UX for Beginners

Chapter 84. The Launch Is an Experiment

The main difference between UX design and other types of design is that we can measure our designs to see if they work. And we do that using the scientific method.

It is normal to think of the launch as the end of the creative process. But don’t.

That process is uncertain: strategic decisions are just educated predictions. Design is a matter of taste; people make irrational decisions all the time. The only way to know is to do some science, and good science always needs a question, a hypothesis, an experiment, results, and interpretation.

Or what we in the industry like to call...

The Scientific Method

The Question/Problem

First and always, you need to start with a question. In your case, it might be a user problem. Your job is to understand the problem well enough that you can describe it specifically and then design a way to solve it.

Many people think that you should come up with some questions first and then use UX research to answer the questions, but that’s wrong. That’s called guessing. UX research is supposed to find the questions and problems. By researching users and data you will uncover user behavior that needs to be fixed, or doesn’t make sense. Why do users do that weird thing? What is the main problem for the user? How do users think about this feature? Why do people leave on the second step of the checkout? Why do so many people bounce on our landing page?

There are millions of those questions.

Hypothesis

Your design is your hypothesis: ...