Reflecting on the Design Thinking Process

As a new UX Design student, the concept of design as not a ‘visual’ thing, but a whole process fascinated me, and fired up my curiosity. Learning to appreciate this process was not necessarily linear, with entry points at any stage depending on your project, that it was iterative, and user-centred and thrived on collaboration, was “awesome”.

My First UX Project: Solving the Right Problem

Goal: Successfully apply the Double Diamond Design Process to design a digital solution

Subject Matter: Food: how people prepare or decide what to eat

Timeline: 2 weeks

Week One: Solving the Right Problem

Working with a partner as my ‘users’, I determined what their unmet need relating to the subject matter was and created a research plan and conducted user interviews.

Research Goal: Discover how Chris and his partner can find recipes to cater for their dietary requirements that are exciting and appropriate to both their needs.

Key Takeaways:

• Research goal needs to be related to what you’re looking to learn from your research
• User interview questions must be open-ended, focusing on the user experience to uncover their underlying behaviours
• Utilise the ‘5 Why’s’ technique to dive deeper into the users behaviours, painpoints and motives

I conducted my user interview and noted down critical insights on post-it notes. I considered these in an affinity map and brainstormed with my partner possible themes and trends, applying “I” statements to groupings to link the insights back to the user, until I had a map that felt ‘gut-checkable’.

Affinity Map 1 — Week One

It is worth noting that having 1 person as my user who was also my partner for brainstorming made it challenging to identify certain themes without allowing any ‘solution’ ideas or biases to creep in.

I completed a Persona for my user, focusing on identifying what the problem looks like for them and creating a story to help contextualise this.

User Persona

Next: Problem Statement

I found drafting my first problem statement surprisingly challenging. From my previous job experiences where the focus was trying to ‘solve as many problems at once’, I had to shift my mindset and focus on 1 need and 1 insight only. (Lets just say I think this approach worked a lot more effectively!)

The result: Chris needs to search for recipes with specific ingredients because he and his partner have different dietary requirements.

I completed How Might We Statements [HMWs] and Crazy-8s, to begin the ideation process, however was dissatisfied with my results. I felt I was unable to generate ‘unique’ statements that answered a significant need.

Week Two: Revision and Reflection

Key areas for revision:

• Problem statement — flesh out the insight, what is the users unmet need?
• Insights in affinity map — dive deeper, what are the underlying behaviours?

Working backwards I could see the connection between not having deep enough insights through to struggling with ideation:

My brain calculation: If insights are not properly captured in the Affinity Map, this has a flow on effect throughout the process

I felt good being able to connect the feedback from week one with my own reflections and see why I was experiencing this.

So, with no time to spare, I revisited my affinity map.

Diving Deeper into the Affinity Map

I identified the following gaps:

• Some insights were not addressing the underlying behaviour
• I revisited my user interview notes and pulled out critical insights that were missing
• In the existing insights, I noted a trend related to time

Affinity Map from Week One — Initial Review

I revised the groupings and identified new trends in the data, using “I” statements to frame insights.

Affinity Map — Second Review

The key theme shining through for my users food matter was concerned with time. To fully understand the underlying behaviours I did a dive deeper into the insights and considered this in a flow.

Breaking down the key theme from the Affinity Map

Based on the number of insights relating to ‘finding recipes’ and looking at the findings from my user research, this behaviour presents the biggest unmet need due to different dietary requirements.

New Problem Statement

I reviewed this with Chris’s persona, and came up with a new problem statement:

• Chris needs to find diet-appropriate recipes so that he can plan he and his partners meals for the week.

Key Learnings:

• Diving deeper into the insights and understanding the underlying behaviours of the user made identifying the insight for the problem statement simpler and the process felt more organic
• Next time I will put more focus on capturing the insights from the user research

I began ideating using HMWs, and found I was able to think up more creative and relevant statements to the problem. I selected the 3 statements I found most inspiring and practiced Crazy-8 sketches on them.

