The "Prioritization" phase helps us to determine which features or elements to prioritize based on user needs, project goals, and other constraints. This phase typically follows the "Define Themes" phase and is focused on organizing and ranking design requirements, features, or elements in order of importance.
Here are some practical steps that designers can take during this phase:
Identify and rank design requirements: Based on the design brief and other research data, designers can create a list of design requirements and rankYou cannot do everything, and in fact the product would be worse if it included everything. Thus, UX relies heavily on prioritization to determine what features add the most value relative to the resources needed to deliver them.
The "Prioritization" phase helps us to determine which features or elements to prioritize based on user needs, project goals, and other constraints. This phase typically follows the "Define Themes" phase and is focused on organizing and ranking design requirements, features, or elements in order of importance. This helps to ensure that the most critical requirements are addressed first.
Conduct a stakeholder analysis: Designers should consider the needs and preferences of all stakeholders involved in the project, including users, business owners, developers, and designers. This can help to ensure that the design prioritization is aligned with the needs and goals of all stakeholders.
Use a prioritization matrix: As UX practitioners, we are often caught in a balancing act: usability improvements, tasks to be done, design ideas, personas, resources — the list goes on. The reality is that not everything can be done at once. Making an informed decision on what to prioritize can be daunting. A prioritization matrix serves to identify the most important problems. This structured, objective approach helps achieve collaborative consensus while satisfying the varied needs of the user and business.
Determine trade-offs: Sometimes, it may not be possible to address all design requirements or features due to budget or time constraints. In such cases, designers need to determine the trade-offs and make strategic decisions about which features or elements to prioritize.
Test and iterate: Prioritization is an ongoing process, and designers should continue to test and iterate on the design to ensure that it meets the needs and goals of the users and stakeholders.
Prioritizing work into a roadmap can be daunting for UX practitioners. Prioritization methods base these important decisions on objective, relevant criteria instead of subjective opinions.
An impact–effort matrix is a 2D-visual that plots relative user value against implementation complexity. Variations of this matrix are used across various product-development approaches, including Six Sigma, design thinking, and Agile.
An impact–effort matrix assigns items to one of four quadrants: quick wins, big bets, fill-ins, and money pits.
The resulting matrix captures the relative effort necessary to implement candidate features and their impact on the users. It can be subdivided into four quadrants: