Somewhere in the intersection of skill set, project constraints and user expectation lies a best practice.
I'm all for sharing information and learning and improving technique, but to try to create a perfect storm of steps to facilitate a UX process for a corporate standard... I'm not buying it.
User Experience Design is an odd combination of skills that make up a job title driven by industry need. The UX professional is expected to have a large toolkit with everything from human centered behavioral research techniques to the ability to communicate visually with your team, clients and whoever else has a stake in the project.
There are folks out there with very different set of tools than the ones I possess and I can not expect them to identify, design and create solutions with the same process I use. I have previously mentioned some of the things I do and when I do them. That however is not process.
For me it's pretty simple. My strength is visual communication. I use my business, communication and design experience to identify the problems that the software solution solves and then make sure everyone understands what the solution looks like. Is that over simplification? To be sure. But when you can distill a thing to its simplest form and still it works, that thing is something to hang on to. All the details are just a matter of situation and design preference.
Do you card sort? When? Why? Can you moderate a prototype or software user testing session? Can you draw? Can you collect statistics an data and glean actionable information from it? Are you good at collecting requirements? Does interaction design make sense to you? Blah blah. You evaluate the business constraints, use your toolkit to define, design and communicate.
In the end of a project, look back. See if you clearly understood the business problems, defined what a win is, kept the user in focus, designed and communicated the solution clearly. If you do that then you have used the correct process. Throw away the spread sheet, after all it is design and design gets messy.
I'm all for sharing information and learning and improving technique, but to try to create a perfect storm of steps to facilitate a UX process for a corporate standard... I'm not buying it.
User Experience Design is an odd combination of skills that make up a job title driven by industry need. The UX professional is expected to have a large toolkit with everything from human centered behavioral research techniques to the ability to communicate visually with your team, clients and whoever else has a stake in the project.
There are folks out there with very different set of tools than the ones I possess and I can not expect them to identify, design and create solutions with the same process I use. I have previously mentioned some of the things I do and when I do them. That however is not process.
For me it's pretty simple. My strength is visual communication. I use my business, communication and design experience to identify the problems that the software solution solves and then make sure everyone understands what the solution looks like. Is that over simplification? To be sure. But when you can distill a thing to its simplest form and still it works, that thing is something to hang on to. All the details are just a matter of situation and design preference.
Do you card sort? When? Why? Can you moderate a prototype or software user testing session? Can you draw? Can you collect statistics an data and glean actionable information from it? Are you good at collecting requirements? Does interaction design make sense to you? Blah blah. You evaluate the business constraints, use your toolkit to define, design and communicate.
In the end of a project, look back. See if you clearly understood the business problems, defined what a win is, kept the user in focus, designed and communicated the solution clearly. If you do that then you have used the correct process. Throw away the spread sheet, after all it is design and design gets messy.
- 0 Comments
- Previous Article
- Next Article