UX has to do with following Usability processes moreso than using particular tools to produce results that will enhance usability. The most popular process is known as User Centered Design. This means defining who your users are, analyzing their processes by collecting data about the user.

Once you collect user data, you can create an affinity. Often times this results in creating personas for users. Personas are archetypes that represent your user by encapsulating their beliefs, philosophies and activities. You can also use this affinity information to build a mental model of their activities.

You would use the mental model or persona to help make decisions during the design process. Think, does this feature satisfy a user persona, or would it fullfill some content in a content inventory that you may create based off of a Mental Model.

The tools that you use during your design process would depend on what you are doing. Right now my company uses iRise for prototyping which is extremely expensive. You could however use Power Point or Photoshop, or you could create an HTML mockup. Your prototype should also be accompanied by a page flow to illustrate the interactions.

Once you create your prototypes, you would perform user testing. Would would allow you to vette your designs with users before they go into production. User testing does not have to be formal. It could just be you asking a user questions about some screens to validate the content and language, or it could contain a ‘walk through’ of the process.

I hope this gives you a little more understanding of the UX process. The goal is to take “I think” out of your designs by using user data to ensure that your designs are usable. You can get some brief definitions of Usability Terms in this post in my “What is UX” section of my blog.

Cheers!

UX diva