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Methodology

for
Digital Product Design

This tried and true collaborative method inspires teams and produces practical results. Use it for improving digital experiences as well as creating new innovative products and services intended to be delivered through one or multiple channels. Steeped in Design Thinking, this process works for sprint teams and agile delivery. It is flexible in that each phase can be as short or long as needed to accommodate project scope and complexity. 

 

Users are at the center of the User Experience discipline. Make sure to include real users of your product or service in activities you perform throughout the process. This will ensure a high probability that your solutions will be successful. Read on to explore each phase in detail.

A model for UX strategy and agile UX design
Creating a UX Strategy

A strategy is created during the time of discovery and definition. It is a strategy unique to the project or problem set at hand. You will find that the strategy is integral to establishing success as you work from left to the right in the methodology.

 

Discover

During discovery, perform research activities (data analysis, interviews, usability tests, competitive and technical assessments and so on) to gather insights that will inform and focus problem sets ( business and user problems) to solve for. From these research activities you may produce a variety of tools such as personas, journey maps and gap analyses to use as inputs into the definition phase. Don't be surprised to find yourselves delighted with newfound insights or reassured with a greater understanding of data, behaviors or business. Share and communicate findings with the entire team. Hypotheses begin to form and you will have more questions and some answers. This is a period of fuzziness and squishy boundaries. Identify next steps as a team and individuals to help you bring the strategy and design direction into focus.

 

Define

In the definition phases, specific business and user problems and innovation opportunities are becoming clearer. These may include latent and obvious user needs and goals, desires and frustrations. Additional research may need to be done in order to answer some questions. Have broad discussions on why and how the problems and opportunities may be approached with guidance from leadership, UX and technology. Business, user and technical requirements are taking shape. Create an evaluation framework for these problems to take into the next phase. You are formulating the strategy. 

 

Rapid Experimentation, Build to Learn

This phase is marked by a period of divergent and convergent thinking, building, testing and iterating. Ideate broadly and quickly for the hypotheses and requirements established during definition. Produce as many experiments (possible candidate solutions) as you can within a time constraint.

 

Evaluate each experiment with the team. Provide rationale and use your framework and design principles to determine if the experiment is strong enough to solve your problems and support your hypotheses. Some experiments fail immediately, others will need iteration. Strengths from two or more experiments might be combined. Next, evaluate strong candidate solutions with users. You will learn a lot. Your learnings may result in a decision to continue in one or two directions, or you may need to pivot direction completely.

 

Once you have a clear candidate solution, it's time to move onto the next phase in which essential details for the project are now identified, agreed to and can be accurately estimated to be built and launched on a timeline established for working with a sprint development team. If project work is to be reassigned to another UX Designer, this is the time to do it. Ensure you share all your key finding and deliverables from the strategy phase with the team who will take the project forward.

 

Build

Working with the project candidate solution determined during the strategy phase together with your UX know-how, produce detailed design specifications to suit the level of communication needed to convey design intent in regular sprints for hand-off to the development team. When the solution has a GUI, this typically includes annotated high fidelity wireframes of primary and secondary use cases, visual styling specifications, gesture or voice specifications, creative assets and supporting documentation such as error messages or examples of dynamic content displays. It could include a working prototype and code. 

Success metrics and launch plans are finalized. Sometimes further usability studies are needed at this stage.

 

Monitor progress of the development team as they work with your designs. Prior to launch ensure you have an opportunity to review the solution the development team has produced. Record and communicate any defects that need to be corrected. This is called UX QA (quality assurance) and is super important to ensuring project success metrics of usability, usage and adoption. As the UX practitioner on the team, you will need to advocate that any defects are corrected. This takes leadership and perseverance. Don't give in to pressure to release a solution with design defects.

Launch and Measure

Once the solution is launched, make sure it is working as designed. Begin to gather evidence of success by monitoring KPIs (key performance indicators) established for your project. Share the results with all team members and stakeholders.

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