Application Design I : Task 2 - UX, UI, IxD Design Document
22/10/2025 - 23/11/2025 (Week 5 - Week 9)
Chang Wing / 0367807
Application Design I / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Task 2 - UX, UI, IxD Design Document
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Week 4 & 5
- Provides deep insights into user motivations, emotions and thought processes
- Helps uncover unexpected needs, frustrations or patterns that may not be obvious from numbers alone
- Provides statistical evidence, allowing results to be presented as percentages, averages or trends
- Enables generalisation across a larger user population, ensuring findings are representative
- Facilitates benchmarking and tracking changes over time through metrics
Five-User Rule (by Jakob Nielsen)
- From usability testing
- Testing with 5 users takes the least time to uncover the majority of usability problems
As a group, we did a card sorting activity to figure out how to best organise the features of a travel app. It helps us to see the app from a user's perspective and understand how users naturally group features. Card sorting helps in designing an app that feels intuitive and logical.
Research Methods for App Design
When designing an app, understanding users deeply is more important than simply validating designer's own assumptions. Mr. Sylvain shared some practical approach to conducting user research that helps uncover real needs and motivations, not just confirm what we think users want.
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1. Start with Qualitative Research: Live Interviews- Begin with around 5 live interviews, each no more than 15 minutes -> collect qualitative data and uncover users’ real problems
- Record audio and use AI transcription tools to save time, check yourself as well to ensure accuracy.
- Focus on understanding UX, pain points and motivations.
- Avoid asking about features directly, designer's goal is to identify problems, not have users design the solution for you.
*Tip:
Ask users to share their best experiences first, then move on to their worst. This "min-max method" helps people open up naturally, as they tend to elaborate more when discussing negative experiences.
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2. Online Surveys for Supplementary Insights
- Next, distribute 10–20 online surveys (just for this project) to collect supporting data and perspectives.
- Use surveys to ask questions that people might not be comfortable answering in live interviews, such as rating experiences or prioritising needs.
- However, avoid oversimplified or biased questions like “Do you need a tracker?”, users will likely just say “yes.”
Instead, design questions that help you:
Understand how users actually behave.
Learn what matters most to them.
Identify how widespread certain problems are.
Remember: Surveys are not for validation. They’re for discovery.
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3. Organise Insights Visually with an Affinity Map
- After collecting interview and survey data, use tools like Miro / FigJam / Trello to build an Affinity Map.
Write down observations and quotes using the users’ own language, such as “I’m a bit OCD about organising things” or “I love seeing my progress.”
Group similar thoughts together to reveal common themes or hidden motivations.
Can also include your designer’s reflections (just make sure they’re clearly differentiated from user insights).
- This process helps you see patterns that might not be obvious in raw data.
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4. Create Personas to Humanise Your Research
- Based on your findings, develop around 3 personas that represent different user types.
Each persona should reflect:
Key motivations and frustrations.
Common behaviors or attitudes.
Specific goals related to your app’s context.
- Personas turn data into something you can empathise with and group issues
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5. Keep Asking “Why?”, Dig Deeper!!
During interviews, don’t stop at surface-level answers. Keep asking "Why?" (up to five times if your participants are comfortable)
This technique helps to uncover the root motivations behind users’ behavior, not just what they say on the surface.
For instance, if someone says, "I use reminders because I forget things easily," asking "why" again might reveal a deeper reason like "I get anxious when I lose track of my tasks."
That emotional layer is where meaningful design opportunities comes.
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6. Avoid Leading Questions
Always keep questions neutral. Don’t guide users toward a particular answer or idea.
Instead of "Would it help if you had a progress tracker?", try "How do you usually keep track of your progress?"
Your role as a designer is to listen, interpret and decide what kind of solution fit, not to let users design it for you.
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Final Goal
The main goal of interviewing and surveying is to understand problems, not to ask for solutions or confirm assumptions. Once you clearly understand your users’ real needs and motivations, you can confidently design features that truly matter.
Affinity Mapping
Guide when grouping notes;
5+ notes → It’s getting broad, try splitting into smaller, more specific clusters.
3 – 4 notes → Just nice. A clear theme that recurs across users.
2 notes → A small signal. Might be something worth watching in the next round of interviews.
1 note → An outlier. It could be a hidden gold nugget or just noise, look closer to decide.
0 notes → If something feels missing, ask more about it in the next interview.
User Personas
Figure 1.7 User persona example template
Types of Personas
1. Main Persona
- Primary target user, the main focus of design. Their goals and needs drive most decisions.
