User experience design is a difficult process that relies on communication between the designer and the product owner. With some tips from ORCA, we can build better interfaces faster.
You're sitting with your team analyzing the latest deliverable. The project is working as planned, all functionality is installed, and without a few minor quirks it appears stable enough for a pre-release. And yet, there is something wrong, something is not right.
Maybe it's the interface, maybe the colors are wrong, or maybe the navigation isn't what you expected. Whatever the case, there is a huge disconnect between what you envisioned and what the UX designer delivered.
This is nothing new and is to be expected. Iterative design is a back-and-forth process between the development team and the stakeholder. With each cycle, the vision of the product owner/user/decision maker is incorporated into the project and the final product takes shape.
Or at least, that's how it should be. But in reality, human communication is complex. Sometimes the development team leaves a stakeholder meeting feeling lost, with new guidelines that contradict previous conversations.
It can be extremely frustrating for a UX developer to have an innovative solution to a problem, but no matter how hard they try, they just can't figure it out. Or the interested party has a very clear vision of what they want, but can't find the right words to communicate it. In all of these cases, communication failed.
What is UX research?
To put it simply, User Experience Research is the practice of studying user interactions and behaviors to help design people-first products and experiences. Within a project, it is the process in which the user experience specialist gathers information and feedback from users and decision makers to improve the project's interface and usability.
In theory, UX research is customer-facing, the UX researcher acts as a facilitator asking the right questions to foster discussion and explore all possibilities. Present prototypes and record reactions, as well as unexpected issues for improvement.
In practice, however, what we think we need is not the same thing we need. Our expectations and desires come from a certain perspective, which is extremely valuable but also limited.
UX designers are not just programmers, they are experts with a lot of knowledge in aesthetics, accessibility, modern trends, technology and other aspects of interface design. Their contribution can show the limitation of our vision and provide new insights into how best to approach the relationship between user and software.
I like to think of UX research as a conversation between two individuals, each with their own perspective, trying to find common ground through dialogue, like the philosophers of old. But aimless dialogue can be even more unproductive than no communication at all.
For me, two central questions serve as a guide for the conversation about UX:
- What are the objects?
- What is the interaction between objects?
OOUX changed the UX landscape
OOUX stands for Object-Oriented User Experience is the process of planning a system of interacting objects and information on your website, app or digital tool, with an object/noun first approach.
When done correctly, OOUX facilitates a spider web-like system organization in contrast to traditional hierarchical tree structures. It's the difference between a fluid page like Wikipedia and having to go through three different links to get to your intended destination.
Think of it this way: imagine your project is like a coffee shop. To open a business you need things: coffee, tables, chairs, cups, counter and so on. These are all objects and they all play a role in your coffee shop.
For a long time, designers approached UX design with an action-first approach, meaning they first thought about the actions users would take and they built around those actions. Going back to our example, it’s like saying “I want a place where people can have coffee”.
Here's the problem with this approach: Instead of having a nice coffee shop, I could dig a hole in the ground, fill it with coffee, and sell customers a straw to drink from my coffee maker. Inventive? Yes. Does it meet the criteria? Yes. Is it aligned with my client's mental image? Probably not. Is it likely to be successful? Never.
When we create a mental model of what our project will look like, we tend to think in terms of images, not a process. So it makes sense that our research focuses on painting a clear picture of what these images are. But how to do this?
ORCA Tips
ORCA stands for Objects, Relationships, CTAs, and Attributes and describes a process for creating strong object-oriented user experiences. It is a highly detailed and extremely productive fifteen-step process.
Fortunately, we don't need to go through all the steps; in fact, for UX research we can go through the first two: object discovery and relationship discovery.
As I mentioned before, objects are the things your project is made of. We find them in user stories or in the product declaration. For example:
“We are building a platform to help stressed users with meditation exercises they can do at home ”
There we have three different nouns that the UX researcher can use to start working on the project. The first step would be to expand these nouns, for example stressed users have names, emails, usernames, gender, body weight and so on.
Once the objects have been discovered and defined, we can establish the relationships between them. These relationships inform us about their potential interactions and help us identify actions for each of these objects.
Users do exercises, which in turn can be counted and tracked, there is a relationship there, so it would make sense to create an interface where the user can track which exercises they have done in the past and for how long. It's that simple: by understanding how two things are related we can decide which actions are necessary.
When we put it like that, it makes sense, right? What ORCA does is divide the process into small slices so that we don't get overwhelmed with information. Instead of spending hours talking nonstop and mixing objects with actions, we are taking one step at a time, slowly building the infrastructure of our project.
Aligning Design, Goals and Dreams
UX has a direct impact on productivity, and if we want to create the best project possible we have to get it right. ORCA and similar methodologies are built on the fact that good designs align the process with the product owner's vision, user needs, and developer experience.
Source: BairesDev
