User experience (UX) design begins with a thorough understanding of the end user based on targeted research of their experiences. At Astegic, our user research focuses on 3 main areas; Personas, User Stories, and User Journeys.

Personas

Personas are a representation of the end user. Each persona analyzes a cluster of users who exhibit similar behavioral patterns as are relevant to your application or solution, such as:

• Purchasing decisions
• Use of technology or products
• Customer service preferences
• Lifestyle choices
• Demographic variables
• And more

These personas are used as a reference point throughout the design process to establish and ensure a clear user focus for the final product.

User Stories

User stories serve as the basis for defining the functions a business system must provide. These stories capture what the end user does, or needs to do, and are typically employed in agile methodologies of software development. Astegic engages user stories to capture the “who”, “what”, and “why” in order to determine, provide, and facilitate the necessary requirements for a users experience. A few examples of a user story are:

• “As a user, I want to search for my customers by their first and last names.”
• “As a user closing the application, I want to be prompted to save anything that has changed since the last save.”
• “As a mobile application tester, I want to test my test cases and report results to my management.”

User Journeys

Using the personas and stories created, the final step in researching the end user is to map the users journey and define the ideal path a user would take to achieve various objectives. User journeys are intended to conceptualize and structure an application, site, or service’s end content and functionality. A clearly defined journey from the users perspective enables us to shift away from thinking about structure in terms of hierarchies or a technical build.

Astegic employs user journeys in order to define a clear progression through an interface and shed light on places where the user can be “captured” with an action.