- Example: The busy working mother who needs a quick and reliable meal-planning app.
2. Secondary Persona
- Important but less central users, their needs are considered without overriding the main persona’s experience.
- Example: The father who occasionally uses the same meal-planning app when helping with groceries.
3. Tertiary Persona
- Peripheral or indirect users, interact occasionally or are affected by the product indirectly.
- Example: The children who eat the meals planned using the app.
How User Personas Influence Product Decisions
- Provide clear picture of user preferences, behaviors and pain points, guiding design decisions.
- Identifying and addressing pain points early can prevent usability issues after launch.
- Users have diverse needs, personas help prioritise which problems are most worth solving.
User Journey Map
User Flowchart
- Keep everyone in the team (e.g. designers / developers / stakeholders) aligned
- Proactive issue detection, exposes confusing or redundant steps early
- Refine user experience
- Provides a clear reference for testing real user behavior
Figure 1.10 User Flowchart
Site Map
- Shows page hierarchy + navigation flow
- Made before wireframes/prototypes
- Ensures logical content organization
- Guides UI design (menus, layout)
- Helps developers plan page routes
Wireframes & Sketches
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Figure 1.17 Scrolling
Figure 1.18 Branching
1. Start building your own reference archive (e.g. Pinterest) It helps you notice what you’re drawn to and what styles or features you keep coming back to.
2. When exploring ideas, mix and match from 10 or more references. Pulling from just one becomes copying, but combining many lets you figure out what actually fits your client.
UI/UX Wayfinding
Anchoring happens when:
- The first number, first offer, or first option shapes the user’s perception of value or difficulty
- Users compare all later options against that initial reference point.
For example:
1. Pricing PagesIf the first price shown is RM299, the next option at RM99 feels “cheap”.
The RM299 price acts as the anchor.
If a salary filter shows:
RM8,000 first
Then RM2,000–RM3,000
Users may perceive RM2,000 as “low”, even if it’s industry standard.
Figure 1.21 The Paradox of Choice
When users are given too many choices, they:
- Take longer to decide
- Feel anxious about choosing “wrong"
- Sometimes avoid choosing at all to avoid regrets
Users freeze because there's no clear path forward
Conclusion, designers help users to choose whats important for users, left with just the important choice, reduce overwhelming users with lots of choices
- Every instructions have long paragraphs to read
- Filling forms repeatedly (name, phone, file upload etc.)
- Too many CTAs
Designers has to reduce decision fatigue in UI/UX so users don’t have to think too hard to move forward.
UI/UX Hooks
1. Habits Stick
- How to make users repeat a behaviour naturally over time.
It explains what conditions must be met for a behaviour to become a habit:
Cue → Routine → Reward → Repeat
A behaviour only becomes a habit when:
- The user sees a cue (something reminds them)
- They perform the routine easily
- They receive a reward that feels worth
- The loop is repeated consistently
For example, a fitness app shows a reminder on the home screen saying “Log today’s workout.” The user taps it and logs their exercise. They immediately see a progress graph update with a motivational message like “Great job!” Doing this daily forms a habit because the interface makes the action easy and rewarding.
Figure 1.22 Habits Stick
2. The Hook Model
- How a product creates habits by design.
It explains how to pull users back repeatedly through:
1. Trigger
- Internal (boredom, stress) or external (notifications).
2. Action
- User does something simple.
3. Variable Reward
- Unpredictable reward that keeps them coming back.
4. Investment
- User puts something into the system → makes them return later.
Figure 1.23 The Hook Model
Figure 1.24 Class Practice (Figma Design & Prototype screenshot)
Task 2 focuses on turning the approved app idea into a full UX plan. Using the research from Task 1, students will define their target audience, outline content, use card sorting to build the information structure, list features and identify the MVP (Minimum Viable Product), create wireframes and plan the overall user interaction.
Task 2 - UX, UI, IxD Design Document
Live Interview Audio & Transcripts:
REFLECTION
This task was mainly to check if it matches Task 1’s findings about adding new features to JobStreet. I learnt a lot, this was the first time I got proper hands on experience with user research. Mr. Sylvain taught us how to do live interviews, how to ask questions without leading people and that designers shouldn’t just ask what features users want, but understand how they behave and make decisions.
I also learnt how to design online surveys and use the data from interviews and surveys to pull out I statements, make personas, map user flows, do card sorting and finally build a site map. This experience will be really useful for me as a UI/UX designer, it helps me to make design decisions based on real user behaviour rather than assumptions.
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