Since I've been working in corporate world, I can see that web redesign projects always lack on planning and methodology, resulting in solutions that does not solve any problem and that took a lot of time and effort to build.
Working in a team can be a bit messy, and we might lose sight of the bigger picture, so this article has the purpose to give concrete plan of delivery for a meaningfull solution that's ready for development, starting from a user experience problema.
Each phase can also be understood as semi-diamonds. Empathise is a time to diverge, define is a time to converge, ideate is a time to diverge, and so on.
IDEO, Divergent and Convergent Thinking
1. 💗 Empathise
This is the time to do interviews of actual users. Every use has to be considered, this work really needs to be exhaustive as we're in a "diverge" phase. You can look for templates to build a few really different personas based on those interviews.
Even if you don't see now how it will benefit your project, even if it might feel like a waste of time, trust the process and do your best working on your personas or you'll regret this later, asking yourself why didn't your project reached expectations.
Mindset : craving for accuracy. Don't judge, don't project your own needs, don't sort information you get.
Delievery : minimum 4 different personas, interviews of users filled with questions about their expectations.
2. ✍️ Define
Now it's time to take a paper and a pen, and to try to formulate the problems that emerged from phase 1 in the most precise way possible. It's good to start by "How to ..", "How could we ..." to produce a convenient output in next phase. But for now, only focus on formulating this question really well, an don't try to awnser it yet. You should really take the time that's needed for you to be perfectly happy with your problema.
Mindset : synthesizing everything discovered through phase 1, trying to both encompass and be precise.
Delievery : A problem statement sentence, but a really thoughtful one.
3. 💡 Ideate
Let's gather all your collaborators and do a brainstorming. Guided by the problem statement elaborated in phase 2, you would produce very different propositions or ideas. In order for those ideas to not be all similar, and get the most of this exercise, you should work on preparing an environment that's not judgmental. There's no bad ideas, and one "out-of-the-box" approach consists in playing a game of The Worst Possible Idea to generate new ones.
Mindset : not judgmental, focused on producing a lot of very different output, as you're in a "diverge" phase.
Delievery : Photos of the brainstorming whiteboard with sticky notes all-over. Drawings / writings that has been made by the team. Keep everything.
3. 🛠️ Prototype
We're not done yet, so this is not about the final prototype that you do on Figma. You rather do paper prototypes that doesn't take a lot of effort to make. Card Sorting can be a way to prioritize and gather information regarding sections of a website, and Crazy Eights can help you find the most appropriate layout for your web interfaces.
Mindset : keep in mind it's for testing and it's not the final output. Find a great balance between rapidity of execution and realism/ projection.
Delievery : Low-fidelity prototypes.
5. ✔️ Test
Here, a designer's ego might be threatened. Try to make the users you've identified during phase 1 to interact very purely with you prototypes. The difficulty here is to not try to guide their usage, but you rather observe what comes from the interaction between your user and your prototype. Tell yourself that every problem you might discover is an opportunity to improve.
Mindset : Observe, analyse, don't guide the user even if it feels awkward.
Delievery : Notes, or maybe videos of the user/prototype interaction.
To conclude, polyvalence is needed for an UX designer to be great, because each phase is very different in it's mindset. Also, for most of us, it costs effort to erease our pre-convieved ideas in order to only rely on proofs that users gives us.
Sources: Interaction Design Foundation, IDEO
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