My User Centred Design Process
Guy Carberry, 23 November 2021
Every user centred design professional has a goto set of tools and methods for getting the most from the tasks they have been set. This article provides a little insight into mine.
It's always an interesting challenge to attempt to illustrate a non-linear process without the use of a diagram but I thought I'd give it a go:
- Identify and understand the problem
- Test with users
- Design possible solutions
- Test with users
- Develop the solution
- Test with users
- Refine the solution
- Launch the solution
- Test with users
- Improve the solution
Accepting that testing with users is a fundamental part of every stage, we can refine the list into five stage gates:
- Understand the problem
- Design possible solutions
- Develop the solution
- Launch the solution
- Improve the solution
Or, Understand > Design > Develop > Launch > Improve.
Let's look at each of the stages in detail.
Understand the problem
In this first stage we want to know
- Is there a clear articulation of the problem we need to solve?
- Who will benefit from the solution? Why?
- Who are the users?
- What do we know about the users? What are their needs and expectations?
- How have other organisations tackled the same or similar problems?
- Is this something the team should be taking further?
Techniques employed at this stage include
- Competitor / comparative analysis
- Empathy mapping workshops
- User needs and expectations audit and analysis
- Search log analysis
- Sentiment mining from CRM, feedback, forums and social media
- Stakeholder interviews
- User interviews
- Surveys
- Desk research
- Customer journey mapping (the 'as is')
- User profiles or persona creation
- Benchmarking existing solutions
Design possible solutions
In the design stage we take all of the outputs from the previous stage and think about all the ways we can solve the problem. Often we won't get to this stage at all if the problem has not been clearly identified.
Here we may use any of the following techniques:
- Group design sessions with a number of designers, including key stakeholders and end users.
- Divergent and convergent design activities.
- Customer journey mapping (the 'to be')
- Low-fidelity wireframing
- Prototyping e.g. in Sketch/Invision, Figma or HTML protosites
- Card sorting / tree testing activities
- Emotional response testing
- Usability testing
- Flash testing
- Stakeholder / user review and critique workshops
Develop the solution
At this stage we are ready to commit to technical development. This is where costs can escalate so we ensure that there are clear measures of success and a reliable agile development methodology in place. We want to deliver regular, incremental potentially deployable increments of value. That is, functionality that we can make live and once again test with users.
The most active user research technique employed at this stage is face to face or remote usability and accessibility testing. This helps us identify unforeseen issues that only present themselves once a more fully formed service or product starts to emerge.
This stage is iterative with each UX test session further informing changes to the product backlog.
Launch the solution
We need to ensure that sufficient mechanisms for capturing and evaluating user behaviour and sentiment are in place at the moment of launch. This includes:
- Google (or equiv.) analytics
- Feedback / sentiment capture mechanisms
- A/B or multivariate software
- Automated UX tools such as User Zoom
We also need to be clear on how we will be alerted to UX issues and how we will go about prioritising and fixing them.
Improve the solution
Committing to continuous improvement will ensure that your product or service is able to evolve to better meet user needs and expectations as time progresses. Often user needs remain fairly constant. Their expectations about how those needs should be met changes over time. We need to keep checking in with users as well as keeping an eye on the competition. As long as there is commitment to continuous improvement it should also be possible to continue to innovate and bring value to both users and the business alike.
At this stage it is possible to revisit the techniques used at all of the previous stages and make the case for improvement.