UX Designer’s Lifecycle
How the UX Designer role aligns with the software delivery process.
The design process has been described myriads of times… but since it is the bread and butter of a designer, it’s worth, just for exercise, to describe it once again, in basic terms. A firm founding stone is a base for any improvements. The purpose is to emphasize basics, whatever fancy name they give it in your company. The lecture will stress a clear division between two stages, Design and Develop, in which UX Designer’s work bases on the same principles and fits into the same framework…
I encourage UX Designers — being one and knowing that the seed of misunderstanding is poor communication — to explain your team your role, actions that you undertake and its outcomes (during delivery process) in simple yet clear way. I do encourage UX Designers to dully consider themselves as developers and be accountable for their work within scrum framework.
A designer is someone responsible for finding solutions. In a team, it may be the only person (by position name) with such obligation. It makes UX Designers even ambassadors of design process — the one and basic — toolbox for finding right solutions.
Designing digital products is not much very different from designing physical objects, the same process applies. The key difference is that others in your team aren’t particularly designers, so what is obvious to you (UX Designer), is not always obvious to them, but you work together for the same, mutual goal. A product.
Content
- What is Design Process and how it affects your team
- How Design Thinking came to life
- Design Thinking in details — Design Stage
- Design Thinking — Develop Stage
- Sum-up
1. What is Design Process and how it affects your team
Whenever you start any initiative, you have to identify why you are doing it. You have to find objectives. This answer will provide you with the rationale behind the project and suggest you perfect metrics. It will also highlight pain-points that users encounter.
Of course, one user with a single goal is never real. A typical software has to deal with multiple goals for various users.
Not only your users have different goals and of different priority, but also each stakeholder has its own. It is not about delivering the overlapping areas of interests, but to collaboratively find the best possible way in which everyone’s voice is audible during a product delivery.
One may define Design Thinking as the process of delivering User-centred solutions to problems. But it is really not about artefacts. Design thinking is a way to get the team to think creatively about your products and services from your clients’ perspective.
The rationale behind Design Thinking is to get stakeholder’s buy-in, arouse empathy for your users and ignite creativity among your team.
More about Design Thinking: Cohen, Reuven. “Design Thinking: A Unified Framework For Innovation.” Forbes. March 14, 2014.
2. How Design Thinking came to life
A designer work bases on empirics, causality, hypothesis stating, refuting them or validating.
At the beginning, product delivery was managed according to waterfall flow, borrowed from big construction sites. It proved insufficiently adapted for ever-changing digital environment and scored poorly in risk management. The approach required big and completed activities up-front, e.g. Analysis had to be completed, approved, signed-off before triggering of a consecutive phase. Although linear, each phase had its proceeding, like design that is always iterative.
It soon proved that iterative approach is the way of delivering digital products, managing the risk, and commercializing concepts. Lean approach from business domain, agile from software development and double-diamond from design merged into one collaborative process.
Thus emerge core Design Thinking principles:
- Predictability (everyone knows what to do next and what phase are we in);
- Empirics (all hypotheses are tested and conclusion drove from evidence);
- Iterative cycles (consecutive steps are derived comes logically from previous ones, and none can be executed separately);
- Partition into small, deliverable chunks (delegating work to others and fast demonstrability);
- Inclusivity (all team members take part in designing the solution);
- Transparency (instant inspection of results);
- Reversibility (no sunken-cost -fallacy, the design process can be modified in no-time).
3. Design Thinking in details — Design Stage
Little matters what you name phases and how the diagram looks like. There are core activities done by UX Designer all along the process. In some activities, like research or plan, designer may encroach on Business Analysis or Solution Architecture territory, but only in a superficial manner, not taking other’s people hats but simply supporting and triggering creativity and teamwork. Remember, Design Thinking is collaborative.
I. Research:
- Ethnographical observation (Contextual inquiry);
- User interviews;
- Usability audit;
- Market research;
- Competition research;
- Strategy research.
Research should lead to:
- Get to know the motivations and goals of users;
- Understand pain-points they have and its root-causes;
- Define basic metrics [Efficiency (time), Effectiveness (errors) Satisfaction (emotion)]
- Get to know their emotions, tools, environment, behaviour, and ways of coping with difficulties (workarounds);
- Get to know the competition and the state of their market;
- Understand the flow of money;
- Get to know decision makers, strategy roadmap and time frames.
II. Mapping
Mapping starts by presenting research results. These are multidisciplinary workshops with PO, SA, SMEs and Stakeholders.
