UX Blueprint
If you’ve been following us, you’ll know that we’ve already explored UX strategy and checked out its components. Another UX strategy-related tool is the UX Blueprint.
UX blueprint, what’s that?
It is a structure used to drive a UX project strategy. It comes with design mockups and a plan to get you started, a strategy to enhance your project, and a guide to help you and your team succeed.
It provides clarity and a shared sense of purpose for a specific website or application by describing your project’s goals, objectives, and approaches, as well as identifying features, obstacles, and recommended designs.
Just as you wouldn’t build a building without a blueprint we approach our projects in the same manner!
As illustrated above, the UX strategy Blueprint includes six major elements:
- Challenges:
These are the issues that must be addressed. What should be done to get the desired result? The desire to get from point A to point B. - Aspirations:
What kind of experience do you genuinely want to provide? What is the desired result? Beyond the generic goals, your ambitions should motivate teammates. - Focus areas:
This is where you determine your focus, and the extent of your strategy, which is critical since it will serve as the guide for all decision-making. What will you concentrate on to have the most impact? It’s a good idea to specify the focus for users, locations, services, use cases, and UX areas, for example. - Guiding principles:
This is the general method you will follow to overcome and solve your challenges. It is specific, and it may even include a summary of the important actions. How will you overcome the obstacles? How will you get your team to all be driving in the same direction? - Activities:
As the name suggests, this is about the kind of activities that will be required to accomplish the solution (aspirations). This involves doing user research, developing concepts, drawing, screen design, prototyping, and testing, as well as developing patterns or rules. What types of measures will you use to achieve success? This section is required for any strategy plan and describes how you will measure and oversee your strategy.
How do you use it?
This is an excellent tool for small groups to utilize with sticky notes in a brainstorming session. It may be done by one person or by a group of people; the more the merrier!
You may create the blueprint by following this order: establish your challenge, proceed to your goals, and so on. Continue to move, as if you were illustrating, initially completing as much as you can, and then just adding information to each part of the framework. Once you’ve completed it, you can simply write everything down in one or two pages, which will be an excellent representation of your UX approach.
We have been incorporating UX blueprints for all of our projects at Smashy Design, and it has enabled us to keep a consistent flow in our work.
If you are interested in more UX design-related content, don’t forget to follow our social media pages listed below or reach out to us at hello@smashydesign.com.