Discover

During discovery, it is important to understand the problems that we will be trying to solve.  It's important to determine both the current and the desired state and find the gaps between the two. To determine the problems and the gaps, I look to understand the business, markets and users as well as business' and users' goals, frustrations and needs and then determine where there are opportunities.  I conduct the following activities in discovery:
  • Content Inventory and Audit (website)
  • Current Functionality Inventory and Audit 
  • Heuristic Evaluation
  • Stakeholder Interviews & Workshops
  • User Research (interview, surveys, contextual inquiry, analytics, search log analysis, card sorting, usability testing, co-creation sessions)
  • Analytics Assessment
  • KPI Identification and Tracking
  • Current State Journey Maps
  • Competitive Assessment/Analysis
  • Requirements Gathering
  • Guiding Principles Discovery
  • Market Research
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Discover: Competitive Assessment

Synthesize and Envision

After the discovery process, it's imperative that an experience strategy is created to ensure that everyone, from designers to the product owner and developers, is on the same page and understands the problems we are trying to solve and the goals we are trying to reach.  The strategy is a guide and reminder that helps the team work towards a common goal. The strategy should be the synthesis of discovery activities bundled into a story and should have the following components:
  • Personas
  • Journey maps and storyboards
  • Strategic and tactical recommendations
  • Feature set, requirements and prioritization of those features (story mapping)
  • Roadmap 
  • High Level Sitemaps, user flows and sketches
  • Co-creation and stakeholder validation sessions
  • Concepts for testing
I also test high level concepts to validate assumptions and ensure the concept is worth bringing to market.
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Envision: Persona

Design and Iterate

Based on the strategy, a result of the envision phase, I begin to create sketches (if time permits), wireframes, user flows and clickable prototypes to express more detailed interactions and tasks.  Those ideas directly solve a problem that was detailed as a part of the envision phase. Those ideas are talked about with clients and colleagues and tested and refined iteratively with users during the wireframing/prototype phase.  New problems are uncovered during usability testing that we directly address with new rounds of user experience design and usability testing. The goal is to get great solutions vetted prior to build. During this phase I create:
  • Sitemaps
  • User Flows
  • Wireframes
  • Rapid Prototypes
  • User Flows
  • Annotated Wireframes
And conduct:
  • Usability testing
  • A/B Testing
During this phase it is also imperative to work alongside developers to ensure our products can be developed in a cost effective manner.
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Design and Iterate: User Flow

Build

During the build phase I work closely with developers to make sure all of the features have been implemented and work as specified.  
Lashanda Hodge | Resume | Mobile: (919) 272-5661