In this phase, I try to bridge the gap in my knowledge. I start by asking crucial questions, mostly the “Why?” and working my way to the deep end. This phase can be about understanding the user needs, validating our current hypothesis or just building a solid domain knowledge.
After we feel we have understood the user’s needs and have relevant domain knowledge, we start hypothesizing about what these users will react well to. This phase also requires many rounds of communication between all stakeholders to make sure everyone is on the same wavelength.
Finally, we start putting the pencil to the paper and the pixel to the screen. The fidelity of our work is dependent on each situation. Usually when we have challenges to conduct User Research after, we bump up the fidelity. That way, even with fewer rounds of testing, the feedback is better quality.
Inspired by Google, I have really bought into the idea of Creating Good things, Fast. Because Design Matters and Speed Matters. The Sprint is pretty much the same process compressed into 5 Days. Monday we start by researching our use cases and user needs.
During a sprint we pretty much lock ourselves in a ‘War Room’. After we feel we have a good grasp on User Needs and what we want to go after, we start debating the scope of the sprint. Since we only have 2 days to design, we focus on creating one or two complete User Tasks.
Usually we sprint as a team. So dividing the work helps. We either divide the work by fidelity or by screen. For example Designer A is in charge or screens 1-5 or in charge of all Wireframes. There is constant feedback between the different sprint members to make sure the work is tight.
You can feel the pressure now. It’s all about tying all loose ends, making sure our screens are at the right and consistent fidelity. And finally, we build a clickable prototype to be tested. This is also the day that may see some level of improvisation based on how much we got done.
This is it. Time to validate our hypothesis. On Fridays, we go out in the wild and conduct user research. How close we want to get to our Target Audience is based on how deep this feature is and the use case. Most times you just need a person at the other end. After testing, we pool in our feedback and reflect upon the lessons learned.