Secrets of UX Design

Wiktor Żołnowski: Welcome to Pragmatic Talks, a podcast and video series where we discuss startups, contemporary digital product development, modern technologies, and product management. I am Wiktor Żołnowski, CEO of Pragmatic Coders, the first-choice software development partner for startup founders. For this episode of Pragmatic Talks, we invited Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga, Head of UX Design at Pragmatic Coders. Today, we are going to explain the importance of user experience in any startup product. We’ll start by going over what UX actually is and explaining the UX design process. Then, we’ll discuss the value of a great user experience. Lastly, we’ll illustrate how to spot and hire a great UX specialist for your startup. Welcome, everyone, to Pragmatic Talks. In today’s episode, we are going to discuss UX for startups. There is no better person I could invite for this episode than Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga, who is our Head of UX at Pragmatic Coders. Welcome, Kasia.

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: Hi.

What is user experience (UX)?

Wiktor Żołnowski: The first question I’m going to ask you might sound basic: what is user experience? I’m asking because many people use the term UX or user experience, and they think about very different things when they say it. Some of them are talking about UI, some are talking about UX, and some are talking about product design. So, maybe let’s start from the beginning. What is user experience?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: Okay, maybe I’ll tell you a story. A couple of days ago, I tried to manage the delivery location for my package. First, I desperately tried to find the phone number for support, but of course, I couldn’t. Then, I tried to find the appropriate form, but again, I couldn’t. When I finally found the option to change the delivery location for my package, it was quite funny because I didn’t understand why the point I chose wasn’t appropriate for my package. I couldn’t find any information. As you can see, all of that was my user experience. User experience is basically everything that touches your experience with a product: your emotions, your experiences with the brand, the company, and its products and services. That is your user experience. I’m pretty sure you also have plenty of examples like that, where something was frustrating for you. All of this is user experience, and it’s not just connected with digital products, which is quite interesting.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So, it’s easy to spot where the user experience is not as good as it should be. When it is an excellent user experience, is it possible to notice it? How do you distinguish a great user experience from a bad one?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: In most cases, it is probably quite easy for people who do something like this. But actually, good products with a good user experience are, we can say, invisible to you. Every element of the process is very smooth. You don’t have any part where something is distracting you or causing frustration. When you, for example, download an application or visit a website, and everything is just smooth, you’ll probably notice something like, “That was good. That was nice. That caused delight.” So, in most cases, the product should solve your problem and just be good to use.

The difference between UX, UI, and product design

Wiktor Żołnowski: That might be one of the reasons why so many startups underrate user experience and investing in UX at all. But as you mentioned, a bad user experience is very visible, and it could ruin the product and the experience of users. Okay, so that’s user experience. I can already imagine what a user experience designer, UX designer, or UX design is about. But maybe you can elaborate a little more on that. What is UX design, and how does it differ from UI design and product design?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: It’s quite funny because in the UX discipline, we have a lot of different terms and names that can be confusing for people who would like to start in that field. But basically, what we say quite loudly is that UX and UI are not the same. UI is rather connected to visual elements. In digital products, you can think about typography, colors, grids, spacing, and so on. What’s more important, UI is a subset of UX. UX is about how the product works. What is also quite interesting is that we have a lot of people who call themselves UX/UI designers, but for me, that just simplifies the discipline. The whole science behind user experience – psychology, math, logic, statistics, and so on – is just treated like making pretty pictures. But where is the whole science behind it? This is the difference between UX and UI. We can say UI is a subset of UX. Most product designers who I’ve met do elements from both fields, so they are doing user experience work and also the elements connected with the visual side.

The science behind UX design

Wiktor Żołnowski: Correct me if I’m wrong: UI is just the visible part of the UX design process. Can we simplify it that way? That might be why so many people confuse UI with UX – because they only see the results. At the end of the day, you have these UI design mock-ups, and they think that the designer just figured it out off the top of their head without any extra work. But as you said, there is science behind it. Could you tell me a bit more about the science part?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: Yes. First of all, as you mentioned, when we interact with some products, especially when we think about applications or websites, the visual side of the product is what we see. It would be better to say not UI design but maybe visual design because this is the visual part of the product. But when I mentioned the whole part connected with the science behind user experience, first of all, you have psychology. You need to try to understand people: how they think, what they need, what they want, how they behave, and so on. That is the whole part. Because we are creating products for people. Who better to decide if your product brings value than your customers? There is only one who can decide if they will buy the product or not. Exactly. So, that’s the first part. Of course, you have the whole topic connected with doing research, because a big part of user experience is doing research. You have qualitative and quantitative research. When you are talking about collecting data from tools that are used for qualitative research, you need to think about statistics and so on. This is the whole part connected with statistics, with understanding data, and so on. Also, there are some elements, because as UX people, we don’t just do the visual side of the product, but we are also interested in the visual side of the product – for example, about the contrast, about the spacing, and so on. That is why a lot of designers who are creating some pictures on Dribbble, for example – Dribbble is a portal for visual designers – when you go through that portal, there are very beautiful pictures, but most of the applications and websites presented there are completely unusable because you can’t see the information correctly. Those are some elements of the whole science behind this: psychology, even marketing, the elements connected with statistics, with logical thinking, and so on. The whole part connected with preparing information architecture, so the structure of your product, for example, the navigation and so on. How to logically put elements together. The whole taxonomy and so on. This is a big part of user experience.

