During the kick-off meeting, I like to keep things fairly informal as I get to know the client as well as their problem domain. I really value chemistry, and during the kick-off meeting a raport is established with client and meaningful communication channels opened. Through the informal chat, requirements are gathered and a problem statement articulated.
All materials provided by client are thoroughly reviewed, categorised and documented. This allows a global view and rough business case for further analysis and insights. Depending on the project requirements and size of team; as UX Lead, I would then write up internal briefs to team members in order for the next steps to take place.
This is when the exciting part starts; getting my hands dirty doing some research. Depending on the project and subject, the method of research can vary. I generally like to have a good balance between quantitative and ethnographic approaches on a project as I have found this give a much clearer understanding of users and user behaviours. I am very comfortable with methods of internet scavenging, heuristic evaluation of competitors, stakeholder interviews, user research and surveys / questionaires. I structure interviews to elicit storytelling, and I document users' thoughts, feelings and actions when conducting contextual inquiries and user testing.
Once a clear understanding (or educated guess) is achieved on who our users are and what might be their motivations and pain-points; personas and use cases are created. It is important at this stage to remain flexible on these assumptions until such a time as they are bourne out by evidence.
Usually at this point, there is a clear understanding of our users and their motivations and I go ahead and create user journey maps based on this understanding and empathy. In very simple terms; a user journey is a series of steps that maps out how someone might interact with the service or product I am designing. User journeys can be used either to understand and articulate how users are currently interacting with the service or to map out how we want the user to interact with our product or service. When creating user journeys it is important to consider context (where the user is, what they are doing, what is going on around them), the sequence and lastly, the functionality.
When it comes to wireframing I strongly believe in churning out as many ideas as possible and jot them down using paper and pen. I then take a break; do something else; then come back to my wireframes with a fresh perspective. Ideas are then refined, poor ideas go to the bin and the better wireframes are then translated into mid-fidelity, computer generated wireframes. On the sofware side I am comfortable using Adobe XD, Balsamiq, Omigraffle; but by far my favourite go to software is Sketch.
Before any design (pretty pictures) takes place, I conduct a workshop with the design team where the Low and Mid fidelity wireframes are vigorously interogated. Once team members are in agreement on the wireframes, a high fidelity prototype is produced. For prototyping I am comfortable with Adobe XD, Photoshop, InDesign, InVision, Axure... but again; my go to is Sketch. I am equally comfortable mucking in and doing the design myself or mentoring junior designers.
Armed with our research, findings, wireframes and prototype; the project is presented to stakeholders for feedback. The feedback session works best if it is convened in a workshop format so that stakeholders feel they are part of the solution and to engender some buy-in.
No process or design is likely to be 100% perfect on the first go. It is important at this stage to regroup and consider all stakeholder feedback. What has been omitted ? What workflows are redundant or can be optimised. Is there a clearer understanding of users ? All feedback is taken on board and implemented in the deliverables. Rinse and repeat.
Depending on the project and budget, the solution must be tested against user expectations. My favourite methods of usability testing are analytics, surveys, interviews, A/B testing and Heuristic Evaluation. Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the "heuristics").
No, I am not simply checking if you are actually reading all this... And this is not a typo... Iteration is the cornerstone of my process and it bears repeating. What you may miss on the first swing you can catch on the second, and so on and so forth. Rinse and repeat.
Depending on the project and my role, I may at this point proceed with front end development. Although my happy place is in crafting delightful user experiences (UX > UI); I am also quite profficient in the dark arts of HTML, CSS and Javascript. Designs and interactions are created and socialised with stakeholders for feedback.
Yup, you guessed it... Literally after every bit of feedback I revisit my designs and see how to best implement the inputs. Iteritive design will save your life; trust me. Rinse and repeat.
A deeper dive into usability based on our functional prototype (the skins) to see if they meet and exceed our user expectations. This final round of usability testing is the most critical since we are at the stage where we are closest to having a finished product.
I have a really solid understanding of software architecture, especially MVC Frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Magento and Joomla amongsts others. Nowadays I try to steer clear of actual coding; however my technical understanding is invaluable when it comes to handing over artefacts to coders for implementation. It is also equally important to have a firm grasp of any constraints in the underlying architecture and how these may affect usability.
I like to give developers full implementation support as far as possible. A lot of projects end us in the weeds when UX does not play an active, lead role in the implementation of code. Also, code is all about computation not usability; so it is important that user centered principles are also adopted in DevOps. Over and above supporting developers; I feel it is also my role to support stakeholders in onboardoing the new product or service through training and workshops.
