⏳ 3 tips to become more effective in UX/UI design faster

⏳ 3 tips to become more effective in UX/UI design faster

How to improve your workflow and become a faster, more efficient and subsequently happier designer. You're welcome 😇

Happy Sunday, wonderful Design Peeps,

In this week’s newsletter, we will talk about:

🌪️ Effectiveness vs efficiency in Design

⌛️ 3 Benefits of becoming more efficient

👩🏼‍💻 3 Tips on how to achieve a higher efficiency in design

🌪️ Effectiveness vs efficiency in Design

I’m going to state the obvious first: Effectiveness and efficiency are two sides of the same coin, yet they hold distinct meanings.

Effectiveness means achieving the right results and meeting the intended objectives. It's about the impact of your design — does it solve the problem? Does it resonate with the target audience?

On the other hand, efficiency is about the process. It's how you get to those results. Are you utilizing resources, including time and tools, in the most productive way possible? Efficient design processes often involve streamlining workflows, using technology smartly, and eliminating unnecessary steps.

While effectiveness focuses on the 'what,' efficiency is all about the 'how.' A designer might create an incredibly effective campaign that hits all the right notes with the audience, but if it took an unreasonably long time and consumed excessive resources, it wasn't efficient.

The key (not only in design) is to balance these two: creating impactful, goal-oriented designs whist optimizing the process and resources used.

⌛️ 3 Benefits of becoming more efficient

Becoming more efficient in design doesn't mean cutting corners. It's about smart management of your skills, time, and tools to create the best possible work in a sustainable, productive manner.

You might think it takes me a lot of time to actually become efficient and effective! Yes, that is called skillset, and needs to be developed. It takes time and hard work, but the outcome is definitely worth fighting for:

1. Increased Productivity: By streamlining your design process, you can produce more in less time.
2. Improved Quality of Work: Efficiency often leads to a clearer mind and less clutter in the workflow. This clarity can significantly enhance the quality of your design outputs.
3. Enhanced Client Satisfaction: Efficient design work often translates to meeting deadlines and staying within budget, which are crucial factors in client satisfaction.

Needless to say, all of the above ☝️inevitably lead to an increase in income potential, which in the long run is what we (presumably) are all working towards.

👩🏼‍💻 3 Tips on how to achieve a higher efficiency in design

You’ll probably think now… ok, that’s nice. But how do I become more efficient when working in design.

Good news; the answer to that is pretty straight forward. Here are three crucial steps.

1. Don’t skip steps in the process or you’ll have to go back

I often encounter designers who tell me “This is the brief for my project, and this is the high fidelity design I started”.

Even if you are only starting out with design, you’ll probably know that there is a process that should be followed, and that decisions are not made on a whim.

The other extreme is that students seem to think they have to follow all the steps in order to achieve success in design, which is also a misconception.

I like to think of the design process as a building process, and your knowledge is your toolbox. You can use the tools inside (design process exercises such as surveys, personas, affinity maps or task flows) in the order that makes the most logical sense for the particular project you are working on.

2. Get feedback early

Similarly counterproductive is the process where designers work in a vacuum, and present team members, stakeholders and clients with a finished design, that has not gone through any feedback or testing sessions.

There are two types of feedback we should seek no matter how far we are into the design process:

• Internal feedback from team members and stakeholders. This includes feedback from people who are somehow involved in the development of the product. They are likely going to be able to give you technical or business related feedback such as: “Our database is built in a way that the user won’t be able to create a document before creating a folder first”, which impacts the order in which things happen in your design. Or a stakeholder might be able to give you feedback related to the company OKRs (which should be openly available for you to know to begin with).
• External feedback from potential users. This is the one that will give you the insights on what to build and if the way your built it works for them. For this you can use tools like Useberry or Lyssna, which I like to use to get a variety of people without having to tap the same network of people over and over again. If you prefer to use your own network, you can still use these tools and send a link out, or do usability tests, surveys and other outward facing tests via video conference call.

What can go wrong?

Imagine: You come across Anna, who tells you about her problem. She struggles to get to work on time when she gets up in the morning.

“I need to get to my work by 8am.”

Your response is: “I have an idea! ✈️ ”

There is not much context, you don’t know where she lives, where her work is, nor how much time she has to commute.

Let’s say for a second that you nail the problem statement, though. You understand what her problem is, and instead of designing a Boeing 735, you go off and come back with an app design that can track all the public transportation methods within her vicinity by geolocation, and it solves her problem right away.

However, the developments costs of this app are higher than you would like, and since you built it already, you want for more people to use it. But you don’t even know if there are more people like her, who struggle with the same problem…

You always want to make sure you came to the right conclusions, and the design decisions you made are helpful for people who are experiencing the problem you are solving.

Even if you experience this problem yourself, you should never assume to be the user. Unless you are okay with potential failure, and developing a product just for yourself. Sometimes this happens as well.

If that is not the case, the most effective feedback (in my experience) when working with a feature, is to use a sandwich method:

• External feedback in the form of user interviews, surveys and beta user calls if the feature / product already exists.
• Internal feedback after some brainstorming, where developers, engineers and product managers can give some insights on what is possible and what best aligns with the business goals.
• External feedback through usability testing, where wireframes or high fidelity prototypes are tested on a user group to see if it aligns with their needs.

As a side dish, some products also have a group of beta testers, who will test the finished feature once it is developed, so we can spot potential bugs before the product gets released to thousands of people.

3. Master your design tool of choice.

You might think it’s very daunting to learn a new tool, and that is certainly the case. However, the one thing to develop a faster workflow is practice, practice, practice. There are two reasons for this:

• Your designs over time become better in more subtile ways.
• You develop muscle memory.

Yes, muscle memory.

You might have heard that blind people can make their way around their own home without a cane, because they remember where things are positioned, and how far apart they are.

That is a form of muscle memory, and it’s meant to make us more efficient, effective and ultimately safer. Whilst that is an amazing example, it’s not the only one:

Once I moved into a home, and whilst taking some of my stuff up the stairs, I tripped over one of the steps, which was a centimeter taller than the rest of them.

Our bodies are so fine tuned, they will notice a tiny difference. The same thing happened every time I would go up those same stairs for the next few days, but soon my body developed muscle memory, and I stopped noticing that one step was taller than the rest.

I wouldn’t have been able to consciously tell you which step it was, but my body knew to lift my feet high enough above the ground to avoid tripping.

We can use this mechanism to our advantage when designing, by performing the same task over and over again. Typing with all ten fingers on a keyboard is another great example.

When designing in your design tool of choice (I use Figma and Affinity Designer), training yourself to do the same tasks in the most efficient and fast way is going to train that muscle memory. If, from the very beginning, you find the necessary shortcuts to switch tools, you will find yourself switching back and forth between scale (k) and move (v) with ease, no mouse required.

What are your favorite Figma shortcuts? Did I miss any tips and strategies you know of? Let me know.

See you in two weeks!

-D.

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