes out allowing you to plan for the best arrangements and experiences.
A particular color theme appeals to you so you apply it visually to your room. You put the frequently used clothes on the closer shelves of your closet for efficiency. You adjust your car seat so it’s maxed out reclined because you’re more of a low rider.
You’re a natural UX designer because you design things to your preferences to improve user experiences for yourself and for others.
Involuntarily. Emotions, comments, suggestions, complaints, praises, etc. — whenever your react to your user experiences, you provide valuable user feedback.
Your natural reactions to experiences are gathered into different studies like Psychology, Human-computer Interaction (HCI), Behavioral Science, etc., all of which are vital sources of UX information.
How convenient! Your natural and receptional reactions are collected for you as they are key to UX design.
Designing UX like a boss
If you want to take UX to the next level, you can use some of the methods and techniques UX designers use:
Stakeholder Interviews. Keep it real with those who matter. End users, sponsors, product managers, developers, and other stakeholders – you have to have great rapport with these people as you’ll be doing a lot of asking and listening. Understand what their roles are, what they’ve been up to, their wants and needs and other design related inquiries.
Usability Testing. Put your designs into action and let users try them on for size. A/B Testing, Hallway Testing, Expert Reviews, etc. — while they’re at it, interview them, carefully observe and record their actions, reactions, body language and feedback to determine how usable your design is and where to improve on.
Personas. Create handy “trading cards” of your users to serve as your user-centered design references. Do some detective work on your users to come up with their profiles and also include what their needs, wants, preferences, attitudes and daily lives are. When it comes to your planning or testing your designs, personas will keep you informed on “what John Doe would do.”
Experience Mapping. Tell the tale of the experience. From the user’s point of view, illustrate the experience journey into a chronological map layout and include details from user actions, interactions, emotions, etc.
Card Sorting. Play with post-its or index cards with the group. These detailed notes represent the workflow components or the structure of your designs and you can conveniently rearrange them over and over as you brainstorm with your target users.
The efforts to improve user experiences are made up of different kinds of inputs and research, both big and small. Everyone is both a natural UX user and designer who contributes into the grand scheme of UX design.