My Ideal Design Process
As a designer, I have experimented with many tools and methods to find the one that fits well with my approach of designing. With my experience from working at a design company for three and a half years, and working on multiple UX projects in the first semester, I have discovered a perfect workflow of design for myself.
The design flow that worked best for me has five main steps:
Discover, Define, Ideation, Prototyping, and Testing
None of these steps are completed without the involvement of the UX team and the client.
The link to high-resolution diagram is here: My Ideal Design Process
🔍 Discover
First step, Discover, includes identifying problems from two primary groups of people: Target Users and Stakeholders. Observing and talking to the target audience provides me with detailed insights about the problems (what, why, how, where) they are facing, along with their needs and expectations. As a professional, I need to understand client requirements and goals equally. I require a “YES” as an answer to:
“Have I gathered enough data to define my problem?”
✏️ Define
The second step is where I synthesize my findings and short-list them based on the similarities. This helps to identify key pain points and target user expectations. My choice of UX method (e.g., Affinity Diagram, Thematic Network) varies from project-to-project. Further, I research about the existing solutions and their drawbacks. Finally, I verify my findings with the client.
💁 Ideate
Ideation is my favorite step of designing. In this step, I brainstorm multiple ideas and find connections between them to identify a dominant idea. I refine my ideas until I come up with a solution that is realistic and technically feasible. To communicate a message through my solution, I prefer creating scenarios/storyboards and paper prototypes to present them to the client and the team.
🖋 Prototype & Test
I believe that the knowledge of user interface guidelines, principles, and tools is equally important to a designer. The best way to attract target users is through a polished product. However, before creating a high-fidelity design, I always research about trending styles and create inspiration mood boards. Among various designing tools, I prefer to use Sketch and InVision.
Through my final design, I aim to address four crucial questions:
“Does my design conform to UX principles and Heuristics?”
“Does my design communicate the right message?”
“Does my design meets the client’s needs?”
“Does my design solve the problem?”
Through my experience, I have learned to remain open to feedback and critiques. This session, commonly known as Evaluating & Testing, helps me identify usability issues. In my experience, this step requires multiple iterations.
I prefer to test my product with three groups of people to identify confusion they face: a group of target audience to conduct the think-aloud session and two groups of UX experts to perform Cognitive Walkthrough and Heuristic Evaluation.
From the results of the evaluation, I would refine my product to improve the overall experience. Post delivering the product, I generally communicate with the client to measure the impact of the solution for improvements in the next version.
Want to learn more?
If you’d like to become an expert in UX Design, Design Thinking, UI Design, or another related design topic, then consider to take an online UX course from the Interaction Design Foundation. For example, Design Thinking, Become a UX Designer from Scratch, Conducting Usability Testing or User Research — Methods and Best Practices. Good luck on your learning journey!
