Day in the life of a UX designer

[Marjo]

Hi guys, how's your week going so far? 

While we wait for the first research task to be completed, we wanted to post something a bit different this week.

Are any of you familiar with UX design? Anyone actually working as a UX designer or know someone who does? We spoke with one of the designers behind the Priority Research Panel project and got some interesting information on what his role as a UX designer entails!

Read more below from Greg, and let us know if you want to hear more about anything specific - happy to pass on your questions!

---

Hey all, Greg here. I’d just like to say a big thanks to everyone who’s got involved in the research so far! It’s great to be able to test concepts and get your opinion on designs coming through our pipeline. 

In case you’re interested, I’ve drafted a basic outline of what I do as a UX designer and how this translates to the world of Priority.

UX Design quick overview

• UX stands for ‘User Experience’ design.
• Activities change based on the type of project we’re working on. 
• The typical design process follows Discovery , Ideation , Delivery and Optimisation stages:
1. Discovery - research & testing.
2. Ideation - creating concepts & prototypes.
3. Delivery - working with developers to release products or features.
4. Optimisation - evolving the product over time through ‘test and learn’. 

What we work on with Priority?

Within Priority the design team are working on a number of streams of work, all at different stages within the design process described above. For example the card sort activity you recently did is currently in the ‘discovery’ phase. Next, we will take the insight and distill it into themes, along with output from other research activities this will inform what we do in the ideation phase. 

This is quite a brief description, but give me a shout if you have any other questions and I’ll do my best to answer!

[gmarkj]

Dabble in this as part of my job currently - building reports for other people to use - and did a little at uni.
It is a very critical thing - bad UX can kill a business as quick as a bad product/offering!

[PhoneChanger]

Do bits of this now in my current role, it can be an absolute mind-field, we do the user research as well as part of the initial designs and wireframes. However once of the more difficult parts is UX is very personal to people, what works (functionally, as well as look and feel) to one isn't the same to another, and even using a mantra of keeping it simple then won't delivery client and customer expectations.

Its great fun though!

[Marjo]

Interesting to hear you both work with UX design guys @gmarkj , @PhoneChanger