Scope Building & Other Things
All great products go through a series of steps before they’re built out and iterated upon, or at least that’s my design thinking opinion. Can you think of an app, physical product or service you enjoy using and pinpoint why you enjoy it? If nothing comes to mind, think about the experience you have using it. Is that experience intuitive (minimal training involved) or does it introduce a new way of operating (some training involved)? There is no right or wrong answer — these are just questions to engage a deeper way of thinking about how a product’s intended functionalities are designed.
Scope building is about thinking strategically; prototyping a design from the scope allows you to visualize that thinking process and programming the design is the real test of strategic rationale. In this article, I wanted to share the guideline I use to define and test user experience scopes whenever I start on a new ideation phase of a project.
Scope building in 3, 2, 1!
Project Concept:
Thoroughly describe the product
- describe the shortcoming of the current state
- define key factors
- goal of the build
* Prompt: Pick 3 key points for a reading app re-design and base the project concept on how the re-design will target those key points
Research & Initial Findings:
Make a funnel of questions to research and make note of preliminary results
- devise a plan to interview
- create an outline with questions & tasks to guide interviewees
- be prepared to take notes
* Prompt: Research ideas around your project concept and come up with 4–6 questions that revolve around the highlights in your research. Gather these questions and provide interviewee with a task list of how you will conduct the interview.
Personas:
Create 1+ target user profile
- address relevant demographic data
- think about their typical context of use
- write down motivations & goals
*Prompt: Decide who the target demographic is and create archetypal users that fit the narrative that you are trying to convey through the project concept. Include names, demographic data, goals & motivations to use your product and a shorthand way to remember their key traits.
User Scenarios:
Form an ideal roadmap for user(s)
- think of informing as a productivity tool
- structure roadmap statements from a user’s perspective
- maintain user-centric design
*Prompt: Think of yourself as the user of the product you are building or re-designing. State the current shortcomings and how the build/re-design will solve them.
Architecture Diagrams:
Decide if the project requires a sitemap or a flow diagram
Sitemap: tasks based on finding, curating, browsing
Flow Diagram: tasks involved in a linear process
- could be one large diagram or collection of smaller ones
- include legend, annotations, cross-references (if needed)
- consider navigation and user interactions⬇
{How will users return to previously visited page? Amount of levels? Where will levels be placed?}
*Prompt: Write out the tasks you will be implementing to the (re)design and determine whether those tasks flow through browsing around (options) or if tasks flow in a step-by-step process (procedure).
Lo-fi & Hi-fi Prototypes:
Draft rough user scenarios into lo-fi wireframes to visualize, then create hi-fi prototypes from them as similar to the intended final product
- create prototypes based off arch diagrams
- annotate to describe different states or interactive behaviors
- keep responsive design in mind for this pillar
*Prompt: Roughly sketch a lo-fi wireframe (could be hand drawn or digitized) of how you envision the structure. Label areas of the skeleton and use different shapes to draw distinctions between content. When you feel that you have a usable design, move on to creating a hi-fi prototype using the lo-fi sketch as a guide. Use photos, attach icons, create user interactions or animations if needed to spotlight angles of the design.
**I recommend Figma based on it being a modern-day industry standard tool, its customization features and great usability experience. (If you have another prototyping tool you are into, that works too!)**
Usability Testing:
Put together a usability test kit
- add facilitation plan for test
- capture 3–5 issues found
- describe points that could use more revision going forward
*Prompt: Write a small introduction for participants, gather your prototype and the guide you created in the Research Plan step to conduct the usability test session. The tasks that you outlined will guide the interviewee through to actions and facilitate the interview. Take notes and be sure to capture 3–5 issues found (as this may help reveal blindspots or other possible interactions).
This piece was intended to spark some ideas to be roadmap of what I generally use to go from ideation to creation in my own scope building process. As always, I am happy to learn and glean useful approaches to add to my palette if you feel inclined to share.
As a design oriented developer, I recognize the importance of considering multiple design avenues before developing functionalities. There are plenty of approaches to arrive at similar solutions (or at least to similar trains of thought), and I am on a continuous search to find more that support my style of thinking. Many designers aren’t developers and many developers are not design oriented, but the two work together to create well thought-out solutions. Teamwork really does make the dream work!
