BUSINESS MODELLING (DESIGN PHASE)

I. REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS

What is requirement analysis?

The process of studying and analyzing the customer and the user
needs to arrive at a definition of the problem domain and system
requirements. The objectives of requirement analysis includes:

 Discover the boundaries of the new system (or software) and

how it must interact with its environment within the new
problem domain

 Detect and resolve conflicts between (user) requirements

 Negotiate priorities of stakeholders

 Prioritize and triage requirements

 Elaborate system requirements, defined in the requirement

specification document, such that managers can give realistic
 project estimates and developers can design, implement, and
test.

 Classify requirements information into various categories and

allocate requirements to sub-systems Evaluate requirements for
desirable qualities.

During requirements verification and validation, the following

happens:

 Need to be performed at every stage during the (requirements)

process

 Elicitation

 Checking back with the elicitation sources

 Analysis - Checking that the domain description and

requirements are correct
 II. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN

User experience (UX) design can be a complicated and overwhelming field for
newcomers, as it encompasses a wide range of topics (from accessibility to
wireframing). Some of these topics overlap, while some of them complement one
another. Therefore, it's important to come to a common and basic understanding
of what the term “user experience” means in a design context.

User experience design, as its name suggests, is about designing the ideal
experience of using a service or product. As such, it can involve all types of
products and services—think, for instance, about the design involved in a museum
exhibition. However, in the main, the term user experience design is used in
relation to websites, web applications and other software applications

WHAT IS A USER EXPERIENCE (UX)?

In general, user experience is simply how people feel when they use a product or
service. In most cases, that product will be a website or an application of some
form. Every instance of human-object interaction has an associated user
experience, but, in general, UX practitioners are interested in the relationship
between human users and computers and computer-based products, such as
websites, applications and systems.

WHO IS A UX DESIGNER?

A UX designer is someone who investigates and analyzes how users feel about
the products he or she offers them. UX designers then apply this knowledge to
product development in order to ensure that the user has the best possible
experience with a product. UX designers conduct research, analyze their findings,
inform other members of the development team of their findings, monitor
development projects to ensure those findings are implemented, and do much
more.

WHY IS UX IMPORTANT?

In times gone by, product design was simple; designers built stuff they thought
was cool and that they hoped their clients would like. Unfortunately, there are two
problems with that approach. The first is that, back then, there was far less
competition for people's attention online.

The second is that there's no consideration for the user of the product at all in that
approach—the success or failure of a development project was down to luck as
much as it was down to the judgment of the design team.

Focusing on UX enables design to focus on the user. It increases the chances of a

project's success when it finally comes to market, not least because it doesn’t
gamble on the faith of users in taking to a product just because it’s a brand name.

DESIGN THINKING

Design thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in

literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. So, why
call it ‘design thinking’? What’s special about design thinking is that designers’
work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply these
human-centered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way —
in our designs, in our businesses, in our countries, in our lives.

Design thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user,

challenge assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative
strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level
of understanding. At the same time, design thinking provides a solution-based
approach to solving problems. It is a way of thinking and working as well as a
collection of hands-on methods.

DESIGN THINKING PHASES

Here are many variants of the design thinking process in use today, and they have
from three to seven phases, stages, or modes. However, all variants of design
thinking are very similar—they all embody the same principles, which were first
described by Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial
in 1996.

Here, we will focus on the five-phase model, which the Hasso-Plattner Institute
of Design at Stanford (aka ‘d.school’) proposed. We’ve chosen d.school’s
approach because they’re at the forefront of applying and teaching design
thinking.

The five phases of design thinking, according to d.school, are as follows: It is

important to note that the five phases, stages, or modes are not always sequential.
They do not have to follow any specific order. What’s more, they can often occur
in parallel and repeat iteratively.

 As such, you should not envision the phases as a hierarchal or step-by-step

process. Instead, you should understand it as an overview of the modes or
phases that contribute to an innovative project, rather than sequential steps.
• • • • • Empathize – with your users
 Define – your users’ needs, their problem, and your insights
  Ideate – by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative
solutions
 Prototype – to start creating solutions
 Test – solutions

7 FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE UX

User Experience (UX) is critical to the success or failure of a product in the

market, but what do we mean by UX? All too often, UX is confused with usability,
which describes how easy a product is to use. While it is true that UX as a
discipline began with usability, UX has grown to accommodate much more than
usability, and paying attention to all facets of UX in order to deliver successful
products to market is vital.

