My Design Process

My experience has taught me that good design is not created in a moment of inspiration or a bubble. It is an iterative process requiring collaboration between multi-disciplinary teams and end users. 

With a design and engineering background, I actively engage each of my intuitive, analytical, critic, and creative mindsets. It's not about right-brain versus left-brain thinking, but taking a holistic approach to the projects I work on — grounding myself in learning, understanding, gaining perspective, embracing the collaborative process, finding ways to test multiple ideas and iterating — to arrive at the most impactful and practicable solutions.

While no two projects are alike, the way I think about and approach user experience design is rather straightforward, and can be summarized below.

Research to Understand

I rely on my business and consumer marketing acumen to take in industry/market research, define business goals, and learn about the brand, the product, and the stakeholders. — Stakeholder Interviews, Data Analysis, Content Audits, Competitive Analyses, Heuristic Evaluations 

Listen to Learn

I structure observations and interviews to elicit storytelling in order to document users' thoughts, feelings and actions when conducting contextual inquiries and user testing. — Ethnographic Research, Surveys, User Interviews, Usability Evaluation 

Synthesize to Define

Pulling together what I've learned, I model representative experiences, tasks and mindsets to articulate the users' goals, and define and frame the problem. — Personas, Actor Maps, Service Blueprints and Roadmaps, Storymapping/User Needs Analysis, User Journeys

Generate Concepts

Collaboration is essential to any ideation process, whether through team brainstorming or engaging in participatory design with stakeholders and customers. — Structured Brainstorming, Ideation Workshops, Concept Organization and Prioritization, Problem Framing, Sketching, Storyboards, User Stories

Visualize the Interaction

Visualizing and diagramming the user interaction is something I do in tandem with prototype development, as it is informed by user feedback on user testing and serves to guide later iterations. — Use Cases, Wireframes, User Flow Diagrams, Site Maps

COMMUNICATE THE IDEA

I take concepts from sketches and wireframes into visual/tangible MVPs and develop low, medium and high fidelity prototypes at multiple stages to get perspective and test with users. — Paper Prototypes, Interactive Prototypes, Visual Mockups,

TEST THE PROTOTYPE

Getting timely and useful feedback on prototyped ideas in a structured or informal setting is crucial to the iterative process. — Usability Testing, Card Sorting, A/B Testing, Guerilla Testing

EVOLVE THE BRAND

Keeping brand standards in tact while finding ways to evolve the visual communication of the service or product. — Product Personas, Moodboards, Style Tiles, Visual and Motion Explorations