The UX design process is often broken down into 4 key steps.
User research: The UX research process involves understanding users’ behaviors, motivations and needs through interviews, focus groups and surveys. This helps designers understand how people use their existing product or related products, as well as what they want out of the product being designed.
Design: The design process transforms the outcomes of the user research into a high-fidelity interactive interface. This often takes form in mockups and wireframes at first.
Testing: Once the interface is designed, designers will often bring back users from the research stage and have them test, or interact with, the design. This phase is called usability testing and allows for additional feedback—ironing out any kinks that users may find cumbersome or unintuitive.
Implementation: Finally, once testing is done, the interface is ready to be added to the product and launched for live users.