Empathy
Development
Business
User
Wires,
Prototype
Define
Test
Define
What are we building?
Who are we building it for?
What problem are we solving?
Development, Business Goals, User Goals
What is the business objective?
What are the user’s goals?
What are the development limitations?
What is the competitive landscape?
Empathy
Be the user
How will user’s use this?
What are their pain points?
Create User Personas
Create User Scenarios
Wires, Prototype
Test your solutions early and often
Usability testing
Review metrics
Track usage
Test
Create simple solutions
Create User Journeys
Create Wireframes
Create Prototypes
Design Process
Following a design process insures the product being designed and built meets the criteria of the user, the stakeholder and the business.
What
What are we building?
Has the project been
started?
What is the initiative
for this project?
Who
Who is this for?
Who are the stakeholders?
Who are the users?
Identify the eco-system and how they are going to use this
new product.
Create personas from your interviews. This brings the user to life and helps to tell the story and create empathy.
Create a user journey.
Why
Asking these questions can pave the path for understanding both the business objectives and user’s needs.
Why are we building this?
What problem are we solving?
Is it better than the competition?
Easier?
Cheaper?
More efficient?
What is the business
objective?
What are the user’s
goals?
What are the user’s
using now?
What are the pain
points?
Research
Identify the best research for the objective.
For example: interviews, card sorting, observation or prototype/listening
lab.
Are we looking for quantifiable or qualifiable results?
Understand your research objective.
User Journey
Create a user journey for each of the primary user groups.
Start with a text narrative of the user’s experience — tell a story about your user.
User Flow
Boxes and Arrows, create a flow of the product and how the user will engage.
The flow can be created by referencing the user journey.
Details of the interactions and features can then be demonstrated in the drawings.
Breaking it down into different paths helps to understand a complex product.
Wires and Prototypes
Wireframes can start out simply by blocking out the real estate of the device’s screens that will be displaying this product.
Start out low resolution and identify the basic elements; headers, global navigations, body, right rail, footer, sub-navigations.
Then you can get into more detail, content and interactions.
Prototypes can be a simple click through built in an inVision or a robust tool like iRise to demonstrate more interaction and needed logic.