This write-up outlines how I apply user-centred design and design thinking processes to the various stages of a digital product delivery. I've framed it around a the development of our latest Photobook Editor to make more sense of the choices I made in applying those processes.
Approach
I see the role of a design leader as a facilitator and enabler. Knowing which methods, activities and processes to apply at which point in the design journey is what ultimately affects whether that process will be successful. But it doesn't happen automatically; enthusing, motivating and enabling the team to engage and benefit from that process is crucial to drive it forward.
The process I follow is that of a design thinking approach: Research, definition, ideation and iteration, which I tend to distill more simply as Learn > Create > Test, as an iterative process.
It's a simple way of ensuring the entire development stays user-centred throughout the project (Learn refers to going back to the user to check your understanding, assumptions, solution etc).
The project
We undertook some research to re-evaluate the conversion performance of our online photobook editor that identified several areas of significant friction and barriers to conversion, outlining some big opportunities to improve the usability and throughput of the app.
It was clear from this that we needed to conduct a wholesale redesign of our main purchase experience.
The Research
To evaluate our entire end-to-end journeys and the wider platform, we have a rolling program of pro-active, generic user testing, covering much longer user journeys than our day-to-day feature testing. This allows us to be open-minded about any issues we might have; we don't know what we don't know.
This time I felt we needed to improve our usual testing method, as I wasn't happy that we were creating realistic testing scenarios with our test scripts.
So instead of asking testers to 'imagine they were buying a photobook', we invited a panel of testers to actually buy a photobook on one of four of our customers' websites using a voucher we've given them.
This testing method apparently created much more realistic scenarios, the testers seemed to care much more about the end result and revealed much more than our previous testing had; simply because they were going to receive a real book at the end of it.
Distilling the Insight
We evaluated the output from that research in team workshops to discuss the notes, find commonality and significance and define the real problems that the user was experiencing.
'Defining the problem' is the critical piece here. Users will describe a feature they want, but we're often able to see that this is because the application is pushing them into a situation that could be avoided.
The results of these sessions were illuminating. It was very clear indeed that areas of the software that we've never previously seen as contentious were actually creating abandonment-level challenges for significant proportions of users.
The UX Design Challenge
At this point we have a long list of pain points from our photobook creation journey and the wider purchase journey.
Some of these issues point to major problems with our users' understanding of key parts of the journey, and it seemed obvious that the best course of action would be to apply a holistic design process to our entire purchase journey.
Design process
As I described in the approach overview, following a Learn > Create > Test process is effective because it's simple, we can apply this from the very beginning of the project, and it's easy to remember what comes next.
I try to avoid processes that have too many ifs and buts; this isn't rocket science, it just needs some common sense:
Learn
The first time into the loop, we really need to check our ideas make sense to the customer/user before we spend any time developing them, so it's typical that we might run them by customers face to face, or video user test some basic wireframes.
At any other point in the process, this would be the analysis of the testing from the previous phase (see later under 'Iterate') and any further research that we've deemed necessary due to uncovering complexities in the solution or, let's be honest, the odd 'I-never-thought-of-that'.
Create
Once we have a best* initial definition of the users' challenges, requirements and/or goals etc (*it will definitely grow legs later!), we can start to ideate around solutions to those challenges.
It is critical that this is a collaborative process, especially during the early, wide-open stages of solution generating. We will include as many people from the multi-disciplined delivery team and stakeholders as possible to roughly discuss and sketch out ideas.
Typically, early design iterations require some big thinking; open-minded, positive collaboration to find effective, potentially innovative ideas that will solve whatever problems you've uncovered.
This project was no different. we needed to get some broad concepts of how we were going to guide a user gracefully and quickly through the process of creating a Photobook, in completely new ways.
To do this we employed a couple of very useful mapping techniques to get those first tracks down quickly. Firstly we mapped the key user requirements with how profitable they are to us and our customers. Sounds cold, but if we end up having to drop some objectives or features from the list, we know what's left is the most valuable.
We then created a journey map. A large wall-based diagram where we mapped out the users expectations of their journey with how we think we could deliver on those. This was iterated to begin including specific feature and solution ideas until we had a walk-around representation of how a user would go from start to finish, and how we thought we might design it.
Test
This can obviously take many forms, and will differ depending on the design collateral you're testing. Early stages will be going to customers/users with written or sketched ideas, later they will be wireframes, prototypes and builds; the important thing is that it happens continuously, i.e. in each iteration or whenever you have something to test, and that your development process accommodates it.
It goes without saying that also, the team need to share in the belief that it is as critical to the development as any other part.
Iterate
After we've tested the current design, we will then loop back round to 'Learn', and analyse the results of that testing.
As a designer this can be the most rewarding time; discovering how users behave with your solution is always enjoyable - finding out what they really think, expect and understand is like finding the key to a safe or the answer to a riddle. You can't wait to try out ideas that improve the solution.
Sleep, repeat
This process will run and run until release, testing higher and higher fidelity prototypes and build versions the further you go. It's simple, effective and very effective at understanding user behaviour and finding issues with a solution.
There are nuances and intricacies in getting the most out of an iterative design process, but the key rules for me are: Keep the process simple, keep the design work lean, and test, test, test.
As of writing, this project is not complete, but here's a teaser of the latest version of the photobook editor:
