Peer-graded assignment: weekly challenge 4: update your portfolio project research presentation

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here is my task to complete:
Step 01-Access the template
Step 2: Analyze your user interviews and identify user groups
Step 3: Build two personas based on your user research for the Sharpen prompt in your portfolio project.
WEEK 1 — Integrating research into the design process.
WEEK 4 — Defining user problems.
W 5 — Ideating design solutions
My Conclusion for Course 2 of 7, for the Google UX Design Certificate

Now that is my first story in the medium.
Just reach the Weekly Challenge 2 :
Here is Task to Create Personas for my Portfolio Projects.

So I have to make a Persona with two different categories.
There is a question of what personas are? Personas are fictional users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users.

My Task to do: “you’ll need to identify two distinct user groups, then create two personas. For larger future projects, you may identify and develop several personas.

You can identify a user group by analyzing user interviews and grouping the responses into users who share similar interests, goals, or concerns. To get started with this activity, you’ll conduct interviews with potential users for the portfolio project you chose from Sharpen.” —

here is my task to complete:

Step 01-Access the template

I access the template and start to edit.

Step 2: Analyze your user interviews and identify user groups

So I Make Two Different user groups

This really helped me envision two different people. I drew particular situations from my interview participants to construct these personalities.
I choose two characters who are fighting with their life journey.

Step 3: Build two personas based on your user research for the Sharpen prompt in your portfolio project.

Let’s do it.
Met my personas Farhan And Evan

Yes, I do it

I chose the different age groups and different goals, and different People. Someone Needs to Job. On the other hand, someone has a successful business. Both are combined at the coffee shop this the common factor for my personas. Someone comes to use wifi and attend the class. On the other hand, other people come to the coffee shop for refreshments.

I added the personal details there life goal and details of life journey. I added the frustration and goals. Different people have different goals and frustration. Someone wants to get out of a busy day. On the other hand, someone wants to join the busy life.

This assignment is peer-reviewed- our first one! I submitted mine, and now I have to go review some of my classmate’s personas.

Next up is Week 3: creating user stories and user journey maps.

As promised in the previous article 👍, I’ve been continuing my Google UX Design Professional Certificate path, and on this article, I’ll be covering some relevant topics/notes for Course 2 (Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate), and to be honest, please keep in mind I do my best to condensed all topics for 5 weeks in this lecture, but in 5 weeks I discovered some existing and new topics about the UX processes that need to be shared to all interested in learning more about Google UX Methodologies, no matter is your complete beginner or experienced designer, so again please take your time to read.

This 2nd course broken into 5 weeks in total and covering research topics, common research tools, research frameworks, and platforms used in UX design, with the main goal to developing the first project for our portfolio and of course understand how empathy is the key to creating exceptional experiences for our potential users.

Ok, so what UX design skills can we expect to develop and learn during this 2nd course? Here are my experience and general notes:

WEEK 1 — Integrating research into the design process.

In this week we’ll be starting a portfolio project, designing a Mobile App to meet the specific needs of a hypothetical business or company, learn how to empathize with potential users y crucial, define users’ needs is very important, and finally start to come up with ideas for design solutions, then we evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of common UX research methods. And also identify and account for biases that can arise when conducting research.

✅ Build your case study across all certification courses, you’ll collect artifacts for your portfolio case study, and google provided us a template slide deck to be used to gather, present, and share our work.

✅ Learn more about UX research understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivation through observation and feedback is crucial to creating a product that satisfies users by applying common Research methodologies like:

Foundational Research is always done before we start designing, and the goal is to figure out what the user needs and how to address those needs with our product. Foundational research methods include Interviews, Surveys, Focus Groups, Competitive Audits, Filed Studies, Diary Studies, and more.
Primary Research is the research we conduct ourselves. Information from direct interactions with users, like interviews, surveys, or usability studies.
Secondary Research is research that uses information someone else has put together. For example, using information from sources like books, articles, or journals.
Qualitative research is primarily collected through observations and conversations, and based on understanding users’ needs and aims to answer questions like “why” or “how did this happen?”
Quantitative research focuses on data that can be gathered by counting or measuring that’s often collected from large-scale surveys. This type of research aims to answer questions like “how many?” and “how much?”
Design Research is done while we design, and the goal is to answer the question: How should we build it?. Additional research methods could be Usability Study, Cafe or Guerrilla Studies, Card Sorting or Intercepts
Post-launch Research is done after the design is complete and our product has launched, and the goal is to answer the question: Did we succeed?

