The value of good UX throughout the course of a project.

Step 1 | Discovery phase

A discovery phase requires team members to understand the broader context of the problem. Establishing goals and defining success. What do we want to achieve and what does success look like?
This approach puts the focus on the actual problem rather than solution.

• Understanding the users

• Stakeholder interviews

• Market research and competitor analysis

Step 2 | Define phase

All of the information gathered in the previous stage will be analysed and the most important elements distilled.

Define phase typically consists of:

• User personas

  Having gathered information from user workshops, or analysed existing information on user preferences and needs, we will create user personas to help us better define the user journeys, stories, content buckets and pain points to help influence design and content choices. This will be a source to refer back to throughout the course of the project (at all stages). If you ever encounter a tough problem, you can always refer back to the user personas and ask, “What tone of voice or design does this person need?”

• User stories

• User journeys

• Brainstorm potential solutions

• Sitemaps / Content buckets

Step 3 | Design phase

With developers participating in early stages of the process, they can be involved in functionality development and start back-end implementation while the design phase is in progress.

Design phase typically consists of:

• Wireframes

• Prototypes

  Low fidelity clickable prototypes allow the framework to be tested with users and other stakeholders, bringing them into the design process and allowing them to test functionality, information architecture, layouts and interactive elements. Implementing any findings or changes at this early stage of development can save time and money. The golden rule of digital prototyping is failing early and in an inexpensive way. Prototypes can act as a bridge between designers and developers, and multidisciplinary teams are beneficial for the final outcome of the product.

• Minimum viable product

• User testing

• Look & feel / Mood boards

• Detailed design

Step 4 | Develop phase

Develop phase typically consists of:

• UI designs

• UI kit

• Functional requirements / Screen flows

  General characteristics of the digital product, describing the product usability and appearance, are created. This includes a description of what the product does or must not do. For less complex digital products, an annotated flow diagram covering all the interactions can be developed instead.

• Test scenarios

  The main reason to write test scenarios is to verify the functionality of the digital product. Scenarios are based on the requirements document and only include information on what feature is to be tested. This is usually short, consisting of one line of high level information. E.g.: Check system behaviour when valid email and password is entered.

• Design handoff

Step 5 | Deliver phase

Deliver phase typically consists of:

• Beta launch

  This is the limited release of the product to a small amount of people with the goal of finding issues and cleaning them up before the launch. (Initial functionality review)

• QA

  Thorough quality assurance. The team make sure that the product corresponds to the requirements and specs before release. Testing is aimed at detecting product errors and identifying any hidden issues. 

Step 6 | Drive phase

Drive phase typically consists of:

• User interviews and testing

  Surveys, polls, in-person interviews and testing are carried out to ensure the launch was a success.

• Metric analysis

• Functionality improvement A/B testing

  Depending on the outcome of the metrics analysis, users are interviewed and user testing performed. A/B testing can be performed with two variants of the same web page served to different segments of users.