Working notes · Process

User experience design process.

Nine questions a team has to be able to answer, and the operating model that keeps design ahead of the development sprint.

The model

Three phases · nine questions

Discover

01
  • Who are our users?
  • What do they need?
  • What do we build?

Optimize

02
  • How do we design it?
  • Will they use it?
  • How do we improve it?

Validate

03
  • Are there showstoppers?
  • Did we have impact?
  • What do we do next?

My operational model

How the phases become a week

Five steps

  1. 01 Understand the requirements and target audience
  2. 02 Create concepts to validate flows, designs and content
  3. 03 User testing
  4. 04 Refine based on findings
  5. 05 Deliver to engineering and iterate as needed
The operating model drawn as a swimlane board: a backlog of stories feeding scoping and prioritization, then a design sprint of concepting, usability testing and refinement running one sprint ahead of the engineering lane it hands off to.
The whole operating model on one board. Design runs a sprint ahead of engineering, so what arrives in the development sprint has already been tested. Scroll horizontally to read the full board

Annotations on the model

  • I create the stories describing what is needed from my team. Sequence following the business priority.
  • Scoping the work with the team and making sure the understanding is aligned.
  • Prioritization based on business and respecting the team’s capacity/velocity.
  • Depending on the type of request, it would be a usability testing story or defining how the experience should be.

Keep reading

7 Design Principles

The principles the work is measured against.

Path to Success

What my team keeps in mind while working on a problem.

Selected work

Five case studies where this process produced the evidence.