UX Process

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Discovery Phase

When beginning a UX or Product Design project the first phase is the discovery phase. In the discovery phase it’s important to gather information through a variety design thinking and research methods. Some discovery work can be done through stakeholder interviews, workshops and collaborative sessions to gather insights about the users and examine the problem we are solving. Even when you have the user voice to drive the process it’s important to approach the project with empathy and ensure that you are actively listening and trying to release your inner bias.

Discovery Activities:

  • Design Thinking Workshops

  • Stakeholder Interviews

  • User Interviews

  • Problem Framing Workshops

  • Defining a RACI, Collaborative Space and Creative Brief

  • Establishing Measurement Baselines

Planning

Planning is a collective and collaborative exercise between product, design, engineering, accessibility and business. Planning can be challenging, as there can be so many unknowns and dependancies but it’s important to break through the obscurity and find a path forward while remaining agile. I work closely with my partners to develop a roadmap and work back schedule to ensure we are proceeding forward efficiently and have adequate time for ideation and validation.

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UX Flow

UX flows aren’t always pretty. They are an essential tool for communication to show our intended approach, the user journey and even as technical diagrams. UX flows help get all team members including stakeholders to visualize and understand the user journey. Whether this is a formal UX flow or a more informal white boarding session, I often include UX flows when defining a new experience.

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Personas & Journey Mapping

‘Who?’ Creating personas can be valuable to help ensure you are developing the user experience while keeping in mind the needs of the core users. Personas need to be based on real people and real data to provide value. I use personas to help everyone empathize and understand our users, often looking back to the personas to validate experiences and approaches through the persona’s lense.

wire-framing

Wire-framing or low fidelity prototyping can help communicate the user experience approach without getting hung up in the details like UI, visual design and branding. I will often experiment with many solutions before finding one I am satisfied with throughout the wire-framing process. When possible I like to complete formal or informal design reviews with peers to get ideas and help improve my solutions. Often times the wire-frames I put together are not very visually appealing, they just get the idea across. This is so that we can validate the direction, use the wire-frame as a communication tool to clarify intent and then rapidly ideate. I use pen and paper, MIRO, Figma, FigJam, Sketch or whatever I have available to wire-frame. Often times I prototype my wire-frames because it helps me think of the holistic experience.

Wire-framing:

  • Sketching

  • White boarding

  • Low-fi Prototyping

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Ideation

There is no one perfect solution to any problem so I often throw strategic spaghetti at the wall. I love to throw a lot of ideas together at the beginning without judgement or inhibition to let my creative brain run free. Then I take those ideas and refine them to the problem space to ensure they align with what our goals are. Once I have something of value, if there is time, I keep ideating to try to get to better and better solutions.

Prototyping

There isn’t always time to stitch together an interactive prototype but having coding experience and using diverse software including UX Pin, InVision, Adobe XD and Figma, I feel comfortable communication the intent of my designs in multiple mediums. My background in development helps me understand what and how to communicate to developers to ensure the integrity of the experience can be upheld. When there is time, there is nothing better than a mind blowing high fidelity prototype to pave the way to the final experience, interaction design included as well. I am confident in multiple prototyping software, and I’m always stretching to learn more.

Developer hand-off

UX and Developers often have to communicate and compromise on solutions based on various limitations. Because I have coding experience I have a strong empathy for developers. I understand what impacts their work and the challenges they face. I can also speak their language and have a deep understanding of web technologies. This means I can easily work with them to find solutions and clearly provide direction and feedback to help them successfully build the experience with accuracy. I am comfortable in tech grooming sessions working with developers to find ideal solutions and I’m flexible to technical constraints, open to feedback and creative ideas on how to solve complex problems.

Dev Hand-off:

  • Design Specs

  • Accessibility ARIA Labels, Skip to Nav etc.

  • Interaction Design Directions

Measure and iterate

I have a lot of experience working with data from A/B Testing, Google Analytics, Visual Website Optimizer and more… I’ve used first party and third party data to evaluate the success of my experiences. Working in a high performance environment, I have had a lot of success driving record joins, sales, donations and customer satisfaction. It’s important to define what success looks like from the onset of the project so we can exceed expectations through our creative approach.

Measure:

  • Google Analytics

  • Visual Website Optimizer (VWO)

  • Hot Jar

  • Heat Mapping

  • A/B Testing

  • Multi-Variate Testing

  • Net Promoter Score

  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

  • Revenue Tracking