Discover

During discovery, it is important to understand the problems that we are 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 customers as well as business' and customers' goals, frustrations and needs and then determine where there are opportunities.  I conduct the following activities in discovery:

• Stakeholder Interviews & Workshops
• Customer Research (interview, surveys, contextual inquiry, analytics, search log analysis, card sorting, usability testing, co-creation sessions)
• Current State Journey Maps
• Current State Service Blueprints
• Market Research
• Competitive Assessment/Analysis
• KPI Identification and baselining
• Guiding Principles Discovery
• Digital Specific Discovery
  • Content Inventory and Audit 
  • Card Sorting
  • Current Functionality Inventory and Audit 
  • Heuristic Evaluation
  • Web Analytics Assessment
  • Usability Testing

Discover: Competitive Assessment

Synthesize and Envision

After the discovery process, it's imperative to develop insights from what was observed or heard.  Examining what was observed or heard, affinitizing that information and then developing insights or finding a deeper meaning in the observed behavior is key to developing a good experience strategy that truly solves root cause issues not just symptoms of issues that are surfaced from pure observation. An experience strategy is created to ensure that everyone, from designers to the product owner and developers, are 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 that resonates with people within the organization.  Some common artifacts from this phase are:

• Personas / Customer Archetypes
• Affinity diagrams
• Stakeholder and ecosystem Maps
• Vision Statement
• Future State Storyboards / Journey Maps
• Future State Service Blueprints
• Strategic and tactical recommendations
• Guiding Principles
• Feature set, solutions, ideas, requirements and prioritization of those features/solutions 
• Strategic Roadmap 
• Co-creation and stakeholder validation sessions
• High Level Vision for digital solutions that includes: high level sitemaps, user flows and sketches
• Concepts for testing

I also test high level concepts to validate assumptions and ensure the concept is worth bringing to market.

Envision: Persona

Design and Iterate

Based on the strategy, a result of the envision phase, I begin to create sketch how solutions might work whether physical or digital.  For digital solutions, wireframes, user flows and clickable prototypes help express more detailed interactions and tasks. The sketched ideas directly solve a problem that was detailed as a part of the envision phase. These ideas are talked about with clients and colleagues and tested and refined iteratively with customers. New problems are uncovered during testing that can be directly addressed with new rounds of experience and service design and testing. The goal is to get great solutions vetted prior to building and scaling. During this phase I create rapid prototypes including:

• Service Prototypes
• Redesigned Process Prototypes
• Redesigned Policy Prototypes
• Website and App prototypes that include the creation of sitemaps, user flows, wireframes, annotated wireframes, hi-fidelity prototypes

And conduct:

• Resonance testing 
• Prototype testing
• Website and app prototype testing include usability, task-based and A/B Testing.

For digital design, during this phase it is also imperative to work alongside technologists to ensure our products can be developed in a cost effective manner.  For non digital prototypes, it is imperative that various stakeholders across the organization are working alongside to refine solutions designs as feedback is gathered.

Design and Iterate: User Flow

Build

During the build phase I work closely with parts of the organization to implement proposed solutions to make sure all of the features have been implemented and work as specified.  

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Lashanda Hodge | Resume | Mobile: (919) 272-5661