Hi folks,

👋 A big welcome to the 897 designers who have joined us since our last issue!

Today we're chatting about user flows. This is something I didn't utilize very often at the beginning of my career—I tended to design things one page at a time. But over time I've learned that everything has context and you can't design in a vacuum. It's important to think about the overall experience.

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– Jordan & Taylor

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↪️ The why of user flows

The ability to create and think in user flows is one of the most important skills in a UX designer’s toolkit.

What's a user flow? The short definition is:

It shows the path a user takes through the product as they complete a specific task. It has things like a title, wireframes, and notes in a flow chart.

What’s the advantage of adding user flows to our process? Here are five important benefits:

👩🏻‍💻 Increases our awareness of the user

When you’re in the weeds of designing, it’s easy to get lost in project requirements, technical jargon, and personal opinions. By the end, the user isn’t even part of the conversation.

Since a user flow is from the perspective of the user, it keeps us grounded in the fact that we’re designing a real life situation for another human being.

🎯 Helps us focus on the user’s tasks

Whenever a user pulls up a digital product, there’s always a reason they’re there: a task they need to complete. It could be finding a video, buying a flamethrower, or booking a flight; but whatever it is, that task is the root of all their interaction.

User flows are all about tasks, so they help us center our work on the user and their actual goals and experience, rather than fixating on one page at a time.

🧱 Sets a foundation for other work

Since user flows are broken up exactly how a user interacts the product—one task at a time—they provide a foundation for the rest of the design process.

User flows influence everything from interface design to information architecture to usability testing.

⚠️ Supports troubleshooting

Lots of the issues (read: support requests) with digital products are about a user not being able to complete a task.

A clearly defined user flow helps us spot and eliminate dead ends, pain points, or confusing steps where users are having trouble.

👥 Improves team communication

Sometimes it can be challenging to get our ideas across in an accurate and understandable way.

User flows clarify the scope, complexities, paths, and goals of our designs for people like engineers, other designers, and product managers.

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In the interest of avoiding a giant email, I've left off the part of this article where I explain how to make a user flow. If you'd like to read about that, head over to the original page.

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📰 Scoop

What’s going on in the world of product design and why it matters.

Apple's WatchOS 10 is in public beta. It's been almost 10 years since the Apple Watch was launched in 2014.

Our take

While WatchOS is certainly not the only watch operating system out there, it is the most ubiquitous, with the largest ecosystem. So it's fascinating to see how it has evolved over the years. Josh Rubin has an excellent article on some of the details in the most recent update—it's worth a read.

Watch interface design is yet another example of a serious arm of product design that most designers haven't touched yet. We often think solely of websites and apps in product design, but more and more devices and types of experiences are appearing that will need designers involved.

It's exciting to think about these new applications and important to remember that fundamental principles of design apply across all digital experiences.

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💎 Gems

Quick item to consider this week.

You may have noticed the Bento design trend popping up more and more lately. Louise North wrote a short, interesting article on Webdesigner Depot describing Bento-style UI's and how to design one yourself.

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