UX & Product Design
Notes on tools and process.
Design Philosophy
UX & Product Design is simply about best serving the needs of current users, building the needs of future users, predicting trends and avoiding churn. There are a lot of ways to set up design teams to achieve this.
Product design is a discipline with key markers and outcomes. As a product designer I expect myself and others to discover and address problems and then exit leaving behind change.
Research & Discovery
If you do not know what and who you are building for, the leanest scrum or the most agile project will not help you. I like to test to the point of routine.
I prefer to record interviews and use Dovetail to analyze sentiment afterwards. This keeps me in the moment during the interview instead of taking notes.
Insights and stories can be produced from this so there can be no debate as to what was discussed. I am not interested in a battle of opinions about what was implied.
Testing, Testing & Testing
I also like to validate to the point of routine. I feel that the work UX teams can do in advance, makes dev sprint cycles easier and eventually reduces pressure on support teams.
Team Design
I have found that team structure makes a dramatic difference to whatever process is in place. Designers, ideally with QA and product, at the root of teams makes it a smoother cycle.
Design Thinking and Business Impact
Places like IBM and others have designers at the O level of the business. I think the trend will go that way with designers holding more influence. For me personally, I like to consider all areas of a business within my reach. I do not mean that I wish them to do what I want, though.
For example, I want to know the issues support teams are having. If 15% of their time is spent on "how do I do this", that is something a UXer can help with through research and interviews. If we can reduce this to 5% month on month then we are improving product scores as well as reducing the cost to serve the product.
More Testing
Sorry, but I cannot stress it enough. Ideally you include users in the process so the expectation is that they will test the product. This includes tools like maze which take your direct wireframes and record flows, correct and incorrect clicks, click rates, bounce rates and more. It is important to me to never feel like I know better, because I do not.
Contact
If the brief is complex, that is usually where I do my best work.
Email is the cleanest way to start. The other channels are placeholders for now, but the section is ready for them when you are.