“A problem well started, is a problem half solved”
Charles Kettering
After trying many different digital tools for my design process, I’ve settled with a select few depending on the design stage.
During the ideation stage, there’s always the trusty whiteboard, accompanied by many different coloured post-it-notes and the “Magic clock” - keeping everyone focused on the task.
After the brainstorming is complete, the ideas are quickly sketched on paper, before being moved over to Figma - where everything is finished off, from low, to high fidelity wireframes.
Having tried Waterfall, Kanban and Scrum methodologies, the Scrum process is what allows us to quickly create a concept and and ship a tested product. Especially by incorporating both Lean and Agile Ux, depending on the project type and stage.
The Scrum process we use is fairly straight forward, with a few exceptions, and is primarily driven by the KISS principle - “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”.
Besides that, the book “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days” by Jake Knapp, is our main driver.
Depending on the project scope, we go through user interviews, conducting user tests as well.
Talking with users directly during the whole process is one of the most important, but unfortunately very overlooked parts by many companies. Since I’ve worked mainly with B2B companies, in my experience this always proves to be crucial. The clients love it as well, feeling heard, included and showing trust and respect.
Before starting to wireframe, I like to take some time and prepare a detailed information architecture. This helps me and the team to see how everything works together - from the user, to front-end and then back-end.
This is my favourite part of the process. Placing all our ideas into a very simplified UI without any colour, or detailed elements. This helps us get a much better sense of the final product and we sometimes create very simple prototypes to test and clarify user flows that we’re not 100% sure about.
After helping create the 1st Design System I ever saw, I became obsessed with working on them and making them accessible to wide range of users. This is still one of my favourite parts of Product Design to work with, especially thinking of different sides of user Psychology and their perception of Ui elements.