There’s more to User Experience Design than mockups and prototypes. Compiled below are the time-honored tools and techniques of our trade, passed on from generation to generation. If you are unfamiliar with a technique, you can read a brief description or follow links to learn more from experienced professionals. Are there missing tools or techniques? Let me know, and I’ll add them!
The tools are organized alphabetically within the Lean UX framework of Think > Make > Check. During the Think phase, you research and, well, think to better understand your users and the problems you are trying to solve to come up with hypotheses to test. Then you Make the quickest representation of a potential solution you can. Finally, you Check the solution against your hypotheses and learn.
When you see people working, playing, or acting where they feel right at home, you can learn a lot more about them than you can in a lab. Field testing lets you observe users where they use the products you make. Simply by paying attention, you can see what else vies for their attention, what their priorities are, and what their habits are.