Design

Traditionally, design was seen as a way to show a look and feel of a product before going into production. This was typically done by arrangement of typography, lines, shapes and colors following a set of specifications.

Today, designers are seen as storytellers tasked with understanding the user's goals and creating a journey that compliments needs, wants, and pain points of the target audience.

Design is ever evolving with the injection of new technologies everyday, a strong UI/UX designer will hold a strong understanding and experience of web technologies to meet all milestones of a project.

Prototyping

A powerful tool for all designs today. A number of services are available today for designers to bring their designs alive and communicate all journeys.

A stand out designer is one with skills in the leading front-end technologies: HTML, CSS, and Javascript. These three languages are all that's needed to develop an array of testing and communication for both internal and external customers.

My career timeline has brought opportunities to work with a number of languages outside of front-end technology: PHP 4, jQuery, SQL, Coldfusion, Java, and Solidity (Web3).

E2E Product Design

A typical design proccess will contain:

  • Research: Multiple sessions with stakeholders to review all details: Use Cases, personas, documentation, etc. Understanding what is needed for either a new or existing feature.
  • UX Design: The design stage is working in-line with research results and others to develop a full V1 concept with the intention of testing with external users to validate research stage findings.
  • UI Design: Final stage after testing and validation is overlapping UI visualization based on style guide, design system or UI Kit leading to front-end build.

Let's Build a Process!

A process in these key areas help design teams create good habits as we work toward milestones.

Research/Testing

  • Developing a strategy to gather user input is key in any product cycle to validate team direction. Some forms of research and testing involves: usability sessions, A/B testing, and surveys.

Documentation

  • Documentation of all features and services a product has to offer helps build understanding throughout the implementation process.
  • Documentation will save time by acting as a single source of truth during build hand off, user insight and affirm workflows.

Product Audit

  • Audits are a crucial part in planning cycles to assure front-end teams are building a 1 to 1 match and meeting design expectations.

Road Map

Product Roadmap: a single source of truth that outlines the vision, direction, priorities, and progress of a product over time. Success is community understanding and full transparency.

Phase 1: Let's Chat

  • Meet with the product owner and review all details: Use Cases, personas, documentation, etc.
  • Multiple sessions to understand what is needed for either a new or review feature.
  • After reviewing all information on item XYZ, we will determine the best course to validate next steps.

Phase 2: Research & Design

  • The design stage is working closely with the product owner and others to develop a full V1 concept with the intention of testing with internal/external users.
  • By the end of this process we will have developed a workflow and overall story to be presented to users.
  • Testing: usability sessions, A/B tests, and surveys are a few methods used to validate previous stages in the process.

Phase 3: Hand off

  • Final stage is hand-off to the build team while acting as support for understanding of the workflow/features for dev teams leading the build.
  • Support is constant to assure design standards are met to deliver a 1 to 1 match of the final product or V1 deliverable.