The line between teams’ capabilities and responsibilities was blurred, causing difficult cross-team alignment and communication. I took the lead and helped elevate their understanding by creating learning material and organizing meetings with key players in the organization.
The digital world is expanding at an exponential rate. As the business grows to keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape, we are tasked with creating products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users.
Humans and technological devices are woven together in today’s society, and improving those interactions is paramount. Here is where UX comes in. UX, or the User Experience, is important because it tries to fulfill users’ needs by providing positive experiences that keep them loyal to the product or brand. UX architects must consider usability, function, design, and branding.
The fundamentals of UX design are based on understanding the persona of our users, and the most effective way to understand them is by getting as much input as possible from team members across the business.
To achieve this, we must ensure that the creative and UX teams – become genuinely cross-functional. Designers, content strategists, IT, testing, and marketers must be involved in all projects that reach our customers. The more data shared about the user, the better the understanding.
This practice ensures that all perspectives are addressed and enables the Creative team to iterate more effectively. Neither entity – UX & Creative teams – can genuinely be successful without the input of the other. The establishment of a collaborative environment with a clear understanding of roles, handoffs, and strong communication leads to a product that is cohesive, seamless, and, most importantly, effective.
A UX team exposes the entire process, from the initial research to the ideation stages to the final visual design, micro-interactions, and prototypes. The UX team captures everything from examples in other products to notebook sketches, white-boarding sessions, and recorded snippets of animations, and this research culminates in a shared platform that details the entire user journey. UX tells stories in detail.
A UX architect is responsible for a meaningful presentation of information and organizational structure on the interface from the users’ perspective. To provide an efficient user-centered design interface, a UX architect takes on the responsibility of analyzing a business’s requirements and the behavior of the users. The UX team defines and maintains UX consistency with customizable assets by building and sharing UI libraries, templates, and master documents with Business Analysts and Product Managers.
The UX team reproduces the vision of a website through a sense of creativity, creating a user experience meant for the target audience. Besides maintaining the aesthetic beauty of the UI, the UX architect oversees the structure and flow of the website so users do not have any issues navigating through the interface.
A UX Architect is responsible for considering all of these elements together: The appearance of the website, ease of navigation, placing of strategic links, structure, and flow.
The Creative team builds upon the initial design theories established by a UX architect. They show how the more minor components or micro-interactions fit together to formulate the overall visual appeal of a product following UX guidelines.
