My process

My process?

Human-centric design. Design Thinking.
In short: Inspiration-Ideation-Implementation

Empathize; Define; Ideate; Prototype; Test;

Most of us have had experience working with a system that is difficult to use. While creating new product is easy to focus on technology and business goals, rather than on people who will use this technology.
Design thinking helps to put a frame, a guideline of sort to make sure we can systematically include end-user in problem solving process.

Empathize

Understanding the problem is always a good place to start. For ongoing projects that starts with asking a lot of ‘Why?’s. For new projects defining and understanding user/customer base might be better place to start.
Using variety of tools and methods we can generate understanding of who the customers are – as humans, not users, and that do they experience in their everyday lives.
This is covered by ‘Empathize‘ in Design Thinking – to observe and engage with users. At this stage we have:
  • Interviews
  • User observation
  • Heuristic analysis
  • Define user needs, vision & goals
  • Stakeholder mapping
  • User surveys
  • Gathering functional requirements
  • Usability testing
  • Competitive analysis and positioning

Define

Then we can use what we’ve learned, to scope a meaningful challenge – define the actual problem.
  • Creating actionable problem statement
  • Persona creation (ideally task based)
  • Defining user journey
  • Data analysis

Ideate

Having defined the problem, now we can ideate potential solutions to investigate and address the problem.
  • Brainstorming
  • Lo-fidelity mockups
  • Flow diagrams
  • Site mapping
  • Information Architecture
  • Interaction design
  • Wire framing
  • Mood boards
  • Design artefacts

Prototype

Now we can select best potential solution and prototype them…
  • Hi-fidelity mock-ups
  • UI design
  • Iterate
  • Defined type of scale
  • Specifications for development
  • Design System creation
  • Functional prototypes
  • Brand identity integration
  • Content and copy-writing

Test

…so that we can test the solution in the real world.
  • Gather feedback
  • Refine solutions
  • Moderated user testing sessions
  • Usability Testing
  • A/B testing
  • Analytics
  • User surveys
  • QA and testing

Tools

I’m getting a lot of questions about the tools I’m using. The thing with tools is that in digital world tools are changing quite a lot over time. Some becoming obsolete, some stays forever.
I’ve a got a wide selection of tools at my disposal, testing and trying new tools all the time.
Here is the rough list of design oriented tools.
  • Figma / Sketch / InVision Studio / Axure / Adobe Xd / Marvel – layout and interface design in general
  • Balsamiq / Wireframe.cc – lo-fidelity prototypes
  • ProtoPie / Origami / Framer – animated, interaction prototyping
  • Photoshop – serious raster image manupulation
  • Illustrator – great for working on single files, like icons preparation for web use.
  • InVision / Miro – collaboration, presentation, workshops
  • Optimal Workshop – UX research, card sorting, tree testing, click tests, user surveys
  • Monkey Survey / Alchemer (formerly SurveyGizmo) – user surveys
  • HotJar / Google Analytics – analytics, quanta data
  • Creately / draw.io / Visual Pradigm / Excel / Gsheets / LucidChart – diagrams, charts,
  • UXpressia – user personas (other software can be used for that as well – Figma, G docs, Sketch etc)
  • After Effects – animation anything

Have a question, or wish to discuss your project?

Feel free to reach out