User Experience Design
For my UX Design process, I follow the following stages to come up with the user's best experience. These stages are not executed linearly; they represent the areas where I use specific tools and methods to create the necessary deliverables for each phase.
After defining the scope or initial framing of the problem, I map overall user experience using three diamonds: The Problem Space, the Solutions Space, and the Build Space. The first space is all about inspiration to arrive at a solid problem statement. The second space is all about ideation to arrive at the best possible solutions. Finally, the third space is all about implementation to deliver the best possible experience.
Product Design
Like the process I use for user experience design, I come up with deliverables in the following areas. In the first stage, I'm usually looking at the company's overall business objectives, product strategy, and mission, or vision. I use the business model generation, lean UX, or UCD canvas during stakeholder interviews.
Above, you can see my visual of the overall process, should I be involved in all stages of the product design. Usually, in agile teams, I will not be directly involved in all of these stages and instead operate in sprint cycles.
Stage 1 is a brainstorming session where I used these tools to get a clearer picture of the business's overall objective and purpose for the product.
In stage 2, I deep dive into the business design that follows a similar fashion as with my user experience design process. The goal is to figure out more about the overall value props for the product, conduct more UX research, determine the target users, and come up with first mockups to show to the stakeholders.
In stage 3, I work on the overall look & feel for the product. This includes the creation of wireframes, user flows, branding and colors, clickable prototypes, user testing, and lean UX improvements. As with the other stages, I go back to the original objectives in the business and product canvases and frequently interact with the stakeholders to make sure we are on track.
Stage 1 is a brainstorming session where I used these tools to get a clearer picture of the business's overall objective and purpose for the product.
In stage 2, I deep dive into the business design that follows a similar fashion as with my user experience design process. The goal is to figure out more about the overall value props for the product, conduct more UX research, determine the target users, and come up with first mockups to show to the stakeholders.
In stage 3, I work on the overall look & feel for the product. This includes the creation of wireframes, user flows, branding and colors, clickable prototypes, user testing, and lean UX improvements. As with the other stages, I go back to the original objectives in the business and product canvases and frequently interact with the stakeholders to make sure we are on track.
The final stage 4 deals with the final deliverables that would go to engineering and development. While more user testing and lean UX improvements happen at this stage, the other focus is on the actual product launch and marketing. Here I put on the hat of the product manager to ensure that a clear roadmap is created, an MVP is ready, and enough data has been gathered to launch a beta or first version to the target users. Once launching the product, the metrics gathered from this stage help me to refine the product. Sometimes this means going back to the other stages and perhaps improve the value props, the personas, or maybe the overall user flow.
Content Marketing
To create great content, I've developed the following process that I had implemented at my prior employer. This process involved four stages: Plan, create, distribute, and analyze. As with user experience design, before creating content, it's essential to know the whys. So I usually investigate the overall business plan or objective, who the target users will be, what we know about these users, a little bit about the global branding and marketing strategy, and the overall SMART goals for the particular deliverable. After that, I determine what kind of content will be created. This content can be a print asset, a PR story angle, advertising, digital marketing, or something else. With the creation of this collateral in mind, I figure out how to best seed it to the world. I figure out if I will tailor it for a social media post, a marketing campaign, or a customer-facing interaction. The final step is to measure the results with in-house or third-party tools to ensure we achieved the key findings based on our objectives