- Personas mapping;
- Ecosystem maps (also stakeholders’ map);
- Chronological maps (Experience maps, Service blueprints, User-journey maps);
- Process maps.
Mapping should result in:
- Building the type (profile) of users you are building for (archetypal user);
- Mapping the process, users and external systems;
- Finding room for improvement (areas for improvement).
III. Solution
- Rephrasing of POV (Point of View) into concepts;
- Generation of multiple possible solutions. Everyone develops their idea individually at first (Design Charette, Crazy 8s);
- Storyboarding (Interaction Scenario, User Story).
Solution should result in:
- Turning pain-points into opportunities;
- Avoiding domination of the workshops by a dominant individual (HiPPO or α-male);
- Telling in a new way how the user shall meet her goals.
IV. Scenario
- User flow — user interaction with a solution while executing their goals;
- Turning descriptions into sketches;
Scenario should result in:
- Telling your ideal scenario by visual means.
V. Prototype
- Sketchy form, easy to modify (sketching encourages discussion, stimulates the imagination, anyone can become a designer);
- Checking the result by revising the interaction, taking the user role.
VI. Test
- Find 5 users based on your Personas;
- User journey (or its fragment — User flow) is a test scenario;
- Take note of comments, update the solution. Refute or validate your's solution (Don’t tell stories, let the respondents guess — these are valuable tips!).
VII. Plan
- We have defined requirements;
- Remember that key developers are involved in Design Thinking activities from the beginning;
- Think about the order in which to start building features, what they imply;
- Storymapping with PO, SA;
- Roadmap
Design Thinking chart
These all activities map into phases of Design Thinking, the last one phase is planning for development. These 6 phases are called Design Stage. It is sometimes called Sprint 0 or Design Sprint, and itss aim to prepare work for developers that join in Develop Stage.
4. Design Thinking — Develop Stage
In Develop Stage, there are different UX Designer’s activities, like preparing additional level of details to prototype (lo-fi, hi-fi wireframes, sometimes preparing UIs), explanatory research if there are still unknowns or any wicked problem, handing design over to development, guiding on implementation and testing with users. All these activities shall be done according to principles of Design Thinking; thus ensuring the outcome will be user-centered, collaborative and owned by the team. That means all the activities performed in Develop Stage, shall be iterative. One cannot jump to the solution without proper understanding and analysing the cause. These phases don’t have to be of the same time length but have to fit into timeframes of delivery process that your team follows (most frequently sprints). UX Designers, are also scrum team developers (according to 2020 Scrum Guide). Their work have to be divided into smaller chunks (user stories, tasks), evidenced, estimated, accomplishable and shared, but also have to follow Design Thinking.
The biggest challenge here, for a UX Designer is to stay within scrum frames and timetable.
5. Summary
Being a seasoned UX Designer, I have experienced issues with understanding my role and rationale behind my actions, and overall my activities from the team. It is normal they (the team) know Design Thinking only from fancy pitches of C-level managers and colourful charts. So — as a UX Designer — take time to explain it to them. Draw your own diagram with felt-tip pens. Applying Design Thinking assures that:
- Key people are involved in the correct time;
- The team have a Big Picture view on what is being built;
- Estimations are fair and no creeping backlog occurs.
The Design Stage is to set up creative environment, buy stakeholders in, demonstrate designing process, find the best solutions and plan them. It is preparatory work before the development starts.
When it comes to Develop Stage, the issue is the same, the team doesn’t really know what the UX Designer is there for. Make sure to follow the same process of Design Thinking but in a microscale, that means covering domain, portion of process, specific user flow, wicked problems or unknowns. The tricky part is to align you work with sprints, estimate your tasks, share outcomes, include your work in backlog. During the sprint, it can be one phase, like ideation e.g. for importing pay-roll or full Design Thinking cycle for accountancy flow.
Takeaways
UX Designers shall share their progress, be transparent, call out frequent demos or display the progress in a designated project room. It’s the way of displaying causality and complexity of designer work. Showing stages — not outcomes — opens for discussion and serendipitous discoveries. Executives are well aware of progress and the team understands the workflow. It is also a way of gratifying contributors and an invitation for help as well as course corrections.
Even if your organization is permeable to Design Thinking, you can always hope for a ripple effect. Small changes will facilitate bigger, later on.
Hope you like the piece; feel free to clap your hands and share your thoughts!
For more on Design Thinking, check InVision source:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/designco-web-assets/uploads/2019/05/InVision_DesignThinkingHandbook.pdf
