Prologue: While this is fundamentally a showcase of our process in the hopes of helping others, it’s also a story about the realism of limitations when working with clients and how we ultimately were able to deliver a product the client was pleased to receive and call their own.

序言：虽然这从根本上展示了我们希望为他人提供帮助的过程，但同时也讲述了与客户合作时局限性的现实性，以及我们最终如何能够交付客户满意的产品并为其打电话给他们的客户拥有。

On a day like any other autumn day in the office, I was approached by my employer with a rather vague request, “We have some business friends, they have a bit of a budget and would like us to rework the UX of their app, can you?” … A seemingly straightforward request right? Well yes but if there’s anything I've learnt working closely with clients is that things are never as simple as, “Here’s a bunch of money, do the thing you do.” Oh no, don’t let yourself fall into that trap. Validate! Always validate what the expectations of an initiative are so that you can better meet those expectations but also gain greater control over what those expectation might be in the first place. Anyways after probing my employer further about the project I finally had my answer “We have some money, do UX” 🤦‍♂️

在办公室的任何其他秋天的一天，我的雇主都向我提出了一个模糊的要求：“我们有一些商业朋友，他们有一些预算，希望我们重新设计应用程序的用户体验，你能？” ……看似简单的请求对吗？ 好吧，是的，但是如果我了解到与客户紧密合作的任何事情，事情从来没有像“这是一大笔钱，做自己想做的事”那样简单。 哦，不，不要让自己陷入陷阱。 验证！ 始终验证计划的期望是什么，以便您可以更好地满足这些期望，同时也可以更好地控制这些期望的初衷。 无论如何，在对我的雇主进一步调查该项目之后，我终于得到了答案：“我们有一些钱，做UX” 🤦‍🤦️

Unsatisfied with the lack of a brief I recruited one of out project managers to help me obtain one. The following morning we called the client and began asking questions, a 14 minute call later and we had exactly what we needed … “We are seeing a tremendous amount of drop-off through the sign-up process.” … “Can this be done before the end of the month.” … “We don’t really have a consistent UI system in place.”

由于缺乏简短的介绍，我招募了一名项目经理来帮助我。 第二天早上，我们打电话给客户并开始提出问题，然后在14分钟后打电话给我们，我们确实满足了我们的需求……“我们在注册过程中看到了巨大的下降。” ……“这可以在月底之前完成吗？” ……“我们实际上并没有一个统一的UI系统。”

研究策略 (Research Strategy)

Achieving a ‘better result’ requires taking a suitable approach. Design thinking has been a-well-known problem-solving method infused in the psyche of designers and start-ups. Design Thinking was familiar and quick to execute which suited the aggressive timeline set-forth by 925's investors. Design thinking was how we were going to do it.

为了获得“更好的结果”，需要采取适当的方法。 设计思维已经成为一种众所周知的解决问题的方法，注入了设计师和初创企业的心中。 Design Thinking熟悉且执行Swift，适合925投资者设定的激进时间表。 设计思维就是我们要做的事情。

移情 (Empathize)

Having an aggressive timeline and fixed budget, it wasn’t going to be achievable spending much time conducting interviews. This is where UX fundamentally hinges, it’s absolutely crucial we base decisions in data and remove our own bias out of the equation as much as possible. However, this doesn't eliminate our ability to improve a product by identifying points of friction and alleviating points of pain through the user journey.

有一个积极的时间表和固定的预算，花很多时间进行采访是不可能的。 这是UX从根本上依赖的地方，这对于我们将决策基于数据并尽可能从等式中消除我们的偏见至关重要。 但是，这并不能消除我们通过识别摩擦点并减轻用户使用过程中的疼痛点来改善产品的能力。

It's important to communicate this limitation to stakeholders when creating without genuinely complete user information and data. “I can make this, it will however be based on these assumptions that we agree upon and it’s recommended these decisions are validated in the near future … sign here”

在没有真正完整的用户信息和数据的情况下，将此限制告知利益相关者很重要。 “我可以做到这一点，但是它将基于我们同意的这些假设，并且建议这些决定在不久的将来得到验证……在此处签名”

So how did we empathize with the user? … Well we started by using the product.

那么我们如何同情用户呢？ …好吧，我们从使用该产品开始。

定义问题 (Defining the Problem)

A team of three, including myself set out to spend a small working session going through the sign up process and exploring the app. We were however unable to successfully complete the sign up process in any realistic amount of time, being periodically hindered by externally linked verification methods and forms. It became immediately apparent why users were not completing the registration process.

一个由三人组成的团队(包括我自己)着手进行一次小型工作会议，以完成注册过程并探索该应用程序。 但是，由于受到外部链接的验证方法和表格的定期限制，我们无法在任何现实的时间内成功完成注册过程。 显而易见的是，用户为什么没有完成注册过程。

We confirmed this was a wide spread problem by having various co-workers and family members run through the same process, all of which had the same struggle with the app, which is :

我们通过让不同的同事和家人进行相同的过程来确认这是一个广泛存在的问题，所有这些人都与该应用程序进行了相同的斗争，这是：

That the 925 app was kind of confusing, the sign-up process asks for an exorbitant amount of information, mainly in the form of a background check performed through a third party service. This required the user to jump into a seperate browser to complete this section of the process. This web service also wasn’t optimized for mobile making it extremely difficult to use. At this point in the process users are unable to evaluate the offerings of the app and are instead met with a variety of challenges while trying to register.

