Researching
For me, getting to know people (face to face when possible) is the most essential part of my process.
It allows me to start from a place of empathy rather than a place of assumption about the difficulties a particular group has.
Furthermore, it acts as a solid foundation for the work to be done, as we can validate that solving X problem is the best use of my team's time.
Sense-making
Evaluating research to find key takeaways is a group activity. I like to get other roles involved early on to build project buy-in and to begin conveying the audience's voice to the team.
Depending on the project, I will use a variety of techniques to uncover themes, from affinity diagramming to persona creation.
The outputs from these activities act as anchors for the project to refer back to when making scope decisions so we ensure we stay focused on the right features to meet our target audience's needs.
Concepting
Good ideas can come from a lot of places but "by myself in a bubble" isn't one of them.
For me, design brainstorming is a mix of solo work and group share-back and critique. This allows individual creativity to shine and group discussion to refine high level ideas.
The resulting sketches turn into the first round of prototype testing to quickly verify we're thinking about the problems we heard from people in the right way.
Iterating
"Final Design" doesn't exist.
I continually work to refine and test designs before and after launch.
Whether it's adding new features or building the depth of existing functionality, good design is a process that evolves based on feedback from the people using the product.
