How-tos
Step-by-step procedures for common UX tasks, written as workbooks you can follow on your own product and check your work against. Each how-to is the one canonical procedure for its task, and every one has the same shape: the outcome you will have at the end; when to use it and when not to; what you need before you start; numbered steps, each saying what to do and what you should have once it is done; a worked example taken through every step; a checklist to run against your own result; the mistakes people commonly make; and the related laws, patterns, Pulse templates and courses. Where a Pulse template exists for the task, the how-to ends in it, so you finish with a filled-in persona, journey map, empathy map, survey or brief rather than a page of notes. The articles keep the reasoning behind each method and link here for the steps.
Research
- Create a user persona
Turn eight to twelve interviews into a one-page persona, derived from behaviour, that settles a design decision your team is stuck on.
- Create an empathy map
Sort research notes about one user into says, thinks, does and feels, then read the gaps between them to find what to design for next.
- Create a customer journey map
Map one persona's path to one goal across stages and channels, built from research, and cut it down to the moments a team will act on.
- Write a UX survey
Write a short survey that measures how usable your product is, with neutral rating statements and one targeted open question, tested before it goes out.
Planning
- Write a design brief
Agree the problem, the users, the scope and how success is measured on one page, signed off before anyone starts designing.
Accessibility
- Check colour contrast
Measure text and interface colours against the WCAG contrast thresholds, and fix the pairs that fail.