**Improving UX Design through Research and Collaboration**

In today's digital landscape, User Experience (UX) design is crucial for creating products that are intuitive, user-friendly, and meet the needs of customers. One of the key aspects of UX design is understanding the users' behavior, preferences, and pain points. In this article, we'll explore how a UX designer improved their design process by conducting research and collaborating with stakeholders.

**Proactive Research and Collaboration**

To improve the design process, the UX designer realized that they needed to gather more information about the target audience. However, the company didn't have a dedicated researcher on board at the time. Undeterred, the designer took matters into their own hands by reaching out to potential users through Twitter. By tweeting a message asking for feedback and engaging with potential users, the designer was able to gather valuable insights and learn about the needs of their target audience.

**Gathering Insights from Users**

Through their Twitter outreach efforts, the UX designer was able to connect with several creative Cloud library users who shared their experiences and workflows. By listening to these users' stories, the designer gained a deeper understanding of how they worked, what their pain points were, and what features they needed in a design solution. This feedback helped the designer refine their design approach and create a more user-centric product.

**Measuring Success in UX Design**

When it comes to measuring success in UX design, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. The success metric depends on the specific project goals and objectives. For some projects, metrics such as conversion rates or analytics data may be sufficient. However, for others, more subjective measures like user satisfaction or overall user experience may be necessary.

**Measuring Success through Validation and Testing**

For the UX designer, one of the most effective ways to measure success was through testing and validation with users. By presenting their design solutions to a small group of users and gathering feedback, the designer was able to identify areas for improvement and refine their designs accordingly. This approach helped ensure that the final product met the needs and expectations of the target audience.

**Working with Engineers and Product Managers**

Collaboration is essential in UX design, particularly when working with engineers and product managers. By involving these stakeholders early on in the design process, the UX designer was able to gather valuable input and feedback. This collaborative approach helped ensure that the final product met the technical requirements and business objectives of the company.

**Overcoming Disagreements and Challenges**

Despite their best efforts, disagreements can arise when working with engineers and product managers. These disagreements are often rooted in subjective design decisions or conflicting priorities. In such cases, the UX designer recommends taking a step back to review the user goals and user journey. By focusing on these core principles, designers can often resolve disagreements by refocusing on what's most important: delivering a good user experience.

**A Fun Design Project: Social Media App**

One of the projects that stood out to us was a social media app designed by the UX designer for fun. The project aimed to address the problem of scheduling and planning with friends, which is often a challenging task for working professionals. By creating an app where users can simply turn on a switch to indicate their availability, the designer simplified the process of hanging out with friends. This design solution not only improved user experience but also increased opportunities for social interaction and happiness.

