One of the most important goals of any UX design project is to offer solutions to business problems and at the same time provide users with meaningful and valuable experiences.
However, there will be instances when you get to conduct a UX project with little budget and limited deadlines, which results in several challenges when it comes to developing innovative UX designs.
In this article, The Cubi Model for a Successful User Experience, we will discuss how this user experience model comes as a simple solution where budgets and timelines are limited.
One of the many challenges when it comes to UX projects is despite the many available diagrams with disciplines, stages, tools, and methods, only a few models are made simple. There are also just a handful of UX diagrams that are focused on the business value. Most of the available UX diagrams are very confusing, unorganized, complex, or antiquated.
Thanks to an experienced designer at The Nerdy who came up with a solution to all the frustrating, confusing, disorganized, complex, and antiquated user experience models--- the CUBI model was created.
The very core of UX is to become a part of compelling and creative projects that offer business solutions and engage users through meaningful and valuable experiences.
But with a very tight budget and timelines, achieving this goal can become a challenge.
Thus, the CUBI user experience model was created to solve these challenges that UX (user experience) professionals face.
Based on thorough user research of the many existing successful projects, the User Experience Model was created.
It was observed that there is a strong balance of content and interactions. The content, as observed from most of the existing, successful projects were made engaging and easy to consume, while the interactions support easy access to more content.
The model is a way to deconstruct the major components, which consist of:
C- ontent
U- ser Goals
B- usiness Goals
I- nteraction
When it comes to considering the intersections on the CUBI diagram, you have the process where users navigate through content through the provided interactions, which includes communications, reactions, actions, and transactions.
Another set of intersections was Experience Factors. To have an effective experience a product needs to be comprehensive, useful, usable and branded.
The benefits of a simple CUBI user experience model
The user experience model has several different contexts and perspectives that need to be addressed. These are the following:
Creativity
Creative experiences are important when it comes to user engagement and providing a unique brand experience to users.
The CUBI UX model provides a good framework for presenting content in a more creative way, using a variety of techniques and methodologies.
These days, content can be made in varied ways. We can apply content on apps in a way we can enhance the visuals more creatively like like 2D/3D effects on the images, which brings good aesthetics.
We can also apply creativity and personality in texts through various text styles. All these are part of creating unique and creative experiences that UX designers have to learn and follow.
Communication
A clear language between UX user experience designers and clients results in good communication and improves the strategy and the results. If communications is placed as a model, then the results are more clear and logical to all departments.
Simplification
The user experience model simplifies any complex design processed and turns them into bite-sized pieces. It also outlines several needed considerations. When you placed everything inside a model or diagram, then things get simplified and organized, in a manner where there is a process to follow.
Collaboration
The user experience model is also good for designing experiences as it is often used to clarify roles, teams, assets, and content required to execute. Not only is the process can easily be executed, but roles are given more clearn definition and this can result in more efficient work process accross all teams.
Gaps
Since we follow a certain structure in CUBi, the user experience model can help identify gaps within the design process more conveniently.
These are the five layers to consider when it comes to incorporating content:
Content Types
Content here does not only refer to the text. It also includes all media such as photography, audio, video, documents, and many other forms.
There is more room for communication and engagement when content types are combined. It’s important to develop an inventory of the different media of content and the context of how else and where it will be used.
Content Models
Content models have different combined content types made into a more recognizable format. For example, a recipe is a content model, which may include content types such as ingredients, instructions, and photos.
Content Treatments
Content can include applied aesthetics and treatments. Content needs to align with the brand to convey the brand clearly.
Content Methods
Content can be presented in several creative ways. The content can become more interesting and engaging in story form where it utilizes metaphors, scenarios, challenges, or other creative concepts.
Content Architecture
Content architecture refers to the structure, organization, and grouping of information. It includes all content categories like content types and models.
User Goals
These are the five layers to consider when it comes to incorporating user goals:
User Types
There are different types of users that you need to understand. One way to get a better understanding of your users is to create personas.
A persona details different roles, responsibilities, skill levels, demographics, and psychographics.
Identifying your personas and their needs often utilizes the where, when, and how questions to create a clear business goals.
Needs
Comes after the user types are identified. It is essential to understand and define the relevant needs of your users to help them fulfill their business goals. Also, take note that there are simple needs such as documentation. Others can be more complex like physiological or esteem needs.
