My Process

My Design Thinking Process is one that follows the same general lines that other designers follow, what makes me different is my skill to understand that different contexts require different approaches.

My design thinking is unique as it’s not problem-focused but solution-focused. If you are building a project from the ground up, the design thinking process you need to follow is going to look a lot different then if you are looking to update a few features on a long standing product.

In order to solve a problem, you need to understand a problem. This first stage in the Design Thinking Process is all about taking the initial steps towards understanding the problem at hand. Often that means starting with creating problem statements, researching the market, creating business requirement documents, and performing competitor analyses.

Observation is all about the user. This is the time I perform as much user research as possible in order to observe the potential user and determine their needs and goals. User surveys and interviews often happen at this stage, and is very closely tied to the understand phase.

My goal in the POV stage is to step into the shows of the users and “see” the product from their point of view. After the observe phase there is usually room to see a greater users and get closer to them which is why I usually take this time to create user personas. The closer I am able to get to the users, the greater the chance of fulfilling their needs efficiently.

With my gathered insights into the users, their problems, and their goals, the next step is to create ideas. I use this time to explore a wide variety and large quantity (as much as a project allows) of diverse possible solutions. My purpose is to move beyond the obvious in order to explore a full range of ideas. Here is often the point I create user flows and journeys and perform card sorting or other explorations that will help me better create solutions.

Once I have ideas, flows, journeys, and more clarity, I am able to move onto the experimental stage of the process. By transforming my ideas into physical formats, they can be experienced and interacted with by others. This usually looks like many many wireframes – receiving feedback – and then turning them into prototypes. It is often here that I am able to gain additional insights and empathy as the users interactions start to come to life.

Testing my prototypes with real users, collecting feedback, then improving and iterating on my designs again and again is a vital step my design process. Validating designs in the early stages is a also a great way to make sure that I have problems solves before they reach the development team, which often makes clients more comfortable.

Justifying design solutions to stakeholders is often a step that happens frequently throughout the design process. This is where I explain and defend my design decisions – always keeping the user and the business in the forefront. This step is also where I remain the most open to critique and feedback.

Finally, after all of my research, design solutions, and prototypes are done and I am confident in the designs, it needs to be passed off to developers. Here I communication what developers should code based on my design blueprints.