Phase 3: UX Requirements
Traditional requirement specifications can be enhanced with UX information in two main ways:
- Feature requirements can be based on information collected during the user research phase. Here, user research complements market research data and other sources of product development information. Basing feature requirements on actual user data collected during research reduces the risk of investing resources in unwanted features and increases the likelihood of adding features that will drive sales.
- UX-specific requirements can be added to the requirement specification. By adding UX requirements, UX becomes a priority alongside other product attributes and UX improvements are delivered when the product ships.
The development of UX requirements begins by looking for overlap between the business objectives defined in Phase 1 and user data collected in Phase 2. For example, a business objective for an accounts receivable contact center may be to reduce average call time by 15%. Field research at this center found that support staff spent an average of 20 seconds per call finding a customer's record. A UX requirement to reduce seek time from 20 seconds to 5 seconds per call would make a significant contribution to the business objective and may be quite realistic from a UXE perspective. If this UX requirement can be implemented within technical and project constraints, then it is added to the product specification.
UX requirements may be qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative requirements are broad statements that inform the many design decisions that are made as a project progresses. For example, "The tourist information kiosk will be easy for first-time users to learn how to use." Quantitative requirements are specific, for example, "Four out of five first-time users of the tourist information kiosk will be able to find directions to a specific restaurant within a minute" or "On first impression, users give the tourist information kiosk an average attractiveness rate of 4 on a scale of 1 to 5." These quantitative requirements are validated during UX testing.
Qualitative requirements are useful to set the overall direction of the UXE design effort; however, quantitative requirements are essential to ensure that UX remains a priority as design deadlines approach. Which lead us to our next section, UX design.
Work products: UX requirements are typically included in with other product requirements in the requirement specification.