Russell Webb Design

Category: Communication Design

Communication design is a mixed discipline between design and information-development which is concerned with how media intermission such as printed, crafted, electronic media or presentations communicate with people

  • Using proto-personas to Know your user – Pt I

    Using proto-personas to Know your user – Pt I

    Execute a Content Audit using proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. Consolidate personas, communicate findings, to achieve a deeper understanding of all users.
    Empower UX to move forward with experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.

    Contents

    Please note; for client confidentiality sensitive parts of all imagery has been pixelated. All work is copyright ©RussellWebbDesign 2024

    Hard Skills:

    Design Process

    Service Blueprint

    Proto-Personas

    Soft Skills:

    Service Design

    Journey Mapping

    Customer Experience Design

    Full List →

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.

    Limited Data, Maximum Impact

    Delivering with resource constraints and tight timeline, this Content Audit / Inventory Battle Plan leverages the power of proto-personas as the primary intel.

    Gather the troops

    Assemble all content audit data

    Regulated design environments are often constrained – it is important to offer agility and be resourceful. This level of Service Design would benefit from ;

    • Customer surveys
    • Stakeholder interviews
    • Analytics (rationalised down into meaningful chunks)

    …and additional data. For this UX project the starting point was an extended collection of unverified proto-personas. These were then rationalised in to bucketed or grouped personas.

    Navigating the complexity of proto-personas

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.
    Proto-personas: Adaptability in the face of organisational inertia and provide clarity to maintain stakeholder engagement.

    Adapt UX to audience and personas

    Larger organisations, often new agile methodologies, may still be in the early stages of embracing lean UX, so adapt your approach to your audience is a key skill.

    When personas are agreed and validated as the only ‘source of truth’ – there also must be alignment that these refine and adapt personas over time, ensuring that they remain relevant.

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.
    Overly detailed personas can dilute effectiveness, especially for large organisations. This task focused on consolidating personas for greater clarity.

    Focussed personas work well. Larger organisations multiply these audience types and their impact is reduced. This task looked at grouping and sorting by commonalities

    Conduct extensive desk research to develop a deep understanding

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.
    Embark on a deep dive of user research to become the brand’s go-to expert on your target audience.

    Absorb insights

    Take the time to listen and absorb – Become the brand’s knowledge hub.

    Absorbing insights and data is vital. Time spent at this stage of your research is key for informing a future IA.

    Dig deeper to understand your users problems, needs and goals

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.
    Experience maps are your tools to excavate the nuances of user behaviour, emotions, and motivations. Use this to win over their hearts and minds.

    Empathy-driven UX; Personas and experience maps

    By delving into the emotional landscape of proto-personas, designers can gain a deeper user understanding. This insight fuelled the development of a clear and empathetic experience map.

    Understand your audience types ; Their needs, aspirations, and behaviours. Commonalities and patterns will surface.

    Common Thread and Outcomes

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.
    By selecting the most crucial key phrases from the workshop discussions, I was able to distil the essence of each audience type and crafted them into a call-to-arms that galvanised the mapping stage

    Expertise within the team distilled the most essential insights (i.e. OUTCOMES), transforming them into powerful ‘calls to arms’ that served as the foundation for the mapping stage.

    Next steps

    By consolidating vast amounts of data into prototype persona groups, this Service Design approach conveys insights for stakeholders to digest, leading to deeper user understanding for all involved. This then informs the next stage, ‘Using Experience Maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.’

    Please note; for client confidentiality sensitive parts of all imagery has been pixelated. All work is copyright ©RussellWebbDesign 2024

    RussellWebbDesign: Get your fill of UX trends, case studies and best practice

    Pique’d your interest?

    This is but part of a selec­tion of design information rus­sell­webb­de­sign gen­er­ated for the creative community out there. Please con­tact me fur­ther to dis­cuss how your brand can ben­e­fit from the new channel: info@russellwebbdesign.co.uk

    If something has peaked your interest. Please leave a comment below.

    Building a Wealth Management Super App

    CASE STUDIES

    Design with the dark mode trend front-of-mind

    Delight, speed and satisfaction are rewriting our UX playbooks in finance

    Find out more
  • Part II; How being more consultative can sooth the UX process – COVID Special

    Part II; How being more consultative can sooth the UX process – COVID Special

    TLDR; Boost your workflow without breaking a Zoom sweat in this COVID-friendly remote special. Simplify KO’s, pinpoint problems, and find your perfect toolset. Unleash the life-saving power of Dual Track UX Delivery. ‍ 

    Contents

    This is Part II of a two-part article looking at improved Ways of Working from a consultative UX perspective. Please visit Part I: How being more consultative can sooth the UX process – COVID Special to where I focused on;

    • Simplifying the KO process
    • Defining problems to solve
    • Tools and their limits

    Real world examples

    Product inconsistencies

    Moving on from the KO process and tool limits (see Part I). Part II drills down on real world ‘quick wins’, tracking tasks and signposting. Conclusions will sum up.