✅ Identify “Bias” in UX research: To begin, let’s define the word Bias. In short, a bias is favoring or having a prejudice against something based on limited information, and on UX we’ll examine 6 kinds of biases: confirmation bias, false consensus bias, primacy bias, recency bias, implicit bias, and the sunk cost fallacy.

Confirmation Bias: This bias occurs when you start looking for evidence to prove a hypothesis you have.
False Consensus Bias: This happens when we overestimate the number of people who will agree with our idea or design, which creates a false consensus.
Primacy Bias: Occurs where you remember the first participant most strongly.
Recency Bias: That’s when it’s easiest to remember the last thing you heard in an interview, conversation, or similar setting because it’s the most recent.
Implicit Bias: is a collection of attitudes and stereotypes we associate with people without our conscious knowledge.
Sunk Cost Fallacy Bias: This is the idea that the deeper we get into a project we’ve invested in, the harder it is to change course without feeling like we’ve failed or wasted time.

It’s important to note that everyone has biases and being able to recognize our own biases and prevent them from affecting our work is what really matters. As a UX designer, we’ll need to know how to anticipate, identify, and overcome biases in our research. If you’d like to learn more about biases in UX research, check out the video below.

WEEK 2 — Empathizing with users and defining pain points.

Empathy is sometimes confused with sympathy, but the two terms don’t mean the same thing. Empathy means understanding someone’s feelings or thoughts, often by feeling the emotions yourself. Sympathy is the experience of showing concern or compassion without feeling the emotions themselves. Over week 2 we covered the topics below:

✅ The ability to empathize with users is a skill that can be learned with practice. Here are 6 tips that can help us become a more empathetic UX designer: Ask lots of questions, Become more observant, Be an active listener, Request input, Have an open mind, Keep current on UX research

✅ Conduct user interviews: In order to empathize with users and understand their pain points, we’ll need to conduct interviews with real people who might use the product we’re designing. Here are a few things we can do to prepare for interviews:

Collect supplies. Create a checklist of items we’ll need for the interview, such as a computer, a printed list of questions, or paper and a pencil.
Research the users. Take time to learn what we can about the people we’ll interview.
Script interview questions. Develop a list of questions that we’ll ask all of the users in the interview. It’s considered a best practice to keep interview questions fairly consistent across users, but this list of questions is just a guide.
Practice. It’s always a good idea to practice delivering the questions we’ll ask users before conduct a real interview. This gives us time to make changes to the questions we’re planning to ask and helps ensure that the interviews run smoothly.
Thank users for coming. Thanking users is a part of establishing a good rapport and can help them feel like their opinions are valued.
Gather basic details. As we meet users, remember to ask about basic information that’s relevant to the interview, such as their name or demographic details.
Follow interview etiquette. Speak in a clear and concise manner while asking questions, and remain professional no matter how users answer a question.
Ask open-ended questions. Avoid asking questions that would lead to a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Instead, ask questions that start with “why.” This will allow for more detailed conversations and can reveal useful information to include in the product we’re designing.
Highlight compelling quotes. The most obvious part of an interview is to take notes on what the user says.
Document observations about participants. It’s important to record not only what users say, but also their mood, expressions, body language, and behaviors.
Consider recording interviews. Ask participants if they will allow us to record their interviews.

✅ Build an empathy map from an interview transcript: While interviews provide a lot of insight, empathy mapping will bring us closer to identifying the real needs of our users. It’s important to understand that there are two types of empathy maps: one-user empathy maps and aggregated empathy maps (also known as “multiple-user empathy maps”).

One-user empathy maps are created by taking one user’s interview transcript and turning it into an empathy map.
Aggregated empathy maps represent a group of users who share similar thoughts, opinions, or qualities.

✅ Pain points vs. Solutions: every UX designer is a problem-solver, and solving user struggles or pain points is number one on the list. Pain points are any UX issues that frustrate the user and block the user from getting what they need. Most pain points fall into 1 of 4 categories, and I added below:

1. Financial pain points: are user problems related to, you guessed it, money.

2. Product pain points: These are usually quality issues related to the product.

3. Process pain points: These are frustrations that stop the user from going from point A to point B.

4. Support pain point: When users interact with your product, they might have questions.

✅ Personas are created by conducting user research and identifying common pain points. We can explore some persona templates like these persona templates and examples on Just In Mind and these persona templates and examples on Xtensio.

WEEK 3 — Creating user stories and user journey maps.

A user story is a fictional one-sentence story told from the persona’s point of view to inspire and inform design decisions and should be written in the following format:

As a type of user (who?), I want to action (what?) so that benefit (why?).