Motivations
Motivations are identified after you have identified your user needs. Motivations can be a wide range of intrinsic or extrinsic rewards or motivators. These are implemented with cues, design triggers, or other techniques.
Behavior
Through user research, any potential behavior or changes can be identified. If you have enough motivation and behavior change, there is a higher chance of developing new user habits and also building user loyalty to a product and brand.
Outcomes
Outcomes are the combination of needs, motivations, and behaviors. All these factors can lead to a meaningful and measurable outcome for users.
Business Goals
These are the four layers to consider when it comes to incorporating business goals:
Operations
Operations refer to the support of the product. This can include people, resources, and other connected experiences.
The people involved in the project include the key business stakeholders, contributors, subject matter experts, administrators, recruited users, and others that are involved in the project.
Operations also help understand that experiences can happen anywhere in the customer experience phase: prior, during, and after the experience. Thus, a good understanding of how the product will be found by users is essential.
When it comes to communications, it is a good practice to observe clear communications both internally and externally through the use of tools like apps, search engines, or social media platforms.
Offerings
Offerings refer to the ecosystem of products and/or services. It’s also important to understand how these products and services related to each other. A value proposition is used to communicate effective offerings.
Outcomes
Outcomes are the meaningful metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that help support the business's success. There are different kinds of KPIs such as financial performance, client acquisition business goals, customer satisfaction rating, and other indicators.
Mission
A mission statement is the core purpose of the organization, which includes the competitive advantages, target audience, and the reason the organization exists. The mission statement should guide decisions and clearly define user goals.
Interaction
These are the four layers to consider when it comes to incorporating interaction:
Pattern Interaction
Design patterns, also known as micro interactions, are reusable components and interactions. This can include headers, menus, calendars, and maps. The resource libraries for patterns include pattern tap and mobile patterns.
System Interaction
The system refers to the navigation, flows, feedback, and notifications used to help users progress and achieve their user goals.
The nature of the system can either be static or dynamic. Dynamic systems can be regulated or self-regulated, which means there are varying degrees of permissions and actions certain users perform based on their credentials.
Systems can also be defined by the content management system or other system software, which may have a set of capabilities and as well as limitations.
Device Interaction
The key to designing for customer experience is to understand the capabilities and constraints of the devices, such as screen sizes, connectivity, user interface, and other factors.
The experience happens on a variety of devices as well (example: phones, tablets, apps).
User interface design considerations are also made to provide experiences that are ergonomic and comfortable when using certain devices.
Human Interaction
The human interaction may be formal or informal, personal, or interpersonal, social, or some other type of human interaction.
Other CUBI key takeaways
Branding Experience in UX Design
When it comes to our perception of the brand, we oftentimes only think of the logo, color theme, and other design elements. In UX user experience designing, however, branding is not just visual identity but extends up to tonality and totality of the brand experiences at every touchpoint for users.
Therefore, it is quite a broad picture of branding in any UX design and hence, the most challenging factor for the UX designers. UX designers have to extend their reach to cover business processes, business components, communication, transactions, production, and final outcomes of the business.
Comprehensiveness Experience in UX Design
Comprehensive refers to understanding, clarity, unclutteredness, and organization. If your product design is following the above design traits, then you are giving comprehensive experiences to the end-users.
As a UX designer, you need to make your design scannable, categorized, labeled, and not confusing to your users.
Avoid excessive corporate lingo, jargon, or any unreadable messages at all steps and touchpoint of the design and organization experiences.
Usefulness Experience in UX Design
You are wasting time and money if your client or end-users don’t feel you’re your product is useful. then you are wasting your time and the client’s money both.
You should address your design to target the right audience, to know and understand your audience's needs, and empower them to be productive to help them achieve their goals efficiently.
If your design or product is useful, you can see some tangible changes in the user behavior, the positive interactions with the product, and the overall performance.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve learned the usability experience in UX design, which includes:
· Easy to use product design experiences
· Intuitive design experiences
· Findable design experiences
· Learnable design experiences
· Legible design experiences
· Consistent design experiences
· Communicative design experiences
· Progressive design experiences
· Accessibility design experiences
· Functionality design experiences
· Corrective design experiences
It is true that only a few people can understand the UX design paradigm. In this time and age. usability is always the area where we need to focus our attention the most. However, user experiences are more than this. The same goes with rewarding better than the mere usability of the product.
Thus, besides the different layers in the CUBI UX model, we must fully understand and learn more about the important factors that are highly influential when it comes to UX design process.
