In UX, I have found it useful to check business or marketing claims against what a product actually delivers. This may seem obvious. But, many times I’ve had to bridge the gap between the marketing speak that brought a

user into an app and what a user actually experiences. This is more common than you might think.

User experience is a craft I love. There are so many aspects to it. And, I’ve made my process my own, so I sort of nerd out on some things that I like most. Aside from being in love with what I do, it can be pretty challenging to design the right thing.

So, when business or marketing has a vision and it doesn’t perfectly align with how an app was built to function, there can be a gap that becomes a huge ask of a UX person to “fix”. I’ve done a lot of this kind of thing for both new apps and existing. In either case, it can be a task that requires the right questions. A healthy dose of pseudo-skepticism, along with the right diagramming, can help you compare what is said of an app to what it actually does.

You’re trying to find the degree of truth between the business vision and what a user will actually experience.

And, to be fair and honest here, many apps deliver exactly what they have said they do. Many have done it beautifully too. I’d be naive and a bit misleading to write about happy path UX all day long though. That’s not always reality. But, all is not lost, even in an imperfect world.

Allow me to nerd out now.

One way to start shoring up the gaps when an app doesn’t quite do what marketing claims is to do an exercise with what I call a “views inventory”. I usually do these to establish what views will be needed in a new user experience, or what views already exist if working on an existing app. Properly label them with meaning, including numbering them. This will be handy when you need to describe interaction states, which I write about in another article, “UX Tip: Don’t Forget Your States“.

If you have multiple personas, which you likely will, you can create a swimlane to contain the views inventory. Doing this will allow you to see overlap as well as dependencies. For instance, an Admin of an app may need to complete setup and onboarding before specific users can even get into the app to use it for the intended purpose. Sometimes it’s helpful to see these dependencies, sometimes it’s less needed. In the example below, I’ve not established any dependencies from a flow perspective. But I have accounted for the content that would need to be experienced.

Swimlane style diagramming also allows you to maintain a high level user categorization. In many of the business apps I’ve helped design, it’s often been “front office” or “customer facing” versus “back office” or “internal”. Similar to the dependencies, it’s sometimes helpful to see these groupings at a high level and quick glance. Thus, I’ll typically use color coding in line styles, or even box certain flows so it is clear, at a glance, what is technical and system oriented, and what is human oriented.

A quick note on tools: I’ve used many diagramming apps by now, but my current go-to is Whimsical. I don’t get paid for that plug. I just think they do color and style of lines very well. They limit the palette across the board, actually. That’s actually a very wise feature of Whimsical, as they allow you to produce lovely diagrams that stick to an established style guide. Sounds constraining, and it is, but the diagrams are beautiful.

I quickly prepared a mock version of a views inventory, presented in a swimlane. When I say quickly, I just napkin sketched this on my iPad, just to quickly convey the exercise. In this case, I’ve given generic context so you can see the point of the exercise. I included generic marketing language that makes some claims about what the app can do.

I have often started a diagram on paper, or now on the iPad, and then translate that to a proper diagramming tool. I’ll write more about diagramming at some point. Sometimes time consuming, but always high value and often repeatedly returned to in business planning. Such an asset can also be maintained and grown as the business grows, scales, and gains more clarity into vision, scope, and capability.