This outlines the critical stages observed as part of John’s end-to-end design and development support process. These stages are iterative, rarely occur linearly, and some are often concurrently happening.
Potential opportunities and problems are brought to light through various inputs such as proactive discovery, research, collected data, customer feedback, and competitive research.
This first stage is spent gathering information to understand the problem space more deeply and derive how addressing this issue will benefit the user and the business. This is conducted in concert with stakeholders and the core product team. The group also begins to log known risks and dependencies and define what success might look like.
Time is spent further consuming all of the gathered information. Lists are made: among them: “This is what is understood to be true,” “these are the questions that need to be answered,” “these are the blind spots and gaps in thinking,” and “here are the implications to the existing product, user flows, processes, etc.” Once this stage is completed, this is reviewed and discussed with the project team.
Additional data gathering will happen at this stage. Depending on the questions and blind spots that have been identified, any necessary next steps will be queued up. This might consist of user research, connecting with internal folks that might possess useful knowledge, or uncovering internal data and research that might have been forgotten or misplaced.
Time is spent reviewing all that has been learned to ensure a shared understanding and alignment on the project’s goals, objectives, outcomes, and success metrics. Discussions around scope are continued and will be had throughout the subsequent stages.
Nothing is off-limits here. There’s always sketching. There may be design workshops, and inspiration is sought in all the places. Creating an inclusive and participatory process is incredibly important. All of the tools in the toolkit are in play.
This happens early and often; before sharing with all stakeholders and the broader design team, John collaborates with his Engineering partners to share early ideas and ensure feasibility. Reviews occur with the PM partner to confirm all business objectives are met. Content designers are engaged in refining vocabulary and conceptual models.
There are numerous approaches to validating designs. Conceptual testing is useful when aligning with the users’ mental models. In the spirit of lean UX, smaller releases are preferred to validate hypotheses through experimentation incrementally. User research by way of moderated or unmoderated user testing is also employed.
This is where the magic happens. Developing a product or feature is a constant learning journey, and rigid thinking has no place in the process. Success comes from understanding and adapting to new information and constraints.
A waterfall delivery approach is outdated. John’s participation does not end with the final designs and he actively participates in sprint planning to ensure design readiness.
He works closely with his engineering partners to understand what design deliverables and ongoing support would be most valuable. John is especially eager to pair with engineers during this stage as new constraints arise and design modifications are needed
A product or feature should be ever-evolving. A plan to measure, learn, and iterate is mandatory and should be prioritized.