The UX design process

Wiktor Żołnowski: So, how does it work? You already mentioned there is a lot of research in UX. Does it start from research or maybe somewhere else?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: Another very funny thing, because in the UX discipline, we have a lot of terms for models which describe design processes. You probably have heard about the Double Diamond; we have a process called ADDIE, Triple Diamond, and so on. But most importantly, we as UX practitioners practice user-centered design. No matter what I call my process or the model of my process, I’m doing pretty much the same things. First of all, and even before research, I need to understand the requirements because there are always some requirements – for example, technology limitations, or you have data from previous research, or you have some analytics done, or something like that. So, we need to understand it. Then, normally I propose to clients to do some kind of research with real users because, in most cases, we don’t have that data. We need to understand people; we need to know who they are, what their needs are, and so on. Then, we are working on information architecture, so the whole navigation and so on, how to group information. We need to cooperate with people from marketing, from the content team, to decide what kind of content we would like to present. Information architecture and interaction design involve preparing wireframes, mock-ups, and prototypes. Then we have the whole part connected with user testing. It’s crucial to show our prototype to real users to gather feedback, to iterate on it, to change it, and so on. And, of course, in that process, we also have cooperation with visual designers because we need to make sure that the user experience and the structure of the product are good, but also that the visual side of the product is appropriate.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So, you mean that the UX design process is all about learning about users, their behaviors, and how they interact with products? Am I correct, or would you add something?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: Yes, I would add to this. Of course, it is learning about users; that’s one very crucial part. It is about inviting users to the whole process, on every step of the process, and constantly testing with them, iterating on that, and so on, because the result must be to prepare a product that will be delightful for your user. It must actually solve their problems, and they must also like it.

The value of UX for startups

Wiktor Żołnowski: Okay, that sounds pretty complicated, actually. It sounds like a very complicated, long, and costly process. The question that I have for you is, what’s the actual value of the UX design process? Because we are recording mainly for startup founders, and startups are usually short on money. UX is often the first thing that most startup founders would think to cut the budget on. So, what’s the value of this kind of very good UX design process? And then I will come up with a follow-up question: how to cut this cost and still deliver the value? What’s the value, or how do you explain the value of UX?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: Sure. First of all, it’s not a strict process where we need to do all the elements. Depending on many factors, like budget, time, or the level of confidence you would like to have in some data, we can strategically pick some elements of that process. That can happen. When you think about the value of user experience, first of all, it’s knowledge about your future or potential customers. For me, the most important value for startups is to find and pick the right problem – the right problem which is worth solving. So, actually, you are limiting the uncertainty that you will create a product that nobody would like to use. That’s the first thing. Second, you asked about the costs and so on. First of all, when we are thinking about research, for example, we have a lot of different methods. We can strategically choose an appropriate method which will be connected with, as I mentioned before, your time, with your budget, with the level of confidence, and so on.

Wiktor Żołnowski: I have a more personal question about that. How do you feel about that as the Head of UX at Pragmatic? We work mainly with startups, so I believe your job is mainly about finding a way to deliver as much value as possible at the lowest cost. And very often, your job is also about convincing clients that they need it. So, how do you feel about that, and how do you cope with that every day?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: Yes, of course. In some products, we have a better opportunity to do appropriate research and so on. It’s very interesting because in some cases, even if we were initially skeptical about the idea, we can figure out that there is something more in people. That’s amazing, and it causes a lot of joy for me when I have an opportunity to discover something unexpected about people. But of course, in other cases, we don’t have enough time, we don’t have enough budget, and our clients don’t have enough money. It’s okay because that is the part where we need to think logically and propose and pick the most crucial element for the client and, of course, highlight the risks, for example. We can say, “Okay, right now we will spend, say, two days, and we will be doing only some kind of desk research, going through Facebook groups to understand and collect as much information about our potential target group as we can,” because we have a limited budget. But my responsibility is to show the client that we need to be careful and it might be risky. So, then I will propose, for example, that as quickly as we prepare some kind of prototype, we need to test it with real users. It’s quite interesting because you can always manipulate some elements of the process, pick what meets the customer’s expectations, and just deal with it.