From here I sketched out an initial ‘ideas’ diagram, capturing the ideas and features I thought would be best for the users need, and asking myself “What is the problem we are trying to solve for the user”.

It’s not pretty — but it shows the ideas I prioritised to solve the problem and take to the next step

I considered what format this digital solution could be, and determined a phone app would provide the most convenient opportunity for Chris. Then I drew up some sketch solutions in this format.

One of the Sketch Solutions

Next: User Flows

I began with looking at the core task flow: How to add a recipe to the weekly meal plan.

Task Flow: How to add a recipe to the weekly meal plan

This task flow is very basic and linear, but is designed to be simple with minimal steps required, in the hope that this process is quick and time effective for Chris (linking goal and user need).

My process for establishing the user flow was to break down each step in the task flow and add in decision points.

User Flow: Creating a weekly meal plan

• ‘Happy path’ is straight-forward, minimal steps
• ‘Unhappy path’ I realised I had made some assumptions and identified some potential problems

I ideated on these problems and assumptions and concluded that I would need to include features that supported or solved these elements otherwise it could have a critical impact on the user in the app. Therefore, I considered these for my MVP. I would however, like to test these assumptions and problems during usability testing.
Note: Due project time constraints, I did not have time to add these into the user flow.

Key Learnings:

• Analysing steps in the user flow revealed my design assumptions and potential problems the user would encounter in the app
• Analysing the assumptions and problems allowed me to make an initial assessment to the critical features for the MVP

MVP

To determine the MVP I reviewed the user flow, problems and assumptions, and considered what the minimum required screens and components would be for the app, weighing up what would provide the highest impact for the least effort to solve my users need. Note: this is my assumption, and IRL I would consider completing something like an impact-effort matrix with the broader team.

To hit the sweet spot (highest impact — low effort) I created a rationale for each item:

• Linking back to the goal and the users need
• Hypothesising the impact on the users behaviour

Next: Wireframes

I started by researching industry practices using websites mobbin and uigarage and searching app stores for similar apps on the market. I noted key trends such as:

• White space, balanced symmetrical design with basic elements
• Hierarchy of elements, picture > text
• Emphasis on the picture
• Maximum 2 x 3 recipes per screen

I felt the emphasis on the picture and the layout design provided the user with the most information they need to achieve their goal (i.e. select a recipe) without being overwhelmed — which could adversely impact their behaviour. This is my assumption and something I would like to assess in usability testing.

I did some initial sketching based on the information I had gathered to this point. Then came to my wireframe solution:

Wireframes — do you like the play on words for the suggested app name?

Key Takeaways:

• Always ask ‘why’ when choosing your design — how will this meet the users need?
• Record assumptions to include in user testing

Due to project time constraints, this is where I completed my project.

Next Steps: Prototyping and Usability Testing

• Create Wireflows
• Create Prototype
• Usability Testing
• Iterate based on findings!

Reflection:

What went well

• Forming a robust discussion guide to gain critical insights into the users behaviours
• Focusing on a user-centred approach through each stage of the process
• Relying on data from user research to support each decision
• Identifying assumptions throughout the process to test in usability testing

What can be improved

• Capturing critical insights upfront for affinity mapping
• Analysing data from insights with the persona to create a significant problem statement for the users need

Learnings for the next project

• It is critical to identify underlying behaviours in user research as this drives the user-centred approach throughout each stage of the design process
• Reflect on design decisions and ask how you got there — have you made assumptions? Is it linked to the users need?
• Test assumptions in user testing
• Prepare to iterate following feedback from user testing

Additional comments

What I am looking forward to in future projects:

• Applying this process where there is more than 1 user involved!
• Collaborating in a team and allowing the process to evolve with multiple perspectives and insights
• Learning to collaborate with a range of stakeholders and how to interact with them at different stages of the process
• Learning how to apply market and competitive analysis techniques, and a range of other UX tools to complete the process