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UI/UX Design: The 3 Golden Principles
The three golden principles of UX design that will help you take your practice to the next level.
Overview
As UX professionals, we have to contend with a deluge of responsibilities on an essentially daily basis.
To that end, here are three practical, actionable, and battle-tested principles that you can apply to your practices to get better results.
#1. You are NOT your user
Stop assuming that you are, and stop assuming that you know what they want.
This is the number one mistake of most design teams and it will absolutely kill a product before it ever sees the light of day.
Other things that aren’t your users even if they may use your product include:
- Your stakeholders.
- You colleagues
- Your mangers/bosses
- Your vendors
- Your proto-personas
- Your business goals
- Your constraints/limitations
- Your loved ones
- Your cat
- Your pride
The only people that are actual users of your product are the ACTUAL END-USERS OF YOUR PRODUCT, PERIOD.
- What do they actually need?
- Have you bothered to ask them?
- Have you observed them and how they operate?
- Do you know what outcomes they are looking for?
These are the questions to ask yourself and the things to do to legitimately get to know your users.
Your users don’t care about your assumptions. They don’t care about your business goals. They don’t care about your constraints, project limitations, the size of your team, your design principles, or how your product works on the back end; THEY. DO. NOT. CARE.