The cost of neglecting UX

Wiktor Żołnowski: It’s not boring here. It’s mainly about choosing the right tools for the context and getting as much as possible from those tools. Of course, if we use all of the available tools, we can limit the risk to a very, very low level – the risk of delivering something that doesn’t make any sense. That’s why I believe this is the value of a good UX process, where we are limiting this risk that we will deliver something that doesn’t matter, that people won’t use later on, or that people don’t need. Because, for example, to do such research, you need one or two UX designers for a week, two weeks, three weeks – it’s even a month in a very long process. But to deliver a product that people will later use, you will need a team of five or six developers, plus someone else like DevOps engineers. The cost of delivering this, usually for three, four, five, or six months to go to production to actually test this hypothesis with real users – that’s a huge cost. It’s a factor of 10, 20, or even 100 compared to the UX research. So that’s the real value. I remember we had one project we were working on where our client had been building a platform for a couple of months, if not a year. They wanted to go to production the next month, but in the end, they figured out that maybe it would be good to do some basic UX research. They learned that what they built was not what the users wanted. So instead of going live the next month, they had to delay for a couple of months to rewrite the entire solution differently. I believe this is a good example of the value of good UX research.

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: Yes, exactly. And what you mentioned is quite crucial because it will always be cheaper for a startup founder to do some research, create a prototype, test it, and then figure out that what they wanted to build is not what the client wanted, than to pay a team of, say, five developers, a product manager, DevOps, and so on. And after three months of developing a solution, you will receive information that everything you wanted to build, which was based on your guesses, hypotheses, and assumptions, needs to be thrown away, and you have to start over.

Integrating UX with the development team

Wiktor Żołnowski: I also remember one thing from a previous episode with Tony Kelly, with whom we had a great conversation about product design and what’s most important for a startup. We were talking about product-market fit, and he mentioned something very important that he also realized when he was working with your team: part of the UX process is also about building confidence in the team that they are building something that makes sense. Thanks to that, people are way more motivated, so they are more effective and also more creative because they have a greater context. They can better understand the users who will use the product. So, I believe that’s also a value of a good UX research process.

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: It is quite interesting what you just mentioned because for me, it’s just connected with reducing costs. You can have external costs and internal costs as well. The external cost is – we need to say this loud – it’s not like the cost for a startup will end when you deliver your product or application on the market. It’s just starting. Yes, exactly. Because then you need to pay for marketing, for back office, and so on and so forth. And of course, when you have a crappy product, the costs are constantly increasing because you need to pay for a good marketing team who will be responding to the bad scores in the Apple Store or in the Google Store. You need to have a support team who will be responding to the tickets, and so on. Those are all the external costs when you launch a product with usability problems. But on the other hand, as you mentioned, we have the internal costs. I had a situation where, for example, we built some kind of product when the whole development team knew that it was not an appropriate direction. It’s very demotivating for those people. So at the end, when we want to calculate the whole cost, we need to take into consideration searching for new people who will work on your product. Because if we, as a team working on the product, don’t see the North Star – the goal of the product – because we don’t have UX on board and no one is telling us if people would like to use that product or how they will react, we are just writing code for the sake of writing code.

Wiktor Żołnowski: The UX department at Pragmatic Coders is not something that we started with at the very beginning. We started with UX, I believe, four or maybe five years ago, starting with experimenting with single designers, adding them to the development team, and checking what would happen. Before that, we were mostly working with external agencies or with our clients who had their own designers somewhere. The worst case was if there was no designer at all, no UX. That was the worst case. But even if there was a proper UX design process and UX research done by an agency or by the client on their own, this transfer of information was not good enough. Our people, as I mentioned, were not as motivated, or they didn’t understand why they were building certain features or solving this problem and not another. The feedback from our team – their knowledge and experience – usually wasn’t transferred to the designers. The communication wasn’t good, and we struggled with it. The entire process wasn’t as effective as it is right now, where we have everyone on the team working together. This knowledge transfer is almost instant, and people share an understanding of the users’ needs. Maybe you can elaborate a little more on that. How do you do this with your team, and what tools do you use?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: Yes, sure. I really like to work with developers and with product owners because we have great product owners and also developers. I’m always saying that the UX field is my field; I’m an expert in that. So, for example, the research – okay, I’m doing the research, but for goals or for some information which is needed for the product owner, he must be a part of that process. When we are finishing research, for example, we always share that knowledge with front-end people, with back-end people, and with the product owner, of course. Also, sometimes, because after every session we do recordings – of course, we ask people if they are okay with it, and it will be for internal team purposes – we invite, for example, product owners, actually everyone who is interested, to watch that recording. And even if they have time, I don’t see any circumstances why they couldn’t be live as an observer during the session. That part builds a common understanding because we are not working in silos. It is very valuable because they see how people interact with the product they build.

