Introduction to User Experience (UX Workshop)
To understand one’s audience is essential when communicating. The goal of the domain of user experience (UX) is to maximize communication effectiveness between the author and the audience through adopting the user’s perspective.
Workshop Outline:
Intro to UX, UI, & IA
Usability audit example: RW website
Conduct your own usability audit!
Design thinking activity
Intro to UX, UI, & IA
We begin by giving the definitions of user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and information architecture (IA), as well as some examples. Here is an example of a content map, the main way to visualize the information architecture of a website or other project:
Usability Audit
When attempting to improve a DH project, conducting a usability audit is a great way to spot issues that could be fixed. In the workshop, we demonstrate a usability audit with an existing website, which home page is displayed here:
Conduct Your Own Informal Usability Audit:
To begin to improve your own digital projects, follow these steps!
- Save this article for future reference!
- Pick an existing digital humanities (DH) project from your organization.
- Approach the project from the perspective of a user, someone who has never seen your project before.
- Note difficult tasks and points of confusion. Think about where the user would expect some function to be: Is it there?
If you’d like to learn how to conduct formal usability audits and other UX tools, check out our Tools and Tips page!
Design Thinking Activity
Lastly we guide participants through the steps of the Design Thinking process, giving them a chance to experience user-centered design for themselves:
Comment below a project that you were able to improve with the help of a usability audit or the design thinking process!
To increase awareness of UX principles at your organization, share this article and discuss UX with your colleagues. Also send us a message and we’d love to take this workshop to you!