Top 10 UX Deliverables Every Designer Should Use
If you're a UX designer, you would know what UX design deliverables are. But for those who don't know, a UX design deliverable is like a document that tells us about the work that has taken place. Common UX designer deliverables are wireframes & prototypes, usability test reports, personas, etc.
Such deliverables make the communication between the designer and the stakeholders easy. If you want to know more about these UX design deliverables, read along.
The 10 UX Deliverables a UX Designer Typically Produces During an Engagement
Business Goals and Technical Specifications
This deliverable helps in understanding the product vision from the business perspective. It should contain the problem you're dealing with, the solution, and a brief description of the target audience. You should also mention some technical details by which you'll deliver the product.
This deliverable should not be longer than a page. You need to write about what, how, and why. That's it.
Competitive Analysis Report
It's one of the most important user experience deliverables you need to note. You need to identify your competitors and evaluate their weaknesses and strengths. And you should compare it with the products and services you deliver.
A UX designer has to look for the product that people are using to deal with the problem. You also need to check whether there's a better product or not. Ultimately, the UX designer has to prove how his products and services can make a difference.
The process of competitive analysis usually selects five competitors. It helps in finding what all these competitors are doing right and wrong. The motive is to create clear goals by setting a design direction.
Personas and UX Research Reports
Personas and research reports are the best ways to find about the target group. Personas help in understanding the user behavior, goals, and interests. And using UX research reports, you can add content and give you deep insights into the design process. You can find various research tools out there.
Here, developing a research plan is the first step. It helps in communicating the research methods and aims. Also, it helps in achieving buy-in from the stakeholders. This deliverable can help in keeping everyone on track.
In a nutshell, the report has different research findings and actionable items. And the UX design team needs to work around those actionable items.
Sitemap and Information Architecture
You can think of a sitemap as a visual demonstration of all the info and components in a digital product—the sitemaps help layout the information architecture. The designer needs to label and organize the product's components.
And this is done to make usability, findability, and navigation easy. It also helps the designer define the UI and taxonomy. You can think of a site map as a resource that develops during the process. It helps in keeping everyone on the team on the same page.
Experience Maps, User Journeys, and User Flows
You can think of experience maps as the visual display of the user flow. It illustrates the goals, time spent, feeling, thoughts, expectations, reactions, etc. In simpler terms, it helps in understanding how the user reacts to the product or service.
User flows and user journeys are similar. However, user experience talks about the steps that the user takes to interact with the product. It shows the functionality, behavior, and some potential tasks that the user might perform.
When you understand the flow, you can decide what content or functionalities you need to incorporate in the UI. The designer's end goal is to solve the user's problem by understanding the behavior, pain points, and goals.
User flow is like a problem that the user will deal with using your product or service. And user journey tells us about how the customer interacts.
UX Wireframes
You can think of UX wireframes as the 2D demonstration of interface elements and the design framework. It helps in understanding what goes where. It's kind of a layout, too, using which you can define the interaction design, user behavior, information architecture, content, etc.UX wireframes are easier to make when you have a good UX platform. One of the best examples is Mockitt. It is an online wireframing tool that helps you create highly interactive wireframes.
Wireframes are another common UX design deliverables for UX designers. This is what the designer is asked about in an interview. After all, a wireframe helps in exploring the ideas and in generating concepts following the customer goals.
Interactive Prototypes
Creating interactive prototypes is another good way of demonstrating how the real product will work. It allows easy user testing and quick design iteration. You, as a designer, can communicate your design better using interactive prototypes.
You can create prototypes at any point in the process. And the prototypes can be made from simple paper or be polished designs of the complete product. The motive is to understand how the user interacts with the end product.
Interactive prototypes are preferred as static sketches look dull and unappealing. But with an interactive prototype, you can understand how the product actually works in the real scenario. You can integrate feedbacks, make new changes, and can create a perfect product with prototyping.
Visual Design
Visual design is like the final touchup. It can help you take your product to the next level. It's the last step after which you hand the product to the developers. You need to create the final aspects and a style guide. You can think of visual design as an opportunity to improve and define your brand's characteristic features in the product.
Style guide and Specifications for Developers
In the UX design workflow, creating a style guide plays an important role. It helps the developers understand the overall designs of the product. It ensures that the developers implement the branding, colors, fonts, and typography across the product.
You can create some style guides manually, while others need can be generated automatically. This process consumes a lot of time. So, it is preferred that you use an automation tool. It's an interactive way of creating style guides that can save you a lot of time.
One common example is Zeplin. It helps the front tend to develop collaboration with the UI designers. It's so much more than just a workflow or a design-handoff. So, make sure to set a style guide and specifications for the developers in the best way possible.
Usability Testing and Usage Analytics Reports
The job of a UX designer is always pending. First, he needs to prepare an action plan for the entire team and ensure everything is implemented well. Even after the product is released, he needs to cater to the users' feedback. And this process goes on and on.
A usability test will help you understand whether or not the users can use your product. It also helps in finding what problem the users are facing with the UI. Common examples can be hard to complete tasks and complex language etc.
Usually, usability test reports are presented during the prototyping phase. However, you can also test the existing product to find any room for improvement. After all, there's always some room for improvement in design.
Understanding the data collected using usability testing is becoming more of a skill. The UX designers are making it a fashion to gather, sort, and understand the data to bring out more and more improvements in the overall project.
Even after the project is released, UX designers focus on a quantitative method. It will help the entire team understand how their product performs on a large scale. It's easily trackable, but if you have the right tools. Fortunately, there are plenty of those tools out there.
Benefits of creating UX design deliverables
Better Communication with stakeholders or clients: When it comes to acquiring or satisfying a client, the UX design deliverable can play a dominant role. And with UX design deliverables, you can handle it well. It helps the client understand your product better. Take the example of the "Experience Maps, User Journeys and User Flows" deliverable.
It shows how the target user interacts with the product and what steps he takes to do so. This way, stakeholders or clients can understand the product easily.
Development of a better product: Another good example of a UX deliverable is "Usability Testing and Usage Analytics Reports." With usability testing and usage analytics reports, you can analyze how the users respond to what you have built. It can help you find if the users are unable to use your product.
This deliverable can also help you find what problems the users face and give you a chance to improve. In this manner, you can craft a more reliable and better product.
Conclusion
The prime goal of every UX designer is to create a product that relates to the user. It should be based on the user's behavior, motivation, goals, pain points, etc. And this is what the above-listed UX design deliverables help the designers achieve. Go through the list and start creating deliverables that add value to the user and your brand.
