Jevy's Blog

I just got back from attending the first Ottawa UXCamp.  I attended with two goals:

• Figure out how to bring highest value to my clients.
• Meet local UX designers and graphic designers for future projects.

What a blast!  Highly recommend anyone interested in the field of UX (User Interaction) design to attend and follow #uxott.  By the simplest definition, UX designers know how to gather information from potential/current customers on how they would interact with your product which directly affects the design. This got me thinking about how critical it is for the startup community.  So here are some reasons why you NEED to be doing UX design for your startup product after the jump

1. You have one chance to get it right

If you’re a small startup, you typically don’t have much cash or time, so your first launch has to be dead on. UX design investigates the core use cases that your target users would have, or DON’T have. Scenario: Say you have a crazy idea that will let cat owners really want an iPhone app to find parks where dogs likely aren’t to roam.  Note: I’ve never owned a cat but I needed an outrageous example.

• Is this going to be a successful product?  Unless you go out and talk to prospective end users, you only have an unfounded hopes it will work, not concrete fact.
• What are the cat owners expecting in your app?  A map? A list? A forum? If you don’t talk to them, you don’t know.
• Is the iPhone the best medium for your app?  Why would you pick it over some other medium like a web application?  How do iPhone users who have cats use their phone?  You don’t know.

2. It will save you time later down the road

Don’t believe me?  Consider the case where your dog-avoider-for-cat-owners app was mocked up, designed, developed, stacks of custom graphical assets created for your tabular centric app.  After you release your app, 1000s of people download it. Within a week but your ratings are topping out around 2 stars.  Why?  Turns out this tabular format makes absolutely no sense to your users.  Turns out they are all expecting a map format instead.  “GAH!  Back to the drawing board“.  Maybe you could have saved yourself lots of time and money by developing some dead simple mock ups using a tools like Balsamiq and trying it out on some people at your local Tim Horton’s or cat lovers club.

3. It will greatly de-risk your product

Wouldn’t it be great if you could guarantee people would buy your product?  Yes it would, but nothing is certain.  A more realistic solution is to remove as many unknowns as possible before you even start coding.  Try out some mock ups on people and gauge their emotional response.  “This would be too easy!” and “My mom would love this!” are good signs.  Getting a response of “Uhhhhh..” or “How do I do this?” means you need to do more research and put more thought to make it more intuitive for them.

4. It will let you know early if you idea sucks

There is nothing better than having your product succeed.  However, if it’s not going to work, it’s best to find out as soon as you can!  UX design will help you figure that out before you write a single line of code.

Lots more to come about this stuff.