Designing for Usability and Impact

At Efigence, we start every UX project with a thorough understanding and gathering of all project knowledge, which we call the UX Discovery phase. During this phase, we conduct workshops with stakeholders from your organization to systematically define the project’s business goals, understand who the users are, and identify their needs and primary jobs-to-be-done. This helps us define the problem and evaluate how your initial ideas and visions address it. We then collaboratively develop a UX strategy and define the target vision.

Additionally, we recommend conducting in-depth research with clients or potential clients to better understand their actual needs, challenges, and current solutions. This approach ensures that our design work is based on real user insights rather than assumptions, helping us avoid significant risks and improve the overall project outcome.

In the subsequent UX Concept phase, we design a range of mockups and user journey fragments that illustrate the strategic vision for the product. Depending on the project, this could involve creating anywhere from 5 to 50 mockups to showcase key functionalities and unique aspects of the approach. We also work on developing a near-final visual design of the interface. This concept is then validated with potential clients through qualitative research sessions.

It’s important to note that the mockups created during this phase are not yet development-ready and will require further detailed business analysis and design refinement.

The duration of the UX Discovery and UX Concept phases can vary depending on the project’s scale. The UX Discovery phase, which involves gathering all relevant project knowledge to define business goals and user needs, typically takes between 1-2 weeks. This phase concludes with a presentation summarizing the insights and ideas discovered.
Following this, the UX Concept phase, which defines and visualizes the strategic vision of the product through prototypes or video showreels and validates it with clients, can take from 2 weeks to 2 months. The duration depends on whether the project is a small website or simple application versus a complex digital transformation for a large organization.

For UX/UI ideation, we believe in structuring the process to manage the vast amount of knowledge and information spread across an organization and among different stakeholders. To achieve this, we have developed our own workshop framework that builds on the Design Thinking philosophy for process structure, and incorporates elements from methodologies like Jobs To Be Done, Customer Journey Mapping (both current and target), and Value Proposition Canvas. We also create Personas or user archetypes.

Before the workshops, all key stakeholders in your organization complete a pre-workshop canvas to share their personal insights and vision for the project. During the 1- or 2-day workshops, we meet with these stakeholders either online or on-site. Using exercises based on the aforementioned methodologies, we collaboratively organize, uncover, and prioritize information related to business goals, user groups and needs, inspirations, benchmarks, and technological constraints, including insights from outside your industry.

At Efigence, we have repeatedly found that thorough research before starting UX/UI work helps avoid significant risks in later stages of the project. We recommend conducting in-depth research with clients or potential clients, typically through focus groups or individual, moderated interviews with about 10 participants. This approach allows us to gain fundamental client insights: understanding their actual needs, the problems they face, how they currently manage these issues, and what competitive solutions they use to achieve what our proposed solution aims to offer. This ensures that our design efforts are based on real insights rather than assumptions, helping us mitigate significant project risks.

If you already have an existing solution and plan to develop an improved version, we also suggest a UX audit—a heuristic, expert analysis conducted by two independent UX experts. Additionally, we analyze analytical data to understand the quantitative aspects of current client behaviors. Combining these approaches ensures that our work is grounded in facts rather than assumptions. Remember, digital products often fail because they do not address real user needs. It’s crucial that we collaboratively understand these needs thoroughly.

UX/UI design can significantly reduce development costs by addressing potential issues early and ensuring the solution truly meets user needs rather than relying solely on assumptions or stakeholder ideas. At Efigence, our integrated team of product designers and developers works together to deeply understand the real needs of users through multiple rounds of client testing throughout the process. This iterative approach minimizes project risks and avoids costly revisions by validating designs early. By thoroughly understanding user requirements and refining designs based on client feedback, we streamline development, optimize resource allocation, and ultimately achieve cost savings.