Process: Requirements Definition

Some have hailed the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) as a seismic shift, an epochal change, and having the most powerful impact on business since the Internet. However, this article might disappoint you. In truth, AI is not meant to do everything, all the time.

In the face of technological hype, product teams and UX professionals risk falling into the “AI-for-everything” trap. They often pursue agentic AI solutions because the technology is novel, not because it represents the most efficient or high-value answer to a user painpoint. The outcome is predictable: wasted resources, unnecessary complexity, and user frustration with a product that fails to solve the right problem. Therefore, the most effective AI strategy involves mastering the power of no. UX designers must move the conversation from Can we build this with AI? to this more responsible and strategic question: Should we build this with AI?

Answering this question requires a rigorous, data-informed tool for governance. Therefore, I have developed the AI Value Rubric to force a structured conversation balancing user needs, business objectives, and technical aptitude to help product teams separate high-impact AI opportunities from technical vanity projects. Read More

All UX professionals, not just user assistance developers, face the problem of integrating their work into the product development lifecycle. At lower levels of organizational usability maturity, too often, the contributions of User Experience tend to be reactive. Usability professionals test the usability of a given product, then designers mitigate any shortcomings they find, and user assistance developers merely document what is already there. This column takes a look at the full scope of the product development lifecycle and how UX professionals can add value.

Figure 1 shows a simple view of the product development lifecycle. You could certainly define more fine-grained phases, but the four phases I’ve shown capture most activities to which UX professionals can add value:

1. requirements definition
2. design and validation
3. development and testing
4. deployment and support

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In this installment of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss how to write effective usability requirements and determine the right metrics for the redesign of a legacy, public-sector system.

Ask UXmatters exists to answer your questions about user experience matters. If you want to read our experts’ responses to your questions in an upcoming installment of Ask UXmatters, please send your questions to: [email protected]. Read More