Defining User Goals, User Flows

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After this lesson, you will be able to:

• Effectively synthesize research into a problem statement and design direction that reflects the primary need of your target audience
• Explore examples of how to map the flow of a specific product or experience
• Construct a first draft of the user flow for the primary user goal for your final project

STUDENT PRE-WORK

Before this lesson, you should already be able to:

• Synthesize research

INSTRUCTOR PREP

Before this lesson, instructors will need to:

• Get black sharpies and paper
• Print enough copies of the Storyboard Worksheet and the Problem Statement Worksheet for all students

Opening (5 mins)

Today we’re going to talk about problem solving and solution-ing - you can’t design a solution without knowing what problem it’s addressing.

Check: Looking back to your research, what was the biggest need people had? What was the primary user goal that you found?

Introduction: What is the Primary User Goal (10 mins)

Experiences often address multiple goals, but when push comes to shove, you’ve got to ask yourself what your primary persona is trying to accomplish by using your experience/product/service.

Look back at the personas you made...what is their main need?

Ask yourself questions like:

• What is the problem your persona wants to solve?
• How is your persona currently addressing this problem?
• Why does your persona need to address this problem?
• Where is your persona when they want to solve this problem?
• When does your persona want to solve this problem?

Instructor Note: Tell students that we are addressing the most major/biggest/most prominent user goal, but they should keep other goals in mind and write them down somewhere safe. They will want them later on in the course.

"How Might We"?

This is a lightweight format for problem definition and a less formal way to define the problem you’re going to address without defining how you’re going to address it.

It’s a solution-ing framework for design thinking pioneered by IDEO. The format is great because it suggests the area of focus, but still offers the chance to address the problem in several ways. They can be laddered up/down in specificity for the size of the issue you’re facing.

Keep asking “How” to narrow scope, and “Why” to broaden scope.

Example 1: How might we help students get the information they need more quickly and efficiently?

Example 2: How might we improve the air travel experience?

Question Assumptions

Let's discuss how we can restate our statements to question assumptions:

• Explore the opposite: HMW make the wait the most exciting part of the trip?
• Question an assumption: HMW entirely remove the wait time at the airport?
• Go after adjectives: HMW we make the rush refreshing instead of harrying?
• Create an analogy from need or context: HMW make the airport like a spa? Like a playground?
• Play POV against the challenge: HMW make the airport a place that kids want to go?
• Break POV into pieces: HMW soothe delayed passengers?

Instructor Note: Instructor should walk through these different ways of phrasing the same question. Point out that writing "How Might We" statements help you create innovative solutions by focusing on human needs and questioning assumptions.

Guided Practice: How Might We? (5 mins)

Use the Problem Statement Worksheet and try writing a "How Might We" statement for your class project on a vacation app.

Make sure you try writing a few and adjusting its level of specificity for the problem you’re facing.

Instructor note: Get students to share questions with the group and talk through it. Instructional team should circulate through the room and help students. They may need to be nudged to look beyond the obvious or helped to further distill the question.

Introduction: Problem Statements and Hypotheses (5 mins)

We’re separating the problem from the proposed solution, so we’ll be writing both a problem statement and a hypothesis. Remember to focus on things that will generate value to users, that will in turn drive their engagement with the business. These statements communicate a clear vision for the work and shift the conversation from outputs (e.g. “we will create an advanced search feature”) to outcomes (e.g. “we want to increase the accuracy of a user’s first search”).

Let's take a look at the format of a problem statement and a hypothesis:

Problem Statement

{Persona name} needs a way to {user’s need}, because {insight}.

Hypothesis

We believe that [ doing this / building this feature / creating this experience], for [these people/personas], we will achieve [this outcome]. We will know this to be true when we see [this feedback / quantitative measure / qualitative insight]

Examples

Problem - The Amplify Tablet System allows selective sharing with students to enable differentiated instruction in the classroom. We have observed that this feature is cumbersome to use and the inability to plan for it make it largely it ineffective.

