Methods for decomposing application functionality
One of the important stages in the formation of UX (User experience) of a digital product is the release of MVP (Minimal Viable Product, also known as minimum viable product). This is a version of your application or program that implies a minimum number of functions implemented in the product, which is sufficient to create user experience and feedback. This helps to understand whether users are satisfied with the existing functions, and to decide on the further vector of product development: how to improve it, what functions to add, what to remove.
However, even after selecting an MVP, the remaining functions may turn out to be multi-component, that is, decomposed into smaller ones. A great method for decomposing functionality is User Story Mapping.
The User Story format is a description of a functional requirement literally in the form of direct speech from the perspective of a user evaluating a product. The description template is like this: “I am like role Can actionto Expected Result». For example: “As a user of a taxi application, I can link a payment card so that I don’t have to re-enter the details each time I make a payment.”. Typically, closed or limited testing is used to obtain such stories.
Mapping allows you to present the functionality of a product in the form of a matrix, where horizontally are the steps necessary to achieve the goal, and vertically are the desired features of this step. After constructing the matrix, the details are sorted according to criteria accepted by the team: importance for the user, importance for the business, and so on. Then the MVP is allocated within a separate function. In addition to mapping, there are other ways to decompose functionality, such as breaking it down into operations. In this case, the existing history “As a user of a taxi application, I can link a payment card so that I don’t have to re-enter the details each time I make a payment.” We break down simple actions into components: adding a card, removing a card, reading, editing and selecting an element.
The ultimate goal of all this is to reduce the number of functions in the product for further more targeted testing, isolating functions and subfunctions that can have a positive or negative impact on the UX. This is an attempt, using narrow-vector testing, to implement the optimal version of a planned product with the minimum possible number of functions, and subsequently correctly adapt it to the changing expectations of users.
All this is just a small part of what we know today about UX and UI design, and the information itself is taken from one chapter of the new book by Yaroslav Shuvaev “UX/UI design to create the perfect product. Complete and comprehensive guide”. It is perfect for anyone who wants to master this niche: the author introduces both the basic concepts and his real cases. Yaroslav was a designer and developer, and later CEO and partner in the DDVB branding agency, and then continued to improve the user experience and employee experience, already managing the creation of innovative products at Alfa-Bank (owner of the Alfa-Mobile product), Ak Bars Bank (internal director Innovation), MTS (Director of Technology Support) and Viasat (Director of Digital Projects). He embodied his experience and knowledge in this book. Perhaps later we will look at another chapter from there.