✅ The happy path describes a user story with a happy ending. For this user, everything goes as they expect, and they reach their goal without issue, BUT!

Unfortunately in the real world building products, for other users, things don’t go quite as smoothly. In this case we have a paralel path call edge cases.

✅ An edge case is what happens when things go wrong that are beyond the user’s control. Good UX anticipates edge cases and reroutes users back to the happy path when things don’t go as planned. In edge cases, the obstacle is beyond the user’s control to fix.

✅ User journey maps are the series of experiences a user has as they interact with our product, User journeys build off the personas and stories we’ve already created. An basically is an illustration of what the user goes through to achieve their goals.

Please don’t forget👇

Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. Designing for accessibility is about considering all users’ journeys, keeping their permanent, temporary, or situational disabilities in mind.

✅ Putting inclusive design into practice: The best way to design empathetically for the world around us is to engage with our users and ask them questions about the way our designs could help them succeed.

To learn more about inclusive design, here are some additional resources to get you started:

✅ Understand the curb cut effect: One of the first curb cuts in the U.S. was installed in Michigan in 1945, and probably you’ve been used a curb cut yourself, but to keep in mind the benefits of curb cuts extend not only to people with wheelchairs, leg braces, or crutches. Curb cuts extend to everyone, from people pushing strollers to bicyclists, movers, and elderly people.

Over this lesson we consider and evaluate the experiences of users, building maps, and we discovered how designing products and solutions for people with disabilities can benefit everyone.

WEEK 4 — Defining user problems.

Over this week the main topic could be how to define unspoken pain points and use them to form strong problem statements. Problem statements provide a clear description of the user’s needs that should be addressed and to build a problem statement, and for this Google suggests utilizing the 5 Ws and H framework.

✅ The 5 Ws and H: who, what, when, where, why, and how is the most common framework used to create problem statements.

Who is experiencing the problem? Knowing your users and their background is key to creating successful solutions for them.
What are the pain points you’re trying to solve? Determining a user’s pain points early allows you to answer the rest of these questions and clarify the context of the pain points.
Where is the user when they’re using the product? A user’s physical context matters to your design.
When does the problem occur? Maybe it’s right after the end of a long and tedious process, or maybe it’s something that happens daily. Knowing when the problem occurs can help you better empathize with the user’s feelings.
Why is the problem important? Knowing how this problem affects your user’s experience and life will help to clarify the potential consequences.
How are users reaching their goals by using the product? Understanding how users reach their goals allows you to map the user journey that they take through your product.

After we define the user’s pain points, we can answer who, what, when, where, why, and how to solve the user’s problem, defining the problem statement.

✅ Problem statements provide clarity about our users’ goals and help UX designers identify constraints that prevent users from meeting those goals, and also help our team measure success

✅ A Hypothesis statement is an educated guess about what we think the solution to a design problem might be. We know the challenges users are facing, so it’s time to consider how our designs can alleviate their pain points. We can try using to write one of any of these 2 common methods:

1. You can use “if / then format” to come up with a hypothesis statement. Here are 2 examples of if/then hypothesis statements for a Dog walker App:

If the users download the dog walker app, then they can utilize the “simplified” mode setting to view only the basic app functions.
If the users sign up for the dog walker app, then they will quickly and easily pick a walker that fits their schedule.

2. You can use “we believe format” to come up with a hypothesis statement. Here are 2 examples using the same App mentioned before:

We believe that a simplified model of the dog walker app for the user will allow them to hire dog walkers efficiently.
We believe that easy access to available dog walkers for the users will increase the number of walks they choose for their pets.

If / then statements focus directly on the needs of users. On the other hand, we believe statements take the perspective of your team into account, while remaining empathetic to the needs of users.

✅ The human factor describes the range of variables humans bring to their product interactions. The most common ones are impatience, limited memory, needing analogies, limited concentration, changes in need, needing motivation, prejudices, fears, making errors, and misjudgment.

✅ Mental models are internal maps that allow humans to predict how something will work.

Ex: When you face a door, your mental model tells you that the door can be opened. Once the door is opened, you’ll be able to leave the room. The process of opening the door is expected to end with you being able to leave the room. A mental model breaks when you can’t go through the open door because, for example, there’s a solid brick wall behind it.

✅ Feedback loops refer to the outcome a user gets at the end of a process.

Ex: if you enter a dark room and flip a light switch, the room will either brighten, or it won’t. Positive feedback would be the light coming on. While negative feedback would be nothing happening. The more positive feedback a user gets when completing the action, the more they will expect the outcome to be positive, and the same happens with negative feedback also.

