Design Thinking & Lean UX

Research (If and Why)

When starting with any project, my main part is the research. Big IF’s and Why’s? My UX strategy includes getting informational elements (collecting data, competitive analysis, user interviews) and involving human factors (SME’s, stakeholders, designers, and developers) to get a desirable outcome.

The entire process includes collecting information from stakeholders (business, marketing, and development teams). Asking as many questions as possible, clearing all doubts and exercise of persona building to create an ideal user journey is a pivotal step.  The process of wireframing, prototyping, and design is critical for the success of any project.

Sketching & Wireframing

Pen and paper are some of the best tools to convey your design thoughts to your stakeholders. Once I have gathered all the information from my research, I create user flows. Create wireframes for users and stakeholders to view how their page structure would look. I will also interact with fellow designers and developers to understand if there were any system limitations and come up with creative solutions if need be.

Design (HOW)

The most interesting and fun part of any project is Design. At this stage of the process, I coordinate with the Branding and Marketing team. I understand what language to use and how to engage users from the Branding & Marketing perspective. If it’s a new project or company, I will create a design system that will include reusable component libraries or UI elements. For existing companies that do not have a design system in place, I will create one, this will help achieve a uniform look across the entire project.

I will design high fidelity interactive mock-ups. I will do usability testing on these flows and mock-ups to understand the fallouts and, what stakeholders think about the design. Once I have reached the desired outcome, I will finalize the design and create a pixel-perfect design along with design docs for developers.

Implementation & Evaluation

After a project launch, I coordinate with the analytics and product team to check the project’s success and also to keep eye on the fallout and pain points. I ask a question to myself: Is there a possibility for expansion in a project? How is the user journey? How is the overall project experience and how does it fall under the service design as a whole? What’s next?