UX Needs Cards – A Pragmatic Tool to Support Experience Design Through Psychological Needs

The psychological needs-driven UX approach is a well-explored area in UX research and a powerful framework for the design of optimal experiences with systems and products. However, the transfer from research to practice is slow and this approach is not yet widely used by practitioners. As card- based methods have been shown to support designers in both the generation of ideas and the evaluation of their designs, we created the UX needs cards as a pragmatic tool able to support a needs-driven UX process. We present the iterative development of the card-set and its associated techniques and report on three use cases, demonstrating the effectiveness of this tool for user research, idea generation and UX evaluation. Our empirical findings suggest that the UX needs cards are a valuable tool able to support design practice, being easily understood by lay users and a source of inspiration for designers. Acting as a tangible translation of a research framework, the UX needs cards promote theory-driven design strategies and provide researchers, designers, and educators with a tool to clearly communicate the framework of psychological needs.