It's not about right-brain, left-brain thinking. It's about taking a holistic approach to the projects I work on. Product design is that part of my identity where I actively engage each of my creative, critical, analytical and intuitive mindsets, grounding myself in understanding, gaining perspective, embracing the collaborative process, finding ways to test multiple ideas and iterating — to arrive at the most effective and practicable solutions. While no two projects are alike, the way I think about and approach user experience design is rather straightforward, and is summarized below.
Research to understand
Talking to stakeholder, analysts and users to understand user behaviors, needs, and motivations is one of the key points to define business goals and create great products.
· Competitive Analyses
· Stakeholder Interviews
Listen to learn
I structure interviews to storytelling, and I document users' thoughts, feelings and actions when conducting contextual inquiries and user testing.
· Questionnaires
· User Interviews
· Usability Evaluation
Defining learnings
Putting together what I've learned, I model tasks, experiences, and mindsets to articulate the users' goals, and define and frame the problem.
· User Personas
· User Journeys
· User Needs Analysis
Visualize the interaction
Visualizing the user interaction through sketches and low fidelity mock ups is something I do together with prototype development, as it is informed by user feedback on user testing and guides later iterations.
· Wireframes
· Use Cases
· User Flow Diagrams
Generate concepts
Collaboration is essential to any ideation process, whether through team brainstorming or engaging in participatory design with stakeholders and customers.
· Structured Brainstorming
· Problem Framing
· Sketching
Communicate the idea
I take concepts from sketches and wireframes into visual/tangible mock ups and develop prototypes at multiple stages to get better perspective on the feature/product and test with users.
· Rapid Prototyping (InVision, Proto.io, Framer)
· Visual Mockups (Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite)
Test the prototype
Getting timely and useful feedback on prototyped ideas in a structured or informal setting is crucial to the iterative process.
· Usability Testing (in person and/or online)
· A/B Testing
Refine and repeat
The feedback from testing is what drives the iterative process, giving me essential insight into refining the prototype, rethinking the interaction, even generating more concepts.
Relevant skills
User-centered design, creative strategy, mobile/web design, wireframes, mock-ups, user research, user testing, prototypes, A/B testing, self-starter, communication, mock-ups, analytics, problem-solving abilities, detail oriented, end-to-end
Relevant tools
Sketch, Zeplin, InVision, Jira, Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Proto.io, Gsuite, Google Analytics, Basecamp, Slack, Zoom, Usertesting.com, Survey Monkey