Design Process

My process is based of the teachings and methods of Jesse James Garrett from The Elements of User Experience. The process is broken into 5 phases.

Phase 1: Strategy

The earliest stage of product or feature development, attempting to understand the needs of the user and business. Methods such as data analysis, direct and non-direct competitor landscaping, and user research, etc are used.

• What are the users actual needs?

- Conduct research session with users, using a range of methods such as 1:1 interviews, ethnographic research, diary studies, etc.

• How does this align with the business or product aims?

- Conduct workshops and interviews with key stakeholders to gather further understanding of business opportunities and implications.

Phase 2: Scope

Working as a team of designs, engineers and produt owners, we discount and prioritise solutions, looking to specify the functional and content requirements and define the scope.

• How can our product or platform actually solve this problem?

- Work closely with partners in engineering and product to understand technical limitations and business opportunities/risks to prioritise potential solutions.

Phase 3: Structure

At this stage, the concept transitions from being less abstract towards more concrete.

• Information Architecture

- The core structure of where features, tools and information are held, and how the user can access it from within the product. Methods such as tree-testing or card sorting are used to verify or influence this structure.

• User Flow

- The process of mapping out the journey throughout the product to help the user complete the task. To further verfiy this, methods such as objective based testing are used during user research.

Phase 4: Skeleton

The objective during this phase is to finesse the interface or tangible design. Multiple iterations might be done at a low-fidelity or greyscale to demonstrate the intent of a particular layout or element. The main focus is to further refine and optimise the information, interface and interaction design. Guerilla testing methods can be used to assess the usability of particular interactions.

Phase 5: Surface

The final phase looks to refine the presentation layer of the product with a particular focus on typography, colour and animations. The purpose of this phase is to present the product in a form which aligns with the company brand, product, value and purpose in a concise and cohesive way.