Artifacts of the UX design process

Wiktor Żołnowski: This is another thing that is often missing when a client comes to us after a UX process they went through. What they usually mean by the UX process they went through is that they have designs, some visual or even high-fidelity designs. So they are coming to us and saying that they have already done the UX and they just want to build it. What we ask them for at that stage is, “Okay, so where are the other artifacts of the UX design process?” Like you mentioned, for example, recordings. Could you tell us a little bit more about those artifacts? Because what people usually think is that the only artifact of the UX design process is the design, but it’s not. There is a lot of information around this design that is actually mandatory for everyone in the team if we are going to build the product as a product team. What artifacts should I expect, and what artifacts are you usually producing during the process?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: First of all, when we propose to a client, “Okay, it will be great and very beneficial for your business to do some kind of generative research,” first of all, I’m preparing all the elements connected with the research plan. Then you have the whole research scenario, or we can call it a discussion guide, also depending on the type of research. So this is another artifact. The whole analysis is also a part where we deliver artifacts. We use different methods of analysis; I really like affinity diagrams, where I’m trying to find elements from the respondents and turn them into appropriate insights. We can also add raw transcriptions or, in some cases, recordings, so those are other artifacts. And the whole report, for example – it can be a list of insights, or it can be personas, user journeys, and so on. Then, when we are creating the information architecture, it can be some kind of draft of the navigation; this is another element. Then we have wireframes, prototypes, and mock-ups. When we are cooperating with visual designers and UI designers, the whole prototype can also have a lot of artifacts. An important artifact for most clients is, of course, the design system because it helps front-end developers build the product and add additional elements in the future. When you have the design system with all the components – buttons, colors, and so on – we know that the whole system will be consistent.

Wiktor Żołnowski: All of those artifacts, combined with the design, the prototype, or even a low-fidelity design, create the context for the entire product. It’s a great tool to onboard new team members, new developers, or anyone joining a startup company. They can learn where the ideas for the features and the product we have right now are coming from. That’s very important because they won’t ask the same questions that were already asked, and they won’t redo work that has already been done. That saves a lot of cost for your team.

Hiring a great UX specialist

Wiktor Żołnowski: You’re talking about UX designers and visual designers. I know that in your teams, most people are doing both the UX and UI design job. Do you see any disadvantages and advantages of such an approach?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: Sure. As you mentioned, right now in our team, we have people who are trying to do the whole process. But we are trying to create a team where we will have people who are specialized in the UI area and we have people who are better experts in UX areas. Like T-shaped people, where their main area of specialization is, for example, UX or UI, but they are also aware of the other parts. In some cases, we are capable of doing some kind of switch when the UX part of the process finishes and we need to go to the more UI-focused work. But my dream in the future is to have well-skilled people where we will be working in projects where UX will be respected, and that will be my UX area, and then there will be the UI area for someone else.

Wiktor Żołnowski: What would you recommend to a startup founder who is just starting, and maybe the UX person will be a freelancer or from an agency? They might be the first person hired by them. So, what would you recommend?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: As a startup founder, when you are hiring a UX person and it will be your first person on a team, you need to learn a little bit about user experience to the level that you can verify the skills of that person. For example, read some articles about how to construct questions and see how that person is constructing questions. Maybe you have someone who was working or is working as a UX person that you trust. You can ask them, “Could you help me with verifying that person?” and what they are delivering. Maybe it’s not so crucial, but it’s important for me how that person is thinking about time. So, does he or she know how much time it will take to do something, to prepare a prototype or something like that? It might also be an important factor.

Final advice for startup founders

Wiktor Żołnowski: Let me summarize. We started from what user experience is. We went through the difference between UX design, UI design, and product design. We were talking about the UX process. We’ve also been talking about the costs of UX design and the value that it brings on board. And we came to the moment where we are also talking about how to hire a great UX designer for your startup. Is there anything else we should discuss today?

Kasia Smoleń-Drzazga: I think maybe some kind of a small message for startup founders. I truly believe that when you are starting your startup, you should hire an experienced UX designer because they will help you with finding and picking the right problem worth solving, as we discussed. I also think that you shouldn’t measure it in terms of cost, thinking that you don’t have enough money to do UX research, because I’m sure that the value of UX will show you that these processes are worth spending money on, especially since you can manipulate the costs depending on your context. You don’t necessarily need to hire that person full-time at the beginning. You can hire such a person for some time, like a freelancer or an agency, do some work, and then hire that person or another person again to continue the work.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Yes, exactly. Especially if there will be the right artifacts and other stuff, then anyone else could later pick up the work from where it was finished and continue it pretty easily. Yes, exactly. Okay, so thank you very much for today. I’m pretty sure that we’ll meet again together with Kasia and discuss some of these topics a little bit more precisely. There’s a lot of other topics that we will cover later. So thank you very much. Bye-bye.

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