By embracing proactive research, collaboration, and testing, UX designers can create products that meet the needs of their target audience. By understanding the users' behavior, preferences, and pain points, designers can craft designs that are intuitive, user-friendly, and effective.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday we're sitting with Karen a star UX designer at Adobe Creative Cloud but a couple of years ago she was just under the UX applicant in today's session we are going to ask her some of the common interview questions she answered while applying for a UX job how did he get started in new york's design I had the intention of being in the health care field when I was studying in college I was taking a lot of health classes and science courses and I was actually in the few for almost three years I was an analyst and I was doing a lot of data work and I found that something was missing I wanted to do something a little bit more creative so I started soul-searching and then at the same time I was always volunteering to design like a team's newsletter and I just thought it was like really fun so I knew there was something there but I didn't exactly know what so I just started like looking around like what other jobs or careers were out there and then I found UX design and then the more I learned the more fascinated I was I just couldn't really get it out of my head I loved how it was about very methodical process they creatures driven and ultimately just trying to help people create the best experiences took me a while but I just like kind of contemplated and realized that this was what I was meant to do so I quit my job and enrolled in like a UX bootcamp and then from there on I just tried to learn as much as I can try to learn off methods and the principal is a really grateful that I got the opportunity where I am now and I'm just so lucky to work with really smart people on it really interesting problems as well what is your design process like my design process is usually broken down into three parts there's the research part and then design and then iteration so before I start any project I would do a lot of research and that depends on whether there's a user researcher or not and I would so if there is then they would do a lot of like the search upfront and then I would just design but then if there isn't and I would do a lot of like competitive analysis do a lot of market research and trying to figure out like what are some of the things that are already working so I don't need to like reinvent the wheel a lot of it is just looking at the existing products what are the some of the trends and some of the products that are already working like really well so I would come up with like a couple of design concepts and then get feedback from my stakeholders and that includes like the PM engineers including my teammates and then like get feedback and an iterate and then try to do research and test to see if this design actually makes sense is it actually an improve experience so from there we just keep learning and keep iterating and that's usually the ideal process what is a recent project that you were challenged by I'd love to hear about like what the problem was and how you approached it yeah so a recent project that I'm actually working on right now is improving a search experience for like this libraries panel in Adobe product and what I had to do was try to come up with a new search experience for users and customers I was trying to figure out what that could possibly look like and that was particularly challenging because we didn't really have a lot of research implemented into our process yet so that was something that our team knew that we wanted to improve on but at the current moment we don't really have a dedicated researcher so what I did was I went on Twitter and I tried to be really proactive and try to recruit users that way and I just tweeted like hey are there any creative cloud library users I would like to talk to you so from there I actually learned a lot from our customers and I understood like the ways they worked and what like who these people were to begin with so this was like particularly child because I didn't know who these people were that I was designing for but I tried to be creative and be resourceful and just try to figure out how I can just talk to people because when you talk to people you can significantly just enhance your designs by tenfold just by understanding what like some of the workflows are for these people and we're continuously trying to improve the process right now we're trying to bring people in to test and to validate that's pretty important how do you measure success in UX design for me success comes from different places so it depends on what the goal is for a project it depends on what you're trying to measure for like a specific project so if you're you're trying to improve conversion rates for example in an experience or a design that's the sucess metric but typically some projects are not as measurable as it is like that so that one you can measure by like analytics the success metric for that but what if I'm designing for a search experience I can't really measure like the impact that it has so it's a little bit subjective in that way but I think if there's validation into testing and then you get validation from maybe like five that's usually like the golden number that is enough but more is better so if you search and like you try to improve like a search experience and it's actually working and people can get to what they can do that's one of the success metrics that I look for and just overall like improve workflow is another metric that I would look for how do you usually work with engineers and product managers I'd love to hear about some experiences of disagreements or other kind of complex he had with them and how you resolved those I have pretty good relationships with the engineers and product managers so typically it's a very collaborative process and with the PM's we would try to collaborate they give me the requirements and I would give them designs and if we can involve like engineers early on that would be the best because they have actually a lot of like input and feedback to say if you're designing like there are a lot of technical constraints that we want to like just cover before like you design all these things and then you find out later oh that's not actually feasible so it's good to involve them early on into the process there's a certain design decision and they don't necessarily agree but I think it might be better so there are a lot of disagreements when it comes to design because it's a little bit like called subjective but there's usually a reason why things were designed a certain way so we'll look back at like the user goal and user journey to figure out well why are we trying to do this in the first place and use that as the core like goal and forget like all the minor details and just try to stick to the user goal as much as possible as like our success criteria and typically that resolves a lot of things like if there's like data involved that could resolve a lot of like disagreements we have to like look at look back at the data and look back at the user what is the user trying to do and that yeah just resolves a lot of things what is the UX design project that you've done for fun one of the projects that I did was the social media app I just thought that there was a problem with like hanging out with my friends because as a working professional I'm super busy and I don't like scheduling and planning and the way that it currently is right now you have to look at your own calendar and then ask your friend hey what's your availability like and then they would have to look at their calendar so this whole process of just trying to hang out with your friends is really difficult so I created this social media app where people can just turn on a switch and let your friends know that you're free so that eliminates the whole like scheduling like hassle and it just makes it a lot more easier so that was something that I just like me for fun and I just thought it was like a really interesting project because this is like one of the problems that I think a lot of people are having and I think that hanging out