MY PROCESS
EMPATHIZE & LISTEN
Understanding the user is a fundamental first step in the design process. Designing from a place of empathy essentially establishes why we are here as designers: to gain insight into someone else’s wants and needs and use that information to provide creative design solutions. Because wants and needs change and expand over time, design should be adaptable as well as scalable. Applications need to behave almost like a living organism so that it can grow with the user.
Preliminary Steps:
Stakeholder Mapping
Understand Requirements / Restraints
Define the Use Cases
UX Methods & Research:
Field Studies/ User Interviews
Stakeholder Interviews
Competitive Analysis
DEFINE & BE CONFIDENT
Understanding a problem is exciting for me because it enables me to feel confident that my designs are headed in the right direction. The defining stage of the project is like pouring the foundation’s concrete – getting clear in this stage helps makes the rest of the design process run more smoothly. My approach is basically to take all the research I accumulate and synthesize it to define the problem statement and pull together ideas for features and functions.
Preliminary Steps:
Define User Personas, Journeys, & Stories
SWOT Analysis
Example UX Methods:
Affinity Mapping
MoSCoW Method
Define Problem Statement
IDEATE & BREATH
This might actually be my favorite stage in the process. It’s when I can dive deeply into my creativity and generate ideas based on the research and analysis done in previous stages.
A great man once said,
No earth shattering idea came from the steps between my desk and a water cooler.
– David Kennedy.
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Being deeply involved with a project can create unintended blind spots, so I usually run my designs by people who aren’t directly involved in my project to get a more complete perspective.
Example UX Methods:
Mind Mapping
Mood Board
Experience Mapping
Rough sketches / possible Paper Prototypes
PROTOTYPE & FAIL
The prototyping phase is where I get to get my hands dirty. Using industry standard tools (Figma, Sketch, InVision, Axure, Adobe CC & XD) I can create prototypes that provide solutions to the problems identified during the first three stages. In this phase I like to fail. A lot. Without failing I would never learn what works and what doesn’t.
Prototyping Tools:
Figma
Sketch
InVision
Axure
TEST
When unveiling my baby to the public, I pick only the best solutions identified in the prototyping phase. Once these designs have gone through the ringer of public criticism, I can use the feedback to better define the problem. This is typically where I would go back to a previous phase to begin again.
Testing Methods:
Qualitative In-person Usability Tests
Qualitative Remote Usability Studies
Accessibility Evaluation
Benchmark Testing