My process?
Human-centric design. Design Thinking.
In short: Inspiration-Ideation-Implementation
Empathize; Define; Ideate; Prototype; Test;
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