BigData-Informed Design Templates for Amazing SaaS & AI Products
Understanding how to collect and analyze data is key to creating better user interfaces and user experience designs, it's designing with data in a user-centric way. It is both art and science, the art of design should be influenced by the science of data and information.
The integration of AI in SaaS, two transformative technologies, enhances UX through personalized recommendations, streamlined onboarding, and conversational AI for seamless communication.
High product standards begin with strong design principles.
Measuring success of SaaS product design
It’s simple – we have to measure the User Experience.
Customer experience aims to meet customers’ needs, helping the users have positive interactions with your product so they to be converted into long-term, power users and brand advocates.
UX Metrics - how people engage with the products and services businesses provide. KPIs and UX Metrics are often confused with each other, but they’re two separate things.
A KPI is a measurement of success for your business (revenues and costs). UX Metrics determine how well users are interacting with the business brand and products by measuring user satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty.
UX Metrics: Quantitative Behavioural (objective data) for Data-driven Design and Qualitative Attitudinal (subjective data) for Data-informed Design.
Building & scaling SaaS products with a data design system
Most companies face challenges when scaling up their products with more features. The issue is that by adding more functionality, the product increases complexity exponentially. One of the first solutions is scaling up the product team with people to align the user experience across all products. Additionally, setting up a consistent design system will always improve speed, quality, and scalability in the long run.
For companies with a strong dependency on data, which is almost any organization these days, in a traditional design system, next to the commonly used categories “components” and “patterns” a third layer is added: "charts".
Data visualization is never an isolated element, it lives within the context of other elements to allow for informative exploration.
During the UX process, the focus is on designing for the customers, whereas during the UI process, the attention is shifted to visual design to help the product owners, marketing teams, and development teams.
Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven & Data-Inspired Design
Today’s largest and most successful organizations use data when making high-impact business decisions because data is logical and concrete in a way that human instinct and intuition simply aren’t.
Only because a decision has been based on data means it is always correct.
Data-informed design is the process of designing and improving digital products with measurable data. The only way to create a self-service product that truly fits the needs of the target audience is by using data that’s obtained from observing and communicating with the users directly.
Ultimately, the final result is influenced by the design team's perceptions and experiences.
Clarification
Why customer-centric teams prefer a data-informed design process?
"Data-driven" involves teams guided by data. But being data-driven doesn’t always lead the team down the path that’s best for the business' customers.
Data-driven means making decisions based solely on data. Data-informed means using data as one of several inputs, alongside factors like your company’s objectives and employee expertise, in decision-making.
Customer-centric product teams need to combine quantitative, numerical data with qualitative data analysis to reveal real user behaviour and needs. Some of the best ways to get deeper insights and make data-informed product decisions include heatmaps, recordings, surveys & feedback, user interviews.
More data isn’t always better. The product team can have all the data in the world, but if it’s not accurate or doesn’t address the right questions, it will not help the team to make the decisions that lead to meaningful results. Being data-informed means the team understands which data is the most important, and to prioritize quality data to underpin the business decisions.
How to build a Design Systems at Scale? Can it be considered a digital product itself?
Decades ago, we didn’t know the difference between a visual style guide, component library, design language, or design system.
A healthy design system will make it easier to scale design patterns and components alongside a growing design/product team. It ensures consistency and quality across all experiences and increases the speed without losing best practices or consistency within the product.
There are a few steps to follow in scaling the design system across different products and platforms:
- align the design system with product vision and goals: purpose, scope, and value of the design system, and how it supports the company's brand identity, user needs, and business objectives.
- establish a governance model that defines the roles, responsibilities, and processes for creating, updating, and using the design system
- modularize and standardize the components, so that they are easy to reuse, customize, and maintain across different products and platforms
- adapt it to different contexts and needs of the products and platforms by considering: the diversity and specificity of the users, devices, environments, and scenarios. How do these factors affect the design decisions and outcomes? The design systems need to be tested and evaluated in different contexts and needs, then collect and analyze feedback.
- promote a culture of collaboration and learning among the design, product, development team and other stakeholders.
- evaluate and measure the impact and value of the design system, and test if it meets the business vision and goals. Identify the gaps and opportunities, and prioritize and implement the necessary changes and enhancements.
Why choose qualitative research over quantitative research?
It depends on what kind of project is going to be handled. Qualitative Research is a method generally used for understanding user's views and perceptions. It offers visions for different problems and helps in developing concepts or theories for potential quantitative research.
This method uses various kinds of unstructured or semi-structured practices for data collection such as group discussions or individual interviews. It helps in interaction among respondents, as they depend on the comments, perceptions, views, opinions and ideas of people. It involves respondents more than in a structured survey (Quantitative Research). It uses in-depth analysis of small groups of people for building theories. The results of qualitative research are not predictive, but descriptive.
What are design tokens in Figma?
Design tokens are a method for managing design properties and values across a design system. Each token stores a piece of information, such as colour, sizing, spacing, font, animations, and so on. To make them easier to refer to, each token also gets a name.
The tokens become a source of truth and a shared language between design and code, making updating the designs and design systems more efficient.
Source: Figma Learn
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