10 Questions You Should Ask at the Beginning of Every UX Project
Designing a UX project can be quite an overwhelming experience when just assigned your first ever project. As a beginner, you're unaware of many things, so it's a great idea to inquire few things before the beginning of the project. Asking the right questions can help you gather important information and avoid any confusion in the future. Moreover, it increases the chances of the end product being a total success.
The question of concern here is what UX questions you should ask before starting a new project. To solve this dilemma, we have gathered the 10 most crucial UX questions to ask at the beginning of every UX project.
10 Questions UX Designer Should Ask at the Beginning of Every UX Project
You can ask as many relevant questions as you want, but before jumping into endless details, you should first understand the basics of the UX project well.
In our opinion, the following user experience questions are a great way to cover the basics of the project:
1. What is the Rationale for delivering a product or a service in question?
The first and foremost thing to inquire about in every UX project is the demand for the product among the people. The product you will be crafting should have a reasonable demand, and you must identify the need for the product you will be designing. You can achieve this by conducting public surveys and creating polls on social media. By studying closely the concerns and problems of your potential customers, you'll be able to design an effective product/service.
2. Who is the product intended for? If the product already exists, what kind of users does it already have, if any?
Another thing to acknowledge before moving further is to know why you're designing the product/service, and who its targeted customers are. Knowing this will help you to understand the core purpose behind the existence of the product. After collecting the necessary information, you can conduct more research to acquire a full grip on the customers' needs. Furthermore, it'll ensure you design a suitable product according to their needs and requirements.
Although, in this drill of knowing your customer, make sure to understand your client's perspective as well. You don't need to challenge the client if you don't like his/her concept behind the UX project to avoid unfruitful debates.
If the product is already in use, then a smart UX question would be to ask what kind of users the product has. Some users may be inconsistent with buying the product, while others might be regular buyers. Finding this will assist you in creating a more user-friendly end product.
3. Was there ever a piece of research run on this before we stepped in?
Previous research on the same project can help you more than you think. Understanding that will lend you precious information, which you can study and come up with an even better plan to execute your UX project. Also, previous research can be beneficial to recognize the issues that could arise at the beginning of the project.
You can take help from the marketing department to access the data of earlier research. However, if the project is happening for the first time, you can run public research on your own. Moreover, you can also invite your colleagues to assist you with the research.
4. What are our desired business (or organizational) outcomes? Why are we doing this, and how are we going to measure the success?
Never be afraid to ask the desired results of the UX project. Inquire the organization about their goal and develop your work plan accordingly. Besides, you must ask them for a logical explanation regarding the said goal. The goals should be clear and achievable. For example, the goal can be to increase customer satisfaction by 4 points or decreasing customer complaints by up to 3%. As both of them will require long-term planning, such user experience questions are crucial to design a perfect product.
Once you have decided on the goal, you should question the organization about the performance evaluation criteria. The criteria should be definite and follow a proper score pattern. Furthermore, you can ask them other success-related UX questions like the following:
Define success metrics?
Will we measure success quantitatively or qualitatively?
5. Are there enough resources for this project? What if we go extra, will there still be enough resources?
Another important UX question to ask is about the availability of resources. As a UX designer, you must obtain knowledge of all the resources available to support the project. Otherwise, it would be a blunder to start the planning before making a complete list of tools and services at the beginning of the project. You might need the help of your colleagues to accomplish this task because they will be responsible for the final design too.
The second part of the question will tell you if the company has enough resources to support additional expenses or not.
6. What are the ethical considerations? What group might we marginalize by not making our product inclusive and accessible?
Well, we all know that not all the products we design are meant for everyone. There are some UX projects which target only a small group of people. For example, gardening is a service that might not be needed by everyone. Similarly, you must realize that your product will not be suitable for everyone in society. But you should know for which people will the product work.
You should remain thoughtful while designing a product to save your organization from being labeled unethical or insensitive.
7. What are the risks and problems that we have to overcome?
Always remember the risks and problems associated with a project will not only affect the company but will affect the UX designer as well. Therefore, questioning the risks and issues concerning the UX project is of significant importance. Besides, measuring the risk beforehand will allow you to plan wisely from the beginning of the project.
Considering the problems before starting the project will provide you with additional time to come up with a better solution.
8. Who owns the UI once you have “finished” working on it? Will others need to change it independently?
UI is a primary aspect of every UX project, so you can't leave the discussion without knowing about the authority of the end product. UI defines the interaction of people with the product you have created. That means UI falls under the designing part that includes it in the list of important UX questions. Also, never forget to inquire about the editing portion too. If tomorrow the final design needs some changes, the organization must know who would be responsible for editing the UI.
9. What technologies are we planning to use, how well are these suited towards meeting our goals?
At the beginning of the project, you will be hit with some facts and percentages by your company. For example, a fact will state that word press is the best CMS to use when creating websites. However, you will soon find some better options after searching this on Google. After discussing this particular website with your team, you'll know the website is not the best option for creating a user-friendly site. Again, you'll be hit by another User experience question, and this cycle will continue until your team contacts the stakeholder.
Conveying your problems to the stakeholder requires a lot of patience and communication. Therefore, you must be ready to face this by researching well on your project.
10. Do you have the freedom to try unconventional solutions or are the standard ones more appropriate to the context?
What will happen if you think of a brilliant solution to solve an ongoing designing problem in your UX project? Well, the answer is pretty simple; your team will appreciate your efforts and apply the solution, and get rid of the problem. But what if your solution doesn't follow the standard criteria? Will your unconventional idea be accepted, or you'll be told to comply with the standard ways of doing things.
If the latter happens, you'll have to start everything from scratch, and this will feel unjustified. So, to avoid such problems in the future, it's an outstanding idea to get the basic details first and ask as many UX questions as possible.
Conclusion
When working on UX projects, the designer must ask as many relevant questions as possible. Many designers think that asking too many questions will portray them as unskilled or incompetent. Although, in reality, asking questions indicate that you are curious to know more about the subject.
The same happens when it comes to designing products. The more User experience questions you will ask, the more it will reflect your passion for making a user-friendly product. This, in turn, will increase the effectiveness of the product, and hence the sales, making you a professional UX designer.