with your friends is an opportunity for like happiness and joy and if we can make that experience easier then it would increase our overall like health and well-beingtoday we're sitting with Karen a star UX designer at Adobe Creative Cloud but a couple of years ago she was just under the UX applicant in today's session we are going to ask her some of the common interview questions she answered while applying for a UX job how did he get started in new york's design I had the intention of being in the health care field when I was studying in college I was taking a lot of health classes and science courses and I was actually in the few for almost three years I was an analyst and I was doing a lot of data work and I found that something was missing I wanted to do something a little bit more creative so I started soul-searching and then at the same time I was always volunteering to design like a team's newsletter and I just thought it was like really fun so I knew there was something there but I didn't exactly know what so I just started like looking around like what other jobs or careers were out there and then I found UX design and then the more I learned the more fascinated I was I just couldn't really get it out of my head I loved how it was about very methodical process they creatures driven and ultimately just trying to help people create the best experiences took me a while but I just like kind of contemplated and realized that this was what I was meant to do so I quit my job and enrolled in like a UX bootcamp and then from there on I just tried to learn as much as I can try to learn off methods and the principal is a really grateful that I got the opportunity where I am now and I'm just so lucky to work with really smart people on it really interesting problems as well what is your design process like my design process is usually broken down into three parts there's the research part and then design and then iteration so before I start any project I would do a lot of research and that depends on whether there's a user researcher or not and I would so if there is then they would do a lot of like the search upfront and then I would just design but then if there isn't and I would do a lot of like competitive analysis do a lot of market research and trying to figure out like what are some of the things that are already working so I don't need to like reinvent the wheel a lot of it is just looking at the existing products what are the some of the trends and some of the products that are already working like really well so I would come up with like a couple of design concepts and then get feedback from my stakeholders and that includes like the PM engineers including my teammates and then like get feedback and an iterate and then try to do research and test to see if this design actually makes sense is it actually an improve experience so from there we just keep learning and keep iterating and that's usually the ideal process what is a recent project that you were challenged by I'd love to hear about like what the problem was and how you approached it yeah so a recent project that I'm actually working on right now is improving a search experience for like this libraries panel in Adobe product and what I had to do was try to come up with a new search experience for users and customers I was trying to figure out what that could possibly look like and that was particularly challenging because we didn't really have a lot of research implemented into our process yet so that was something that our team knew that we wanted to improve on but at the current moment we don't really have a dedicated researcher so what I did was I went on Twitter and I tried to be really proactive and try to recruit users that way and I just tweeted like hey are there any creative cloud library users I would like to talk to you so from there I actually learned a lot from our customers and I understood like the ways they worked and what like who these people were to begin with so this was like particularly child because I didn't know who these people were that I was designing for but I tried to be creative and be resourceful and just try to figure out how I can just talk to people because when you talk to people you can significantly just enhance your designs by tenfold just by understanding what like some of the workflows are for these people and we're continuously trying to improve the process right now we're trying to bring people in to test and to validate that's pretty important how do you measure success in UX design for me success comes from different places so it depends on what the goal is for a project it depends on what you're trying to measure for like a specific project so if you're you're trying to improve conversion rates for example in an experience or a design that's the sucess metric but typically some projects are not as measurable as it is like that so that one you can measure by like analytics the success metric for that but what if I'm designing for a search experience I can't really measure like the impact that it has so it's a little bit subjective in that way but I think if there's validation into testing and then you get validation from maybe like five that's usually like the golden number that is enough but more is better so if you search and like you try to improve like a search experience and it's actually working and people can get to what they can do that's one of the success metrics that I look for and just overall like improve workflow is another metric that I would look for how do you usually work with engineers and product managers I'd love to hear about some experiences of disagreements or other kind of complex he had with them and how you resolved those I have pretty good relationships with the engineers and product managers so typically it's a very collaborative process and with the PM's we would try to collaborate they give me the requirements and I would give them designs and if we can involve like engineers early on that would be the best because they have actually a lot of like input and feedback to say if you're designing like there are a lot of technical constraints that we want to like just cover before like you design all these things and then you find out later oh that's not actually feasible so it's good to involve them early on into the process there's a certain design decision and they don't necessarily agree but I think it might be better so there are a lot of disagreements when it comes to design because it's a little bit like called subjective but there's usually a reason why things were designed a certain way so we'll look back at like the user goal and user journey to figure out well why are we trying to do this in the first place and use that as the core like goal and forget like all the minor details and just try to stick to the user goal as much as possible as like our success criteria and typically that resolves a lot of things like if there's like data involved that could resolve a lot of like disagreements we have to like look at look back at the data and look back at the user what is the user trying to do and that yeah just resolves a lot of things what is the UX design project that you've done for fun one of the projects that I did was the social media app I just thought that there was a problem with like hanging out with my friends because as a working professional I'm super busy and I don't like scheduling and planning and the way that it currently is right now you have to look at your own calendar and then ask your friend hey what's your availability like and then they would have to look at their calendar so this whole process of just trying to hang out with your friends is really difficult so I created this social media app where people can just turn on a switch and let your friends know that you're free so that eliminates the whole like scheduling like hassle and it just makes it a lot more easier so that was something that I just like me for fun and I just thought it was like a really interesting project because this is like one of the problems that I think a lot of people are having and I think that hanging out with your friends is an opportunity for like happiness and joy and if we can make that experience easier then it would increase our overall like health and well-being\n"