    Labelling and Buttons

    Focus on your speciality, and reach out when you need help
    Focus on your speciality, and reach out when you need help.

    ‘Quick wins’, including consistency like tracking labelling decisions (with accountability) and pressing the right primary (or secondary) buttons should be your focus as a consultative UX designer.

    This visual how confusion over two descriptions. Custom mapping within DBS is a complicated animal so learn on your front-end developer who has the skills to explain payment endpoints much better than any creative.

    When mental models don’t align

    Identical terminology should be used in prompts, menus, and help screens; and consistent colour, layout, capitalisation, fonts, and so on, should be employed throughout.
    Use the Gestalt ‘Law of Similarity’ principle and keep parallel screens similar.

    The “Law of Similarity” states that elements tend to be perceived into groups, if they are similar to each other. Meaning if you have elements with the same functionality, meanings and hierarchy, they should be visually similar. 

    (more…)
  • Part 1; How being more consultative can sooth the UX process – COVID Special

    Part 1; How being more consultative can sooth the UX process – COVID Special

    TL;DR; Boost your workflow without breaking a Zoom sweat in this COVID-friendly remote special.
    —
    Simplify KO’s, pinpoint problems, and find your perfect toolset—faster than a remote ping. Discover the limits of your daily grind. Then, unleash the life-saving power of Dual Track UX Delivery as a consultative designer. ‍ 

    Contents

    Hard Skills:

    Journey Mapping

    Research

    Visual Design

    Soft Skills:

    Empathy

    Collaboration

    Critical Thinking

    Full List →

    This is Part 1 of a two-part article looking at improved Ways of Working from a consultative UX perspective. I will be concentrating on;

    Jump forward to Part II, I will be deep-diving into;

    • Real world examples
    • Ways of Working
    • Dual track UX
    • Signposting
    • Conclusion
    • My Top 9 Take-aways
    (more…)

  • Design an upselling mechanic for wedding cakes

    TLDR: Analyse competitor apps selling wedding cakes, you identified promotions and discount opportunities, bundles and samples to nudge customers towards Pre-made packages to increase premium sales.

    Rreatil Challenge

    I was recently challenged by a prominent UK-based high street retailer to conceptualise and design an App based upselling mechanic for wedding cakes, looking for an effective solution to drive sales to a more premium product.

    (more…)

  • How user personas can help crystallise the early stage design process

    TL;DR; A large automotive client wanted to improve their dealer portal but the client needed guidance on understanding their audience’s needs and wants. Personas generation is a great to focus the team’s expectations and contributes to a better product and service.

    Contents

    B2B UX Case Study – Automotive Dealer Portal

    I was recently asked to provide insight for a dealer portal for a very large automotive client. There was a definite opportunity in their market to improve their internal front end offering – but very early on it was clear there was a lack of understanding of who their audience was. How their needs and wants differed and what, as customers, they were looking for.

    So, before deep-diving in the UX,  I produced a selection of personas to focus down the teams expectations and unite the groups thinking. I’m taking for granted that we are all aware that personas represent a typical user, based on user research and incorporate user goals, needs, and interests. Here I created four (4) personas, Hilary, Gary, Donald and Bernie;

    1.1 – Hillary, a Competitive Owner / Consider

    "“My
    (more…)
  • Brand logo design in 5 steps

    Brand logo design in 5 steps

    TL;DR; The branding exercise showcasing a need for a standout, flexible, unique, and impactful logo marque. From sketching, client involvement, standardising the colour palette to finessing the design into a fully-fledged product.

    Contents

    1. Lets get started with… R&D

    I have recently been involved in a branding exercise for a company that has over over 20 years experience in consultancy, project management and business analysis. This isn’t a new sphere of business, there is plenty of competition out there so a stand out logo marque that was…

    • Flexible
    • Unique
    • Impactful

    … was essential. So I presented a limited selection of ideas as I feel, after a certain amount of years, I’m qualified not to waste the client’s time presenting numerous options. This is a concept shared by the likes of David Airey on his site logodesignlove.com

    DAA_dragonheadConsultancy-BrandMarque_Page_04
    (more…)