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Does anybody use "Analytical Hierarchy Process" to prioritise their UX design considerations?

I am very often been in the position where I am impounded by different criterias and alternatives for any given design quality like usability and easy of use.

Will be great help to know if anybody is taking advantage of any other statistical models for making a UX design decision.

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    Statistical model??? I personally use agile costing method. It works great.
    – CleverNode
    Nov 4, 2015 at 20:42
  • I really really hope not. Isn't the point of being a UX designer to use your experience and judgement.
    – dwkns
    Nov 4, 2015 at 22:38
  • @Novina, Interesting, I thought an agile costing method is more to do with translating story points to a rough estimate of time and cost. I was looking ways to explain my design tradeoff analysis.
    – Arun Kollan
    Nov 5, 2015 at 13:33
  • @dwkns, I thought the same until I came to know that we could use data science to measure user experience. People have been using statistics to make all sorts of marketing decisions. Agreed there is an additional overhead to the designer.
    – Arun Kollan
    Nov 5, 2015 at 13:44
  • @dwkns I don't doubt statistical model will help, but it has to make sense. I used the t-test to analyze A/B testing before, only to have the model tells me my A and B does not make a statistical difference -- which, i guess is good to know. From what I (just) read, analytical hierarchy process isn't to give hierarchy to the outcome, but to make one decision based on putting hierarchy of the criteria and opinion... (Which car should the family buy.. put these in hierarchy, subject and objective: cost, style, fuel, etc). So not sure how you can use it, maybe you can elaborate?
    – CleverNode
    Nov 5, 2015 at 15:01

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Although there is no reason why AHP can't be used for making decisions in UX design to prioritize tasks or requirements, I think you'll find that the level of analysis required and the output generated isn't necessarily the answer that you want.

Instead, there are simple strategies or processes that will give you the high level buckets (e.g. MoSCoW process) that allows you to narrow the focus and therefore the complexity of the analysis and decision that needs to be made.

I don't know of any examples or projects where this has been applied, but given that it is not too dissimilar to other methods I can imagine that it has been applied somewhere.

If the complexity of the analysis is prioritizing the tasks or requirements in the context of UX design only, then I think AHP might be an overkill. However, if it is about weighing UX considerations in the context of other business or technical constraints then you may consider more complex analysis processes.

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  • Yes I agree for a manual or semi automated approach, MoSCow is good at arriving at a decision . With a multi-criteria decision analysis tool such a AHP it would be possible to bring your considerations /criteria onto an analysis model and use fuzzy logic to prioritise your considerations to achieve certain goals. There are software packages and tools to help to do that.
    – Arun Kollan
    Jan 10, 2020 at 14:13

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