“It is vital to ensure users have a voice throughout the design process. This approach means designers are empathetic to their needs throughout. Enabling an authentic user's voice means the whole team can understand the true impact to users with key decisions.
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My ideal UX process is contained within the standard Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and uses the double diamond problem solving methodology, as illustrated below. The best results are achieved when the trio of UX, Product and Engineering are engaged at all stages of this process. For communication purposes the process is portrayed as a simplified ideal linear state of a UX project, however, true agile work is more cyclical then linear.
When designing for AI and automation experiences, my process incorporates additional considerations:
These considerations are integrated throughout the double diamond process, with special attention during user testing to ensure AI features enhance rather than complicate the experience.
There is usually a problem identified at the start of the discovery phase that the trio knows and are trying to solve for. In discovery we want to get a deep understanding of this problem. How does this impact customers? What do they do today to solve for this? How would they like to solve for this? Are there any key technical constraints that need to beunderstood? Are there any technical ideas that should be explored and understand more. Essentially we need to understand why there is a problem and how we could possibly solve for it.
When the trio agreed they understand the problem and start thinking about solutions there is a convergence of ideas, removing things as out of scope or just nice to haves. This allows us to get to a point in definition where we work within the trio to write down and agree on what we all believe the scope of the project is. UX designers typically will create some user journeys and sketches that illustrate this agreement.
As the trio starts to look at the sketches and ideas there might be a new divergence in thought where people use the assets created to come up with more possible solutions.
In the design phase UX designers will look at sketching out more detail of the solution where multiple options may exist and should be investigated some more. There will be technical design that is happening at this time and ideally UX and Engineering will work together to share ideas. There may be a need to do some usability testing of different ideas to ensure we design the most usable solution for customers.
Again the trio will reach a point of divergent thinking; however, it is typically less than during the discovery phase. This is because the trio has agreed on scope and when divergent ideas go beyond that we stop. Again, there is a tipping point where the trio will agree on feasible and usable ideas which is when we now converge in our ideas and ensure the entirety of the trio are aligned and agree on what we are designing.
To start the implemetation phase there must be sufficient alignment and designs agreed to take it to the wider engineering team for refinement. This refinement process will converge ideas down again to a definite tasks for engineering to build. Designers will hand over prototypes to the engineering team with annotations and be in constant communication until final design approval.
After implementation, the design team will monitor user data and analytics and evaluate against success metrics set at the beginning of the project. Then the trio can take what we learn and apply the learnings to future features or to help us continue to iterate on the work that we have already done. This may also be when a new round of discovery begins.
