design process

Overview

Understanding the design processes applied by UX professionals is the rage of the day. Therefore, I thought it would be fitting to share my experience with design processes. Over the course of my career, I have had the privilege of using several design processes:

1. Waterfall
2. ADDIE
3. Agile
4. Jesse James Garrett’s 5 Planes approach
5. Double Diamond
6. Design Thinking
7. Design Sprints

General Approach

No matter the method used, I have always engaged in the following activities:

1. Seeking to identify user needs and business objectives.
2. Obtaining and confirming requirements and any known functional specifications (e.g., through interviewing stakeholders and subject matter experts or conducting design sprints).
3. Engaging in efforts to learn more about user needs, processes, and pain points through research (e.g., ethnographic studies, contextual inquiry, interviews, surveys, etc.).
4. Ideating and brainstorming about information architecture and interaction design principles.
5. Beginning implementing IA and interaction design elements through initial construction of the interface.
6. Facilitating data-driven efforts by validating designs via research.
7. Iterating based on data obtained through research.
8. Dialoguing with developers and quality assurance personnel during various stages of the design process, when possible and as applicable.

My flexibility enables me to operate via any method, focusing on achieving the goals at hand.