由于925应用程序有点令人困惑，因此注册过程要求提供大量信息，主要是通过第三方服务执行的背景检查的形式。 这要求用户跳入单独的浏览器以完成过程的这一部分。 该Web服务还没有针对移动设备进行优化，因此很难使用。 在此过程中，用户无法评估应用程序的产品，而是在尝试注册时遇到了各种挑战。

Our next step was to itemize all of the concerns people were experiencing through the registration process. It helps to get this research to the board to better organize and address these concerns in a prioritized manner. What we settled on was essentially a pseudo approach at user stories. None the less a valuable tool moving forward.

我们的下一步是逐项列出人们在注册过程中遇到的所有问题。 这有助于将这项研究提交给董事会，以便更好地组织和优先解决这些问题。 我们确定的基本上是在用户故事上使用伪方法。 仍然是前进的宝贵工具。

Ideate解决方案 (Ideate Solutions)

We were faced with at least one glaring issue and a limited amount of time and budget to execute much else. The next step was to define How Might We notes. There’s never only one way to achieve something, this allows us to explore a variety of ideas (Diverge) so that we can better narrow down the ones that will work best for us later (Converge).

我们面临着至少一个突出的问题，以及有限的时间和预算来执行其他许多任务。 下一步是定义我们的注释方式。 达成目标的方法绝非仅有一种，这使我们能够探索各种想法(Diverge)，以便我们可以更好地缩小对以后对我们最有用的想法(Converge)。

I speculated that the drop off was occurring due to the effort vs reward of the background check. This was however a key component of the service 925 offered. Workers needed to be vetted in order to build a trustworthy platform that employers would be comfortable using … or so it would seem.

我推测下降是由于背景检查的努力与回报而发生的。 然而，这是所提供的服务925的关键组成部分。 需要对工人进行审查，以建立一个值得信赖的平台，使雇主可以放心使用……看来如此。

One of the initial solutions that simulated the client during a post research / pre design meeting was the idea of “Uber for Work”, perhaps a little contrived but none the less an exciting proposition. It also had the added benefit of helping me pivot the structure of the app around a centralized feature (location based, map interface) versus say a traditional job listing. Simple but promising. Plus the idea had the support of the client behind it, that doesn't inherently make the decision the right one, but it's important that clients feel heard, this so happens to be a great way of achieving just that.

在后期研究/预设计会议上模拟客户的初始解决方案之一是“ Uber for Work”的想法，也许有些人为，但仍然是一个令人兴奋的提议。 与传统的工作清单相比，它还具有帮助我围绕集中功能(基于位置，地图界面)围绕应用程序结构进行枢纽的附加好处。 简单但有希望。 再加上这个想法得到了客户的支持，这并不能使决策成为正确的选择，但是让客户感到被告知很重要，这恰好是实现这一目标的好方法。

线框 (Wireframes)

The process of creating wireframes is seemingly outlined the same way but in actuality is almost always some weird mixture of fidelities. While we strive to start with a paper sketch, followed by a lo-fi and eventually hi-fi interactive digital prototype, our workflow and project constraints may not necessarily allow us to segregate our ideation in such a linear fashion. For this project I did the very thing I was often told to avoid during my time in school and jumped right into digital creation. It worked, but it’s important to understand why it’s typically not a good idea to skip the doodles:

线框的创建过程似乎以相同的方式概述，但实际上几乎总是保真度的某种奇怪混合。 虽然我们努力从纸上素描开始，然后是低保真和最终高保真交互式数字原型，但我们的工作流程和项目限制可能不一定使我们能够以线性方式隔离想法。 在这个项目中，我经常被告知在上学期间要避免的事情，然后直接进入数字创作。 它起作用了，但是重要的是要理解为什么跳过涂鸦通常不是一个好主意：

Sketching allows us to explore a greater amount of ideas in a shorter period of time, it allows us to get the bad ideas out of the way to make room for the good ones. When we begin with digital ideation, it can be extremely easy to explore certain directions that may not necessarily be all that suitable, hence wasting a great deal of time. It’s not a hard set rule to sketch first, it is however recommended and and will likely save you time later on.

草图绘制使我们能够在较短的时间内探索更多的想法，它使我们能够消除不良想法，从而为好的想法留出空间。 当我们从数字化构想开始时，探索可能不一定非常合适的某些方向可能非常容易，因此浪费了大量时间。 首先要绘制草图不是一个硬性规定，但是建议您这样做，以后可能会节省您的时间。

I translated How Might We notes into a visual design solution, I began by creating art boards in Adobe XD with single words written on each one outlining the page or step in the flow, i based these around the existing user flow initially and later moved, added, and subtracted pages as needed until i had a flow that alleviated the barriers we experienced. Next i began writing a list of the required elements each of these pages would need to function. I like to think of this as sketching when working digitally, this stage is not about UI or visuals, rather structure and flow.

