{"id":120,"date":"2015-12-13T13:20:46","date_gmt":"2015-12-13T21:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/?p=120"},"modified":"2023-02-15T17:57:41","modified_gmt":"2023-02-16T01:57:41","slug":"my-ideal-ux-design-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/my-ideal-ux-design-process\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ideal, Yet Long, Product Design Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

New product design involves collaboration between Product Managers, UX Designers and Software Engineering. \u00a0In real-life situations it is important to keep the ideal UX design process in mind as a guideline. \u00a0Marcin Treder’s observations written in a Smashing Magazine<\/a> article are a good reminder. \u00a0Here, I’ve written out my own ideal Product\u00a0Design process from a UX perspective, combining my own real-life experiences with a number of UX process documents\u00a0found online.<\/p>\n

1. Prepare<\/h3>\n

Initial kick-off to introduce and understand the context<\/strong> of the project. \u00a0What is the background story and motivation? \u00a0 Review the brand, guiding principles, and long-term vision of the\u00a0organization. \u00a0Gather information. \u00a0Define the project.<\/p>\n

2. Plan<\/h3>\n

Develop a strategy, roadmap and vision for the project. \u00a0What research, competitive analysis, customer feedback, stakeholder interviews,\u00a0and other information is needed to gather into the requirements for the project? \u00a0Begin to\u00a0define and list expectations and goals. \u00a0How high are we aiming, how big is the project? \u00a0What<\/strong> is it we want to accomplish? \u00a0Product Management should have\u00a0at least a draft vision the\u00a0Product Requirements Document (PRD).<\/p>\n

3. Research & Analyze<\/h3>\n

Compile data and statistics gathered from field research and ethnography, user and stakeholder interviews, usability tests, goal and task analysis, site and search analytics, content and metadata audits, and competitive analysis. \u00a0Understanding why\u00a0<\/strong>we want this. \u00a0Incorporate results and conclusions into PRD.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Define Product Requirements<\/span><\/h3>\n

A good PRD defines\u00a0the purpose, describes features, sets release criteria and sketches rough timing. \u00a0Review and analyze the results of research, gather needs and ideas. \u00a0Refine ideas into requirements and content<\/strong> of the project. \u00a0Requirements are written out, often as stories in the Agile process, or as a larger document that may include lo-fi sketches or wireframes gathered from whiteboard sessions. \u00a0Here is good article about writing good product requirements documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

5. Sketches<\/h3>\n

Whiteboard or paper sketches will help visualize a variety of UI options and workflows. Review with team, note changes and decisions to drive wireframes and UX Design specification document.<\/p>\n

6. UX Design Specification<\/h3>\n

Refine\u00a0the PRD and sketch meeting decisions into a UX Design PDF document with wireframes, workflows, storyboards with accompanying descriptions. \u00a0This shared with the product team<\/a>: product management, engineering and user experience for review and refinements. \u00a0Typically this phase is not shared with the user community. \u00a0It is\u00a0iteratively refined leading towards a spec that will be referred to in building, implementing the end product.<\/p>\n

7. Prototype & Design Iterations<\/h3>\n

This is the most collaborative and iterative stage in the process. \u00a0It is the “How<\/strong> does it look and feel?” phase. \u00a0“The design phase is to put ideas in front of users, get their feedback, refine them, and repeat. \u00a0These ideas may be represented by paper prototypes, interactive wireframes, or semi-functioning prototypes, all deliberately created in low-fidelity to delay any conversation relating to graphic identity, branding or visual details.” [from uxmastery.com<\/a>] \u00a0The UX Design Specification is refined to include high fidelity mockups for review and approval for the next phase. \u00a0It makes sense to get user feedback during this phase, since once in the implementation stage it’s costly and disruptive to make numerous changes.<\/p>\n

8. Implementation & Production<\/h3>\n

High fidelity, final visual design elements such as icons, GUI elements and CSS stylesheets are created by the UX design team and delivered to software engineering to implement. \u00a0Quality assurance plays an important role in testing and verifying the accuracy of the software’s UI in matching the UX design spec. \u00a0QA review until evaluated ready for release and deployment\u00a0by the product team.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, this Product UX design process is traditional, and likely to be time consuming. \u00a0Jeff Gothelf’s concept of Lean UX\u00a0<\/a>may be an alternative methodology applying\u00a0a tighter cycle of prototyping and validation. \u00a0I’ve come up with an Efficient\u00a0UX Design Process<\/a><\/strong> outlined in another blog article.<\/p>\n

\"upaposter_85x11\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New product design involves collaboration between Product Managers, UX Designers and Software Engineering. \u00a0In real-life situations it is important to keep the ideal UX design process in mind as a guideline. \u00a0Marcin Treder’s observations written in a Smashing Magazine article are a good reminder. \u00a0Here, I’ve written out my own ideal Product\u00a0Design process from a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design","category-ux"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/OutsideBox2-Landscape.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p73ygx-1W","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":48,"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hankgrebe.com\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}