Planning and Managing Drupal Projects

User Experience: Techniques for Drupal

One of the challenges inherent in doing UX work is knowing who’s responsible for it. In some teams I’ve spoken to, it’s the project manager’s job to create many of the documents associated with UX (personas, site maps, wireframes); in others, there’s a specific team member who’s completely dedicated to user experience design for the project. The methods and documentation that you use will vary according to project as well. For some clients, you’ll find yourself doing elaborate user personas and backing them up with weeks of research; for others, a quick and dirty approach—where you use existing information on customers to create a persona that you then test as you prototype—is more than appropriate. The point of UX documentation is to always do some, but to only do the things that make sense for the project.

Below are some methods that I’ve found helpful. Many of them are borrowed from traditional UX methodologies; however, most of them have been adapted in one way or another for my Drupal workflow. Over time, you’ll find a method that works for you. If anything, the key to working with UX documentation is to find a balance between an efficient workflow for you and creating something that effectively communicates to the client.

Mind mapping

Mind mapping is a relatively quick and simple way to get a lot of ideas out on the table in one big brain dump, and take a high-level view to recognize the patterns. Whether you’re doing the map in software ...