我将《我们的威力》翻译成一个视觉设计解决方案，首先在Adobe XD中创建画板，每个单词上都写有一个单词，概述了流程中的页面或步骤，首先将它们基于现有用户流程，然后又进行了移动，根据需要添加和减少页面，直到我的流程减轻了我们遇到的障碍。 接下来，我开始编写所有这些页面都需要运行的必需元素的列表。 我喜欢将其视为数字化工作时的草绘，此阶段不是关于UI或视觉效果，而是结构和流程。

Once the structure has been defined you begin compartmentalizing and creating, because of the nature of app design we are constantly reusing visual elements, in a way its self referential which allows us to create quickly and consistently, i followed Atomic Design Principles when building out the UI to keep consistency across screens.

一旦结构被定义开始，因为应用程序设计，我们都在不断重复使用的视觉元素，在某种程度上其自我指涉这使我们能够快速一致地创建本质compartmentalizing和创造，我也跟着原子设计原则构建出时使用者介面可维持萤幕之间的一致性。

Here’s the Adobe XD wireframes:

这是Adobe XD线框：

原型 (Prototype)

Simulating a working product is going to allow us to conduct user testing quickly and in a way that best reflects the final product. It additionally allows us to present out design in a context that the clients will understand (not everyone has the ability to imagine how static images will interact with one another) this ultimately gives us a greater chance of approval when presenting our work. I used Adobe XD’s built in prototype tools to quickly link together the wireframes, while this allowed me to execute quickly it would mean giving up integrated access with Maze a wonderful tool that allows you to gain accurate user feedback remotely.

模拟有效的产品将使我们能够以最能反映最终产品的方式快速进行用户测试。 此外，它还使我们能够在客户能够理解的环境中展示设计(并非每个人都有想象静态图像将如何交互的能力)，这最终使我们在展示我们的作品时获得了更大的认可机会。 我使用Adobe XD的内置原型工具将线框快速链接在一起，而这允许我快速执行，这意味着放弃与Maze的集成访问，这是一种出色的工具，可让您远程获得准确的用户反馈。

验证方式 (Validation)

In order to validate our ideas, we tested the design periodically against the original app with staff across the office and connections the client that best reflected the demographic who would be using the platform.

为了验证我们的想法，我们与整个办公室的员工定期针对原始应用程序对设计进行了测试，并与最能反映使用该平台的受众特征的客户进行了联系。

There are several steps that users went through. First, we showed them the original application and had them register. Followed by the same process using the new prototype. A-B Testing, although rudimentary allowed us to directly measure the impact of the changes made with users.

用户需要经历几个步骤。 首先，我们向他们展示了原始申请并进行了注册。 随后使用新的原型进行相同的过程。 AB测试，虽然基本，但使我们能够直接衡量用户所做更改的影响。

回顾与结论 (Retrospective & Conclusion)

Being a specialist in a smaller agency is seldom a picturesque role of performing a specific type of work every day. The reality is you’re often required to adjust your skill set as projects require. This project was one of those rare cases where I was given complete ownership over the project with support offered across the agency as required, essentially “You’re the expert, steer the ship” The interesting part about being the captain, is you have to know where you're going and how you're going to get there. This project came with a steep learning curve in the sense of project management; specifically dealing with client communication, time-estimates, budget, and billing.

在较小的机构中担任专家很少能每天完成特定类型的工作。 现实情况是，经常需要您根据项目的需要调整技能。 该项目是极少数情况下的案例之一，在该案例中，我获得了该项目的完全所有权，并根据需要在整个机构范围内提供了支持，基本上是“您是专家，驾驶这艘船”关于船长的有趣之处在于，您必须了解您要去哪里以及如何到达那里。 从项目管理的角度来看，该项目具有陡峭的学习曲线。 专门处理客户沟通，时间估算，预算和账单。

At the end of the day, the final prototype can continue to be improved as more insights into user behaviour are discovered and pivot as new business cases arise. Overall this project was a great learning experience given both its opportunities and constraints.

归根结底，随着对用户行为的更多见解和新业务案例的出现，最终原型可以继续得到改进。 总体而言，鉴于其机会和局限性，该项目是一次很棒的学习经历。

If you’d like to review the app it is available on the App Store and Google Play Store. Check out more about 925 Freelancing to see how they are striving to help connect businesses to people looking for flexible work.

如果您想查看该应用程序，则可以在App Store和Google Play商店中找到该应用程序 。 进一步了解925 Freelancing ，了解他们如何努力帮助企业与寻求灵活工作的人们建立联系。

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the UX process for this project. We discovered meaningful insights that will be very useful in future projects. If you want to collaborate, talk shop, or simply share a conversation over coffee, drop me a line at hello@mitchmills.com or connect via LinkedIn.

谢谢阅读！ 我希望您喜欢这个项目的UX流程。 我们发现了有意义的见解，这些见解在将来的项目中将非常有用 。 如果您想合作，聊天或只是在喝咖啡时分享对话，请给我 打电话 hello @ mitchmills.com 或通过 LinkedIn进行联系 。