My Design Process

Learn

This is all about empathy, strategy, and research. At this stage, I help you to discover knowledge gaps and align your assumptions with real user expectations. I identify a strategy to support both user needs and your business goals. Strategies and deliverables may include:

• Goal Analysis

• Personas

• Workflows

• Competitor Benchmarking

Define

Once user and business requirements have been gathered, I often regroup with the primary stakeholders. Within an alignment meeting the team creates a series of project goals. This is where we make compromises with the aim to satisfy as many business and user requirements as possible.

• User Stories

• Project Specifications and design exercises

• Technology Assessment

Design

During the design phase I spend a lot of time diverging and thinking outside the box about solutions through any medium best suited for the job. Ensuring that the visual structure and presentation of information in an application is intuitive and correlated with existing user mental models and expectations is a cornerstone of user experience design. I strive to present the right information in the right way, in the right place, and at the right time. Strategies and deliverables may include:

• Sketching, Whiteboarding, Mindmaps, User Journey’s

• Information architecture

• Layouts

• Clickable Prototypes

Deliver

Usually the single longest stage in the process, this is when the final deliverables are actually created. I validate prototypes as much as possible before passing them onto the development team to build in order to eliminate as much risk as possible.

I typically communicate final designs via a high fidelity InVision clickable prototype. Depending on the client or project, the format may change. This allows the developers to click on the designed screens and get the specs for each individual element. Having experienced many development teams based around the world this visual matter-of-fact communication is essential.

Throughout the development cycle I constantly communicate with the development team to address any issues as they occur and guide them to the finish line as smoothly as possible.

• Mid to High Fidelity Prototypes

• Interaction and Motion Design

• Code Requirements and Specifications

Analysis & User Testing (This happens throughout)

With sketches, wireframes, low-fidelity to high fidelity prototypes it’s important to validate if our assumptions are correct. Design is an iterative process. There are always improvement to be made, informed by testing and our users. I inject testing at every point in the process as an integral part of an iterative design process. Strategies and deliverables may include:

• Usability Testing

• A/B Testing

• Eye Tracking

• Interviews and Focus Groups

Let’s Talk Design