Hypothesis - We believe that creating persistent groups will enable effective differentiated instruction. We will know we've succeeded based on the number of groups created and amount of content shared with specific groups vs. to the entire class.

Instructor note: Feel free to add your own example, if you'd like.

Guided Practice: Basic Problem Statements (5 mins)

Go back to the Problem Statement Worksheet and try filling out the basic format problem statement for your class project, the vacation app. Build off of the ideas from your How Might We worksheet.

Then, try filling in your hypothesis.

Instructor Note: Instructional team should circulate through the room and help students; some will have issues with phrasing. Students can experiment and see which format helps them the

Introduction: Sketch Review (5 mins)

Why do we sketch? Well to separate the problem from possible solutions. It's important to find the right-­sized problems and stay focused on them.

We also do it to communicate ideas quickly. They’re not supposed to be perfect, they’re supposed to be just enough to help you move forward.

Another benefit is to develop our lateral thinking skills. This is a creative way of problem solving, not assuming that you have all the info, and that solutions are not foregone conclusions. It allows us to make room for good ideas. You may have to wade through lots of crappy ideas until you find a gem. Get bad ideas out fast, and get your resistance or fear of failure out of the way. Make room for good ideas to emerge.

Guided Practice: Sketching for Ideas (20 mins)

Take out a new piece of paper and fold it in half 3 times. (Note: You’ll be left with a paper with 8 separate boxes.)

Bad Idea Party

Now I’d like you to look at the Problem/How Might We Statements you just wrote for the vacation app.

I want you to sketch out at least 8 of the absolute WORST ideas that would solve this problem. The most terrible ideas you can think of.

Take 4 minutes!

Good Idea Party

Look to your bad ideas for inspiration — is there something in there that, if tweaked, would be an amazing solution?

Fold a new piece of paper, and sketch out 8 of the BEST ideas that would solve the problem you defined earlier.

Take 4 minutes!

Check: Why are we ideating?

We ideate to :

• To generate a lot of ideas that could address a problem
• To explore a variety of perspectives, and not constrain your explorations too soon
• Create a sense of ownership of the final solution in the whole team

Storyboarding

Storyboarding is a great way of communicating the value your idea offers to others. A good experience should take the user on a journey, telling a story. So I’d like you to expand your idea a bit into a story.

I’d like you to take a minute to review your sketches. Take the one you like the most, and flesh it out a bit more into a series of steps of how it might be used.

Let's quickly look at an example:

Now, take out the Storyboard Worksheet and make a series of little sketches, and add a little bit of text to explain what’s happening in each step.

Introduction: Storyboards (10 mins)

Another reason storyboards are great is because they can help you describe the flow of use at a high level, and also start to think about location­ and device­-specific context.

These steps can eventually have a 1:1 relationship with the interface screens.

The level of your specificity of your thinking should be reflected in your flows and eventually wireframes. They should feed into one another—flows will be a great starting points for wireframes, and wireframing will help you figure out how to streamline and evolve your flow.

• Diagram: Flow example for two interacting users here:

• Diagram: Flow + wireframe example to demo 1:1 relationship here:

Check: Are you more of a details person, or a systems person?

Starting out in design you lean in one direction or the other. Part of being a designer is pushing yourself in the other direction too.

We are deliberately pushing you to work on a macro (system) level, to think about the overall system that would exist. This means that your initial flows are going to be vague, because your thinking is a little vague, and then it will grow more detailed over time.

What you need to know to get started:

• Which users/personas you will be designing your flows for?
• What user and business objectives need to be accomplished?
• Where your users are coming from (i.e. entry points)?

Independent Practice: Problem Statements and Sketching (20 mins)

How are you going to get your persona to complete their primary user goal? Use your storyboard as a starting point to help you document the overall flow.

Get with your team and write up a problem statement and hypothesis for project 3, then move into sketching out a couple of ideas and creating a user flow.

Conclusion (5 mis)

Check: Take 5 minutes to discuss students work: Either A. Have students stick their flows to the wall and discuss them. B. Instructor can mirror their phone on the screen, and use their camera app to highlight individual students’ work for discussion.