Mapping out my design process provided me with great insight into how I address my work, from beginning to finish.
It’s not a set-in-stone guide and it will change and develop as time goes on, as you can see further down I have transformed my sketch into a detailed list and it has developed even further …this is part of the process.
As the structure gains more definition the vital steps become more apparent.
- Receive project
- Find out the purpose
- What does the client want to achieve?
- Who is the target audience?
- What are the users needs and wants?
- Resources, constraints, existing structure, existing content.
- Research
- Find and collate existing user research including web statistics.
- Ask loads of questions to all support officers, advisors, developers, users. Start gathering further user information by asking about support enquiries and talking about what’s currently in place.
- Depending on budget and scope, run surveys, conduct user interviews, and perhaps focus groups (focus groups must be tactfully approached and well moderated otherwise they can become time-consuming with very little value gained).
- Come up with ideas
- Brainstorm, start to define strategy and project requirements.
- What questions are starting to arise? What needs to be considered?
- Further discussions.
- Consider content strategy, who will make edits, will the design and content be manageable and will it continue to be sustainable through the growth of content?
- Draw, wireframe, prototype, storyboard, user journey
- Look at how the design will work in current structure and framework. Agile design/code to test how content will work in current framework
- Go live, continue testing
- Proceed with content strategy and editor training
After writing this post, I came across an article which described some of the techniques used during my design process. It’s called “Service Design Thinking” by Marc Stickdorn and it’s an iterative process consisting of four main steps Exploration. Creation. Reflection. Implementation.
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