1. Useful: If a product isn’t useful to someone, why would you want to bring
it to market? If it has no purpose, it is unlikely to be able to compete for
attention alongside a market full of purposeful and useful products. It’s
worth noting that ‘useful’ is in the eye of the beholder, and things can be
deemed ‘useful’ if they deliver non-practical benefits such as fun or
aesthetic appeal. Thus, a computer game or sculpture may be deemed useful
even if neither enables a user to accomplish a goal that others find
meaningful. In the former case, a teenager may be using the game to vent
angst after a hard exam at college; in the latter, an art gallery visitor may
‘use’ the sculpture to educate herself on the artist’s technique or tradition,
gaining spiritual pleasure at the same time from viewing it.
2. Usable: Usability is concerned with enabling users to achieve their end
objective with a product effectively and efficiently. A computer game
which requires three sets of control pads is unlikely to be usable as people,
for the time being at least, only tend to have two hands. Products can
succeed if they are not usable, but they are less likely to do so. Poor
usability is often associated with the very first generation of a product—
think the first generation of MP3 players, which have since lost their market
share to the more usable iPod. The iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player, but it
was the first—in a UX sense, at least—truly usable MP3 player.

3. Findable: Findable refers to the idea that the product must be easy to find,
and in the instance of digital and information products, the content within
them must be easy to find, too. The reason is quite simple: if you cannot
find the content you want in a website, you’re going to stop browsing it

4. Credible: Twenty-first-century users aren’t going to give you a second

chance to fool them—there are plenty of alternatives in nearly every field
for them to choose a credible product provider. They can and will leave in
a matter of seconds and clicks unless you give them reason to stay.
Credibility relates to the ability of the user to trust in the product that you’ve
provided—not just that it does the job it is supposed to do, but also that it
will last for a reasonable amount of time and that the information provided
with it is accurate and fit-for-purpose. It is nearly impossible to deliver a
user experience if the users think the product creator is a lying clown with
bad intentions—they’ll take their business elsewhere instead, very quickly
and with very clear memories of the impression that creator left in them.
Incidentally, they may well tell others, either in passing or more
intentionally, in the form of feedback, so as to warn would-be customers,
or ‘victims’ as they would view them.
5. Desirable: Skoda and Porsche both make cars. Both brands are, to some
extent, useful, usable, findable, accessible, credible and valuable—but
Porsche is much more desirable than Skoda. This is not to say that Skoda
is undesirable; they have sold a lot of cars. However, given a choice of a
new Porsche or Skoda for free, most people will opt for the Porsche.
Desirability is conveyed in design through branding, image, identity,
aesthetics, and emotional design. The more desirable a product is, the more
likely it is that the user who has it will brag about it and create desire in
other users. Yes, we’re talking about envy here; whilst we can salute
Skoda’s indomitable spirit—not least for having made very innovative
strides and made the most of resources behind the Iron Curtain—we’ll tend
to yearn after the other car here, the one that screams ‘Look at me!’ and is
pure power and affluence on four wheels.

6. Accessible: Sadly, accessibility often gets lost in the mix when creating
user experiences. Accessibility is about providing an experience which can
be accessed by users with a full range of abilities—this includes those who
are disabled in some respect, such as the hearing, vision, motion, or learning
impaired. Designing for accessibility is often seen by companies as a waste
of money—the reason being the enduring misconception that people with
disabilities make up a small segment of the population. In fact, according
to the census data in the United States, at least 19% of people had a
disability in 2010, and it is likely that this number is higher in less
developed nations. That’s one in five people in the audience for your
product who may not be able to use it if it’s not accessible—or 20% of your
total market! It’s also worth remembering that when you design for
accessibility, you will often find that you create products that are easier for
everyone to use, not just those with disabilities. Don’t neglect accessibility
 in the user experience; it’s not just about showing courtesy and decency—
it’s about heeding common sense, too! Finally, accessible design is now a
legal obligation in many jurisdictions, such as the EU. Failure to deliver
accessibility in designs may result in fines. Sadly, this obligation is not
being enforced as often as it should be; all the same, the road of progress
lies before us.

7. Valuable: Finally, the product must deliver value. It must deliver value to
the business which creates it and to the user who buys or uses it. Without
value, it is likely that any initial success of a product will eventually corrode
as the realities of natural economics start to undermine it. As designers, we
should bear in mind that value is one of the key influences on purchasing
decisions. A $100 product that solves a $10,000 problem is one that is likely
to succeed; a $10,000 product that solves a $100 problem is far less likely
to do so.