As I was looking for job after I graduated from the University, I stumbled upon this e-book on Kindle Unlimited titled UX Lifecycle: The business guide to implementing great software user experiences (English Edition)
Like most of e-book in Kindle Unlimited, this book contains less than 200 pages so I could finish it pretty quickly. And sure I was satisfied with the content of this book.
This book exposes the necessary information regarding the world of UX to the reader who wants to dive in deeper in this theme. But this book is also for me who already know one or two things about the UX but still want to sharpen the knowledge.
In this post I would discuss the lifecycle that is discussed in this book which covers three phases: discover, build and measure.
This life cycle can be applied in any software project, mainly one which sets UX as one of the project success indicator. As a cycle this UX lifecycle is not intended to stop. It will occurs again whenever it reaches the end of third phase.
Discover
Keep looking cause you’re gonna discover something!
The life cycle starts here (again if the first cycle finishes). Team which usually consists of Head of UX, UI/UX Designer, Developers begins researching about the users and the system or feature that will be developed.
Creative decisions like persona and interface mockups in this phase must also be based on research. Without data, any input that comes in this phase is just opinions.
Personas can be created by conducting interview or just a simple online research. Interface can be planned by benchmarking what works out there and what not.
Meetings with product owners or clients must also be conducted in this phase as team will see how the structure of the system is or what problem the new feature will solve. The outcome from this meeting can be used as a data to design the system further.
At the end of this phase team will have personas, information architecture, user story, user flow, screen interfaces, and research data.
Build
Build it up high like a fortress
Developers come forward and do their job turning every data that has been gathered in the previous phase into reality. Expect some bumpy rides in this phase as developers will need frequent contact with the UX team whenever there’s a problem developing the concepts. UX team must make a wise decision whether to keep the concepts, and make this phase lasts longer, or to move on and creating an alternative concept together with the developers .
Like in agile situation, we need to be able to adapt to changes and make sure we deliver something that also works. Forcing to develop such UX concepts that currently not technically possible will waste resources.
Every changes that happend in this phase will be evaluated in the last but not least phase.
Measure
Gotta keep it on check
The developed system or feature will be checked here whether it meets the requirement that is made in the first phase. And every new change will be evaluated if it’s good enough.
The very first evaluation happens in the inner circle of the UX team. After that User Acceptance Test can be considered.
Every output in this phase will go into the Discover phase again as inputs.
Will UX Lifecycle Stop?
No. UX can always be improved over time. New features will come eventually. And that’s also the reason why this UX lifecycle won’t stop, unless the project gets cancelled, which of course no one wants it to happen.
