<strong>Google apps that make life easier for aspiring UX designers</strong>
UX Design or User Experience Design is the process of developing evidence based, interactive designs for digital products like websites or apps. This is a lucrative career option among today’s youth. So, many youngsters sign up for web designing courses during their high school years. Apart from the core design tools, UX designers often need to use many apps to accomplish their projects and make the work flow smooth. These apps are mainly used for storage, communication and collaboration. Here is a list of essential functions that can be performed easily by beginners with the help of Google apps.
Data Storage
They can be used by young UX designers to collect design drafts during research to make cases, study plans and competitive analysis notes while collaborating with one’s team in real-time. To make various shapes, one can also use Google Drawings, considering drawing features on Docs are too basic. Moreover, the wide range of website references gathered during research can be organised on Google Keep, where one can create reminders and reference labels. Finally, Google Drive can be used to save all the progress and retrieve data as and when required.
Easy collaboration while scheduling
UX design needs extensive collaboration, which is why planning ahead and managing time for team meetings is essential. For this, Google Calendar can be used for individual as well as team scheduling. The key is to prepare a comprehensive schedule of all tasks that need to accomplished within a particular deadline by one or all members of a team. Adding the teammates as guests beside their allotted tasks will help everyone visualise their short-term goals and work accordingly.
Designing and sharing prototypes
When UX designers are in the actual design phase, they simultaneously need to create multiple components such as information architecture, sketches, visual design maps and so on. All these can be done together on Google Slides that help one insert elements such as shapes, callouts, connectors, polylines, diagrams etc. Following this, one can also add interaction sequence, graphics, text content to produce a prototype. One can use Google Meet to connect with clients or developers and present a slideshow featuring the prototype and explain its various aspects to get their comments and feedback.
Gathering data on user experience
To collect data about a prototype remotely, UX designers can use Google Forms. The key is to select a relevant template, replace the survey texts with your own questions and add targeted texts such as names, time, observations, subject role, etc. One can also refer to Google Docs and put instructions there and share that with the clients in view-only mode. It’s possible to often go back to these Google platforms and check the progress in real-time. When all the clients have submitted their surveys, the data can be analysed using Google Sheets where one can format, arrange and filter raw data to extract meaningful insights and viewpoints that can help upgrade the design prototype accordingly.