My Design Process

Every digital experience I craft is unique. I use this flexible design process as a guide for every project I tackle.

STEP 1

Understanding the Business & Customer

I always start new projects with a stakeholder kickoff meeting to understand the business goals and intentions. I then focus on understanding and empathizing with the customer. I do this by making educated assumptions and observations surrounding: What are customers needs? How do customers think? How do customers feel? How do customers work? What motivates customers?

Empathizing with customers is essential in-order to deliver high-quality experiences.

I then do a competitor review. This helps me understand if there are any pre-existing industry standards or common patterns available. It’s also a chance to get inspired! What are others doing? Are they doing it well? Is there room for improvement?

STEP 2

Thinking & Forming Ideas

While keeping business and user goals in mind, I start collecting and thinking about the data. Possible ways for the data to be presented, visualized, and consumed by the customer.

Data is KING – It must be thoughtfully organized, arranged, and tailored to specific personas / use cases.

This is also the time I start to think about the mood and tone we want to set and communicate to customers. I research design and technology trends being used by industry leaders. Using my findings, I curate an inspiration board to refer back to throughout the remainder of the project.

STEP 3

Bring Ideas into Existence

I typically start off with pencil and paper. This helps me generate and iterate on lots of ideas quickly. I then select the best suited design software to create:

  • User Flow
  • Information Architecture
  • Wireframes
  • User Interface Designs
  • Interaction Designs
  • Prototypes

As a UX specialist it’s my job to create outstanding user experiences. I continually ask myself 3 fundamental questions that are the building blocks for a good experience:  1) Is it easy to use?  2) Does it evoke positive emotions?  3) Is data arranged in the most powerful and insightful ways possible? Ideally, you would answer ‘Yes’ to all 3 questions in order to move to the next step.

STEP 4

Make Discoveries & Validate Assumptions

This step is crucial to improving the user experience. Feedback gathering techniques I always recommend and try to incorporate into the process and system include:

  • Usability Testing
  • Customer Interviews
  • Conducting Surveys
  • Integrated Feedback Forms
  • Tracking User Activity
  • Social Media Engagement

 Repeat

Steps 2 – 4 are repeated until we land on a digital experience that we feel is ready for the customer. Throughout this process, I’m either collaborating, brainstorming, reviewing designs, and / or gathering feedback from stakeholders and cross-functional team members.