Every day, whether we know it or not, we experience examples of psychological phenomena. Let’s check out some that can be especially useful to UX designers.

✅ Von Restorff effect or isolation effect, states that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered.

✅ Call-to-action, or CTA, is a visual prompt that tells the user to take action, usually look different from the rest of the buttons on a site or app; because we want them to stand out.

✅ Serial position effect, says that when people are given a list of items, they are more likely to remember the first few and the last few, while the items in the middle tend to blur.

✅ Hick’s law, states that the more options a user has, the longer it takes for them to make a decision. In other words, if the number of choices increases, the time to make a decision increases in proportion.

Along the way, we learned it’s important for UX designers to use these different psychological principles in an ethical way. We don’t want to exploit the user. We only want to encourage them. We don’t want to overpower the user. We want to empower them. With a little psychology, creativity, and empathy, what starts as a limitation can end up as a benefit.

W 5 — Ideating design solutions

In this last week, we’ll explore about the ideation phase of the design thinking process, where we’ll focus on understanding design ideation, conducting competitive audits, brainstorming approaches like How Might We and Crazy Eights, and determining if we need additional research.

✅ Ideation can be defined as the process of generating a broad set of ideas on a given topic with no attempt to judge or evaluate them, Ideation is all about coming up with lots and lots of ideas. Some of the craziest ideas can actually prove to be really valuable.

What does ideation look like in the real world for UX designers?

Brainstorms out loud.
Every idea is documented.
The goal is the number of ideas over quality.
Share as many ideas as possible.
Do not allow evaluation.
Gather a diverse team
Question the obvious.

✅ Finally, Evaluate the Ideas together by asking these 3 questions:

Feasible: is the idea is technically possible to build?.
Desirable: Does it solve the user problem you’re focusing on?
Viable: Is it financially beneficial for the business?

If an idea meets these three criteria, it might be a good option to move forward with.

One of the best things about ideation is the mentality that there are no bad ideas. So if coming up with lots of ideas isn’t your strongest skill, don’t worry. Part of being a designer means intentionally exploring as many ideas as possible, knowing that some of them or even most of them won’t work. Plus, the more you practice coming up with lots of ideas, the more natural it will feel. If you want to learn more, check out this article from CareerFoundry, A Guide To The Most Important Ideation Techniques

✅ Coming up with lots of ideas is important because when you’re ideating, you want to push past the obvious ideas to get to the innovative ones.

✅ Why should we come up with a lot of ideas?

The list of ideas is narrowed based on constraints, like budget and timelines.
Need to focus on equity, and we want to make sure that the design works for everyone who will use the product.
let users test a bunch of your ideas and they might find the right answer.

✅ Understanding the business needs behind a design: Branding communication has a big effect on how users experience a product. Two major components of branding are voice and tone and have a huge impact on a user’s experience and sales, so keeping in mind this practices our design benefits both the customer and the business: a win-win.

✅ Competitive audits: is an overview of your competitor's (Direct or Indirect) strengths and weaknesses and, is just one tool to explore ideas for designs, so we can learn from others about what has worked and not worked, also could help to save time, money and energy. Do we use the following steps to run a competitive analysis:

Outline the goals.
Create a spreadsheet with a list of your competitors.
Call out the specific features you want to compare.
research each company.
Analyze findings.
Summarize findings in a report.

✅ “How might we” (HMW) is a design thinking activity used to translate problems into opportunities for design. During an HMW exercise, we’ll create a list of questions that start with “How might we” and use those to spark ideas for solutions. f you want more inspiration, check out Stanford’s one-pager on “how might we” questions.

✅ Crazy Eights: is a popular design ideation exercise that helps you think of several ideas in record time sketching eight different designs, each with a new idea for solving the user’s problem. If you want to learn more about how a company called Switch uses the Crazy Eights exercise, check out this article, Crazy Concept Ideation with Crazy Eights.

My Conclusion for Course 2 of 7, for the Google UX Design Certificate

Along the weeks, my notes so far are not limited to the above-mentioned topics and notes, they are many more for sure, and just condensed some personal opinions and topics like my understand and expertise could be helpful to evaluate if this certification is good enough for everyone interested intake it, especially like a big brand like Google.

Thanks again to the instructor Emily Schlemmer, and the entire Google team for coming up with such an amazing course in partnership with Coursera.

🎯 Use the Certification Coursera link for anyone interested in starting using the platform.

Thanks for reading and see you on Course 3 👍.