Implementing a new user experience and interface project in a mobile application with 200K+ users?
Are you really ready for user experience and interface design? 👀 👩🏻💻 Fresh case from 200K+ user app
As a product manager and founder of a product experience studio, one of the biggest internal projects that will directly affect the user’s opinion and usage experience under the product management headings, both in the companies I have previously worked in and in the companies we serve as customers, is definitely creating a user experience and interface for a mobile application that already has thousands of users. to realize the project.
Many people working in the company approach a new “product design” subconsciously with the feeling of a new oil painting design taken into the office, and they get excited and want the project to start and be completed as soon as possible. In fact, the excitement of the process motivates everyone, so it generally has a positive effect at the beginning. However, starting a new user experience and interface design project (especially for products with thousands of existing users) requires the conditions to be completely ready. Knowing your user well, having a large team or having a new investment are not sufficient reasons to start such an internal project.
I want to tell what happened in the mobile application user experience and interface project with 200+K users, based on a real and fresh story, but I think it would be more valuable to share the experiences experienced in the process and move forward with recommendations, whether you start such a process as a product manager, rather than telling this story through our customer or a brand. Whether you are on the service agency side or as a designer, every stage is very important.
A user experience project does not only mean updating the design and making the product look more pleasing to the eye; for a digital application that currently has thousands of users, a UX-UI project means, above all, “solving problems and being able to compete better in the market”. Before starting such a project, regardless of which side you are on, you should know these things very well and tick them off on your checklist.
In my experience, if you are serving as an agency or receiving service from an agency, get to know the type of people in both teams and their areas of expertise, chat with people and get to know their approach, ask for time and give people time.
Make sure everyone understands what the concept of UX-UI means and what it will change.
Make sure that everyone in the team has a clear role in the project. If not, talk to people and position everyone in the project, regardless of the company. “Remember, in such a project, your customers will be direct users, not the company, at the end of the day, no matter which side you are on.”
Show with examples how much the client can intervene in the UX-UI team, it should be clear how much say everyone can have on the design output (it should definitely be experts).
Listen to the problems without judgment like a psychologist, take notes and gather them, going to every team in the company (from management to the receptionist) as you round up the problems.
Learn the company’s future goals that will affect the product, be informed about everything, if someone comes in the middle of the project with a request to add something new without your knowledge, it can disrupt the entire flow.
So, briefly, what should be expected from a user experience and interface design project for an existing multi-user product?
It should solve existing user experience problems.
It must have introduced new facilities to compete in the market (may vary depending on product goals and time, sometimes it may be implemented just to improve a very bad experience)
It should directly match the identity of the brand and have a memorable and creative design.
It must match the company’s goals and be guiding.
Great, but are expectations always met? Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Despite a successfully constructed flow of experience on Figma, successful ideas that provide solutions to problems, and successful results in test groups as a result of tests, sometimes everything does not go as expected, why?
There may be many reasons, but the part based on the real story that I want to touch upon reveals itself a little bit here. It is important to make sure that the conditions are ready to carry out an internal project for an existing product, especially an internal project such as UX-UI that will directly affect the user experience, and that the above checklist is really valid. You have to make sure that it can be ticked, and in order for these to be ticked, basically the following groups of people are needed for a product company of this size;
The product must have a product manager, for a product of this size (200K+ users) such a project should not be carried out only with the marketing team, such a project definitely needs a product manager who is knowledgeable about user experience, can provide the right information and knows where to stand.
Such a project definitely needs a marketing manager/expert who is familiar with the brand identity, brand values and users.
It definitely needs a mobile software team that is experienced and respects the experience team.Such a project definitely needs a board of directors that stays one step back and does not interfere with the flow of experience of the designs outside of the creative departments.
Such a project definitely needs an existing user group willing to give feedback.
Such a project definitely needs a rival user group from which you can get feedback.
Such a project definitely requires mutual sharing of a transparent project agenda.
Of course, such a project needs an interface design team that is experienced and understands the product, market, user and problems very well, and communicates very well with the user experience team and the experience team.
These are indispensable for a successful UX-UI project process that meets expectations for a digital product that is currently live. Thinking that design-based internal projects are just images and trying to guide the team by sharing everything that comes to mind as feedback with the UX-UI team leads to big mistakes. Such processes that affect the user’s experience can cause more harm than good when done incorrectly and implemented live. If you cannot destroy an experience that the user is used to, even if it is bad, and offer something better instead, this will lead to more harm.
Whether the user experience team is the company’s internal team or an outsourced agency, if it is true that the team has sufficient equipment and competence, which we assume, the biggest responsibility of the service company employees towards this team is to inundate the team with information about users, problems and goals. Interfering with the experience team and trying to direct them with personal design considerations will lead to disaster. As a product manager or marketing manager/expert, you should also confirm the above checklist before starting such a project, such a project is an intertwined, mutually progressing project where “experience and design decisions are left to the UX-UI team” and testing with user groups. It should be managed as a process where it is verified and confirmed.
If the current conditions do not meet these, the project should be postponed and the groundwork should be prepared for the right time. The last stage in the processes involved in a product management is to carry out the action that touches the user.
Litmus Effect
An experience and interface design process is the litmus of the product team or even the brand. If it has been successfully implemented and the product has been successfully launched after the design process, the product team, the marketing team or even the entire brand will have an organizational management structure and professional staff that can realize many disciplines and standards within itself. It means having a team of conscious people.
If the process is not successful, that is, if the process does not create the expected effect, it means that the right things were not done at the right time with the right team. In such a process, instead of persistently continuing to update the design, it is necessary to stop and evaluate the team structure and the errors in the process. These errors are basically as follows;
Wrong people constantly gave wrong feedback to the UX-UI team throughout the process (could be product manager, marketing manager/expert or management).
The UX-UI team may have accepted and implemented the wrong feedback without resistance.
The healthy design output may have been received from the UX-UI team, but it may have been transformed into a completely different situation by intervention at the software stage. (This happens very often and is like crossing the ocean and drowning in the stream, all research and knowledge are thrown away, the software team acts according to their own priorities and convenience, or the marketing team intervenes in too many issues, generally when they cannot have a say in the UX-UI team, unconscious teams use this method it moves)
If everything is ready, I hope you will be matched with the right team at the right time to make digital products more seamless, successful and aesthetic.
Be patient, don’t take steps to gloss over things, at the end of the day you will touch the lives of thousands of users, this is a way of existence.
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Implementing a new user experience and interface project in a mobile application with 200K+ users? was originally published in product.blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.