About The Process
In order to create the best experience for your users, I apply the design thinking methodology.
Empathize
Research
A necessary stage for every design project is gathering information - the research phase.
On the one hand I try and understand my clients as much as possible to figure out what do they want to achieve with their product.
Often it takes a few meetings in order to paint a full picture of their wants and needs.
On the other hand you have the people who are interacting with the product - the users.
Who are these users and what are their pain points? What do they need, expect or overlook? My job is to understand how I can create the right experience for them.
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Define
At this phase I'm analyzing information from the research and attempting to frame the design problem. I am using different methods for analyzing such as looking at it from different perspectives (e.g. as the user, as the researcher) while asking a series of questions for every problem. For example:
What is the problem?
Who is experiencing the problem?
Where does the problem present itself?
Why does it matter?
With this kind of deep analysis, I can establish a clear "problem statement" for each and every problem, which is necessary for the next step of building the right product.
Having a clear problem statement is the foundation of the product, and has a super important role. I like to imagine it similar to Genetic Engineering: investing energy and resources for eventually having a tiny, refined seed. This seed holds the DNA on which the entire product will be built with.
Information Analysis
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Now that we have a clear problem statement - or a few - the fun part can begin: the Brainstorming phase.
There are countless ways to conduct meaningful brainstorming sessions. Most of the methods being used, offer diverse ways of manipulating the problem statement; "attacking" the problem from different angles and turning challenges into opportunities.
The purpose of this stage is to generate ideas on how the final product should look, which pages it would contain and what the content of these pages should be.
Brainstorming
Ideate
Mockups
This next step will help us examine our product before we invest a lot of energy and effort in creating a polished final version of it.
The prototype is given to the users to interact with. This way I can check overall things about the flow and experience they have and examine if essential needs of the users are met. I can also make sure that the desired actions, important to the shareholders, are taken by the users.
The benefits of building a prototype are:
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lets us check the idea before it is in the market
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provides insights without investing a lot of effort and money
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identifies product failures before it's too late
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allows us to make informed design decisions based on the user experience
Prototyping
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Examination
Usability testing is one of the most valuable tools when it comes to develop great products. Simply put, it's getting people in front of the product while interacting with it. Guided or not, remote or in person - the important part is getting their real honest feedback.
Working on a product from the sterile space of the working station makes it hard to see the big picture. And most important, the designers are not the users, and they cannot guess accurately how the users would act in a given scenario.
Thats why we use a lot of methods to test the products and different ideas:
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A\B testing
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First click testing
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Tree testing
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Usability testing
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Concept testing