Designing for complex domains
Starting a new design project is exciting!
It also can be overwhelming, hectic, and scary, especially if it is a complex technical domain and you don’t know anything about it. You will need to figure out lots of things and do lots of learning, most of the time with a tight deadline.
Here are some steps that can help you along the way.
1. Show initiative and value your partner’s time
Before meeting with stakeholders and starting to ask questions, invest time doing some research & discovery about the product. Do a Google search. The chances of a competitor having the same or similar product or process are high. After reading and learning about it, create a list of questions to start asking the stakeholders.
If other designers or researcher are involved in the project, ask them if they already have the answers to those questions. Those answers probably will create more questions and help you to structure the conversations.
2. Use the product as if you are the user
Navigate the flow where the new designs will be implemented and learn everything about it. Before starting to navigate and learning about that flow, you will need to complete the following steps:
- Create a test account
- Reach out to your development team to request access to the test environment account they use when implementing and testing a new flow.
- Ask the development team if you need to be allow-listed or have permissions to navigate that flow.
After completing the steps above, you are ready to start learning!
How does it work?
If you have no idea where to start, documentation is a place to start when trying to figure out how something works. If something isn’t clear in the documents or becomes too hard to follow, mark that down as a pain point.
Who are the personas, and what are their jobs-to-be-done?
Learning about the personas and their jobs-to-be-done will help you to understand how the product works and allow you to focus on outcomes rather than features. You don’t need to understand all aspects of the technology at once. Give yourself time and be patient.
After learning about personas and jobs-to-be-done, it will be easier to break down the tasks the user needs to complete. From there, map the flow of their tasks and how those tasks align with the user’s journey.
Are the new designs impacting other existing task flows?
When designing something new, it is important to identify all parts connected with it and determine the impact of the new designs on those areas. What flows do we have that are connected to this one? Are there any areas where these flows intersect or overlap? How will the new design affect these flows?
3. Ask for examples to keep it simple
If the domain gets too complex, ask someone if they can use a metaphor or a simple example to explain it or even draw a picture. These options are a quicker route for a non-expert to understand a complex domain.
For example:
IBM Cloud catalog settings — “A user wants to make products available only to some users by turning off the visibility of the IBM Cloud catalog and adding specific products to a private catalog.”
Metaphor — “Suppose you have a Netflix account and you are the account’s subscriber. You may want to restrict your kids from having access to some shows, so you create a new profile for your kids and add only the appropriate content.”
Most of the time, if you can break it down and simplify it, you will discover this is no more difficult than designing any other digital experiences, such as marketing pages or eCommerce sites.
4. Visualize the end-to-end flow
Create an As-is flow using screenshots of the end-to-end flow. This step helps you to quickly visualize the entire flow and spot problems in the process. Here is also the moment to reflect on what you learned, filter out what you don’t need, and start creating a story.
It is just an initial pass at understanding, and it is helpful to stakeholders because they can call out things you may have missed or that need to be considered moving forward.
Before meeting with stakeholders, add questions or comments you and the team have about the flow to ask them. Visualizing the entire flow makes it easier to guide the conversation between designers and other teams.
5. Start creating visuals to make progress
Start creating visuals even if you are not 100% sure of what you are making. Make whatever makes sense to you with the least time investment to have an artifact that will anchor the conversation between you and stakeholders.
Visual explorations are non-precious. At this point, visuals are just a strategy for you to move forward with the work. Don’t feel tempted to try to make it perfect. Share it in the context of a story and account for all the personas involved in the flow.
Creating diagram flows or low-fis is one way to reflect on your understanding of what you have learned and identify gaps. It allows for faster completion of the design cycle by getting valuable insights early while keeping everybody engaged through interactive sessions.
6. Keep iterating
A good design process is always an iterative one. Feedback always provides us with new opportunities to make it better. Starting with low-fis allow you to change it as much as you need and quickly redo part of the design in just a few minutes.
Your designs will have multiple revisions, endless feedback, or may be completely redone. However your designs are right, wrong, or somewhere in-between, it is what will help you breakthrough on the project. Keep sharing and iterating together with your team. Eventually you will solve the problem.
7. Engage with stakeholders
It is common for designers to create designs for a project but never get approval from key stakeholders to implement them. This problem can happen when designers go solo and build the project alone without knowing if they are solving the right problem, if there are constraints, and feasibility.
Stakeholders are experts, and their input can improve design quality, reduce rework and enhance business success.
A way to avoid this issue is to involve stakeholders in the design process and make them your allies. Bringing stakeholders to early design stages and working collaboratively with them will help you to learn more about the domain and build trust.
Create work sessions with stakeholders and communicate your process, present User Research results and make them understand the reasons behind your design decisions. Talk about competitors and share design best practices.
UX is a team activity. It is important to involve diverse teams, with varied skill sets and perspectives, who are invested in the project. By doing this, you can ensure that you are creating a design that is effective and meets the needs of all stakeholders.
Conclusion
Having a design process is an important part of any successful project. It helps designers to think through their ideas, develop concepts, and create effective solutions. By following a structured design process, designers can ensure that their design solutions meet the needs of their users and stakeholders.
Izabella Timmons is a Designer at IBM based in Austin, TX.
The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.
