User Centered Design Canvas Deconstructed
The goal every UX designer wants to achieve is to make a truly user friendly product. No matter if it’s a mobile application, a website or an interface for a household appliance — a person who will use it should have seamless experience. To achieve such a goal it is crucial to gather as much information about the potential users, their expectations and needs as possible. Processing all that data may be challenging, but often the skillful management of information decides about the projects’ success or failure.
In this article, I’ll show you how to make use of a new UX tool that helps to organize information about users and business. The tool’s name is User Centered Design Canvas. It was introduced in the article on UX Magazine: Introducing User Centered Design Canvas.
User Centered Design Canvas Deconstructed
The tool was inspired by the well-known Business Model Canvas and developed with user centered approach in mind. It contains 9 fields that represent specific categories of information about the users and the business or product. The left side of the canvas is dedicated entirely to the users and consists of the following fields: problems, motives and fears. Having organized those categories of information it is easy to understand the users and define their goals. The right side of the canvas contains information about the business: solutions it offers, alternatives that users have and competitive advantages that make it stand out on the market. The center column of the canvas gathers all the information — the business, the users and Unique Value Proposition.
Field 1 and 2: Business and Users
Filling in the canvas we start with the center part of it — first field is for the business. It can be the name of a company, a short description of a product or even a single feature. The first field serves as a title of the whole canvas.
The second field is for the users. It’s a place for writing down few types of potential users and their goals. It is common that the business has several target groups that differ significantly from one another. The main groups should be jotted down in the canvas to make sure UX designer will keep all of them in mind.
The following sections of the article explain the next fields of the tool and provide information on how UX designer can make use of them.
Field 3: Problems
One of the basic things that should be clearly understood during the UX design process is why users will use a given product. Problems may be considered as rational conditions that trigger behavior. The question that should be asked here is: What problems users have that may be solved by the product or service?
Why is it important:
By realizing what problems users may have, it is possible to understand the purpose of their behavior. Therefore UX designer is able to adjust the product or service to facilitate achieving user’s goal.
How to make use of it:
Highlighting the most important problems or problems that are common for different groups of users enables to assess what kind of information will facilitate users’ decisions. Choosing the gist of the product or service and presenting it to the users is an easy way to save their time and decrease cognitive-load. The gist that clearly shows users that the product or service is aimed to solve their actual problems may be formed as a short sentence on the website, banner, package or can be used in any kind of promotional material.
Field 4: Motives
While problems may push users toward a solution, motives facilitate their behavior and help sustaining it. What will drive users toward a solution, then? Filling in the Motives field makes it easy to understand what emotions or values are hidden behind users’ decisions and behavior.
Why it is important:
Decisions made by people are not entirely rational. In most cases there is a pinch (or something bigger than a pinch) of emotional aspect that motivates behavior. UX designer should always ease the users’ way toward a solution and that’s why acknowledging motivational aspect is a paramount.
How to make use of it:
The longer way the user has to achieve a goal, the more important motivation is. Knowledge about the motives may prove useful when preparing detailed user journey — on each step motives should be considered as an element that would speed up users’ actions and as a result offer them the desired solution quickly.
Field 5: Fears
A counterbalance to motives are users’ fears — the psychological aspects that impede behavior. What elements can prevent users from striving toward a solution? What aspects of a product or service can be seen as risky and discourage users? Fears, together with problems and motives, form the full explanation of the potential users’ behavior.
Why it is important:
Since safety is one of people’s primary needs, anything new or unknown is very often considered as potentially dangerous. From evolutionary point of view, it is better to avoid risk and don’t benefit than take a risk and loose something. New things can make users fearful. They’ll be prone to avoid any risk to sustain their comfort, safe zone. That’s why ensuring users’ safety during the usage of a product or service should be one of the crucial goals for UX designers.
How to make use of it:
After realizing what fears users may have, it is possible to ensure them safety and encourage them to broaden their comfort zone. It is only achievable by providing users with proper information that will resolve their doubts, especially at the beginning of their journey with a product or service.
Field 6: Solutions
Finding possible ways to address the users’ problems, motives and fears is the next step. What can a given business offer to its target users? How can certain product features or service characteristics help achieving users’ goals? Looking at the left side of the canvas it is clear what should be written down in the Solution field.
Why it is important:
Positive user experience is feasible when solutions that a given business offers solve the target users’ problems. Offering something that doesn’t work not only will result in a poor business development but will also frustrate users and lead to negative attitude toward the product or service.
How to make use of it:
Comparing the Solutions field with the left side of the canvas, it is easy to find the most important ways to ensure positive user experience. Those that address not only problems, but also enforce motivation and resolve doubts are most important. After completing this field, it should become clear what aspects of the product or service to develop in order to gain thankful and happy users.
Field 7: Alternatives
Nowadays people have the comfort of choosing among a wide range of products and services. Answering the following questions should help to find potential alternatives to the product or service: What can users do to solve their problems? What possibilities can they encounter when searching for solution?
Why it is important:
Realizing that there are alternatives that could also solve the users’ problems motivates business owners to ensure positive experience and distinguish their businesses on the market. It also gives the idea on the decisions users have to make when trying to solve their problems.
How to make use of it:
Writing down possible alternatives may simplify competitor analysis and help in learning about the specific market — how others sell products or services, what the trends are, how big the competition is.
Field 8: Competitive advantages
Seeing the potential competitors, the next questions should be: What the product or service can offer that others cannot? Why the user should choose one product over another? What is the additional advantage of using it? The answers should be written down in the Competitive Advantages field.
Why it is important:
Whether a user will go for a certain solution or choose the other depends on many different factors. Competitive advantages are one of those factors — they are strengths of a product or service from which users may benefit.
How to make use of it:
Competitive advantages are the key to facilitate users’ decisions. Highlighting business strengths, UX designer eases the decision-making process by showing the additional value users may get when choosing a particular product or service.
Field 9. Unique Value Proposition
After completing all previous fields, it should be easy to create UVP — a phrase that will be a business’ promise given to the users. Such statement with the main benefits listed serves as a description of a product or service and could be used as the main message giving the clear idea on what the product or service is about.
Summary
Organizing the information about the users and business may be challenging, yet it’s necessary to make a product or service truly user friendly. The form of the tool which is A4 sheet of paper forces UX designers to really focus on the most important aspects. With the User Centered Design Canvas it is easier to organize all the data and thus focus on what really matters — ensuring positive user experience.
