S&SHARK.

How do you keep human-centered design methods at the forefront of your UX process?

How do you keep human-centered design methods at the forefront of your UX process?

“We must design for the way people behave, not for how we would wish them to behave.”
Donald A. Norman
Living with Complexity

My UX Process:
Leveraging Design Thinking to create meaningful human experiences

My UX Process:
Leveraging Design Thinking to create meaningful human experiences

Great product and service designs should be useful, relevant, and meaningful. But how can I exemplify these traits at every stage of the UX process? I start by attempting to achieve a deep understanding and empathy for the user. 🫶

DISCOVERY

Start with empathy. 

 

A core component of my design work is about remaining user-centered. UX is about solving problems and providing solutions. First, determine who the users are.

 

For most UX problems, you either have an established product or service with existing users, or you are starting from scratch with a target audience in mind. 

Generally, I start by asking the client/customer about the user base, existing or target. Do they have any data we can look at already? What do we know about the users, if anything? Remember the 5W’s: Who, What, When, Where, Why? (and also, How?) 🙋

 

Once I have some data, I can build out user personas, and user stories. 

Example persona created for a government contracts creation tool, CART.

After establishing who the users are, I can gather data on their use, feelings, and feedback (if any) of the product or service.

Keep in mind, “what people say” about a product and “what people do” with a product are often at odds with one another. 🙊

In an ideal scenario, access to real users is quick, easy, and frequent. However, due to budgeting, privacy, and time constraints, this rarely works out perfectly in the real world.

 

There are many research methods to use, and which ones I leverage depends on these constraints. 

 

In the past, I have conducted usability testing, field studies, participatory design, A/B testing, card sorting, surveys, analytics, interviews, and more, both in person and remotely. 📋 Tests are done with legacy software or new prototypes to determine pain-points, user flows, challenges, and opportunities. 

Taking part in a usability study for an interactive app for kids.

In situations with limited access to users or user testing, I take care to be as thorough as possible during the few interviews I have, outlining multiple lines of questioning to cover all bases. I can also use competitive analysis of other products to make assumptions and educated hypotheses that can drive design decisions. 💡

 

After user interviews, especially field studies where I can observe user journeys, I can build out user flows.

Example of a user flow I created for the Auto Approve credit pull feature.

define the problem

Armed with the knowledge and insights gathered from user testing, I can begin to define the problem(s). 💭

 

Focusing on the goals and challenges of the users is a great place to start. For instance, in CART, our writers were struggling to leverage templates in contract writing. I could begin to write the problem statements and formulate some How Might We’s?

How Might We? statement for a contract creation and management tool.
Part of my regular process became including title cards such as these on all Figma files for Magellan Swift, including feature descriptions and problem statements.

DESIGN + PROTOTYPE

With all that data and the problem identified, it’s time to brainstorm solutions. This step involves challenging assumptions and creating ideas, which can be done in many ways.

 

My go-to is speed sketching. ✍️ Leveraging traditional tools like whiteboards or pen and paper allows me to not be precious, and work quickly and iteratively, getting out ideas as fast as possible. I do this as an informal and less structured “Crazy 8s” method. 

 

If I get stuck, one of my favorite ways to break the mould, and get the creative juices flowing, is the “Worst Possible Idea” method. By examining the problem in this inverted way, it stokes creativity and encourages looking at the challenge from unexpected angles. 

 

By the way, at this sketch stage, it’s important to continue with user research, to gather feedback on assumptions and initial designs. I don’t want to get too far on an idea that isn’t the best solution, and using data and feedback to back up my decisions helps lend them confidence. 🙂‍↕️

With sketches and ideas validated, I begin to develop more robust designs using digital tools. In the past, I have used Photoshop and XD, but lately my design tool of choice is Figma.

 

First rounds of designs are generally lo-fidelity, grayscale wireframes, so I can focus on laying out all the necessary, “MVP” parts of the product before getting bogged down in details. 😵

 

This is also a good time to aggressively check for accessibility – following the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ♿ to ensure the solution meets success criteria.  

Early wireframes for CART.

Again, testing should be done at every stage, so that nothing is missed or overlooked. Below is an early version of a virtual townhall streaming service, which was lightly prototyped to gather usability feedback before further refining of features (there were a lot of them). You can view this prototype here.

Early mockup/prototype for Access Live 2.0

After iterating and iterating on mockups, final designs can be made.

Magellan's Terminal Locator in a very, very rough early wireframe stage.

Many, many iterations later… 🥁

...And voila! The fancy final version with Magellan's design system components, and some custom ones made for this feature (rack wait times flags, for instance.)

Check out the prototype for the Terminal Locator here. The password is helloworld!

At this stage, I also begin using final assets and components to develop high fidelity mockups and prototypes. If the brand or client has an existing design system, I will leverage that, making customizations where necessary. Or, if they do not, this is where I can suggest existing systems or creating a brand new bespoke system for the product.

 

Same with branding and visual identity. I’ll be sure to use any existing brand colors, typography and other visual systems if they exist, or help the brand to develop them if they do not. 🎨

 

I use plugins like contrast checkers to ensure I am still meeting accessibility standards ♿ at this stage.

CART was built from the ground up, without any existing or legacy software to refer to. Because of this, I was given the reigns to design the product's look and feel, including typography, icons, logo, and colors.

Designs are shown to multiple groups of people across many iterations for acceptance before they can be considered “done”. ✅ (And is anything ever truly done in the digital world?)

 

If relevant or if I have access, I present design demos and receive feedback from:

 

  • Users, of course, because the product is for them
  • Fellow designers/design leads for peer review
  • UX researchers to validate correct data analysis
  • Product team for requirements acceptance
  • Development teams for tech feasibility
  • Clients/Stakeholders for final acceptance

Ship it! 🚀

Once designs are approved, they get moved to Hand off, where they are given over to the development team to implement. I still follow this process closely, making sure there is ample documentation in Figma, Jira, and/or Confluence so that the functional product closely mirrors the intended design. 

 

I keep up with development teams, making sure that designs are technically feasible. I also validate and audit dev work.

Design work is rarely done once a product is shipped. There is always more to learn, more to improve. 

 

After product launch, the process continues.

 

To view in-depth case studies, check out my portfolio of work ✨ here. ✨