1. Evolving
Your UX Process
Tom Brinck
simplytom@me.com
Total Experience Design 2014
Nov. 17, 2014 3:30-4:30

2. About me
Diamond Bullet
President/co-founder
Web design &
development 100s
of clients
U. of Michigan /
Academy of Art
Adjunct Instructor, UI/UX
A9/Amazon
Creative director
Advertising &
search UI
Samsung
Sr. Dir. UX Innovations
Consumer
electronics product
incubation

3. “No process” is a bad process
What makes a good process?
◍ Fits users and company
◍ On-time, on-budget
◍ Helps you plan with the resources you have
◍ Fits the long-term plan:
product evolution, career development
◍ Not too much overhead
◍ Minimize risks, minimize restarts and redos
◍ Validated: success metrics
◍ Gets great results, consistently

4. Requirements Structural Design
Visual Design Production
▨ D D D D D
R S V P
Define - Discover - Design - Develop - Deploy
Typical waterfall

5. Typical iterative
DESIGN
PROTOTYPE
TEST
Build
Measure
Learn
Rinse…Repeat…

6. The agile / lean philosophies
◍ Agile
▒
Non-waterfall, minimize process & tools
▒
Working software
▒
Reactive, dynamic response to change
▒
Collaboration
◍ Lean
▒
Learning loops, measuring market fit
▒
Minimal viable product

7. Tons of methods

8. Try & Learn
Experiment: Try out process changes.
If they work, adopt them.
If they don’t, bail out.

9. Process themes
◍ Adaptive design
◍ Streamlined
◍ Optimized
◍ Innovative
◍ Collaborative
◍ Parallel design
◍ Concrete
◍ Evolving:
The UX capabilities model

10. Adaptive design
◍ Starting a project with a thoughtful plan:
▒
Helps make estimates
▒
Foreshadows the design activities
▒
Begins the process of diagnosing what needs to be solved
▒
Establishes the methods you have available for solving
the problems
◍ At every checkpoint evaluate unfinished design, and open
issues. From your toolkit of methods, choose the best tool in
the moment.
Project plans are rigid &
often unrelated to our activities

11. Adaptive design
◍ The plan serves as a reference point, not as a
straightjacket.
◍ Real projects are dynamic. Surprises happen (small
& large): we discover user needs, development
complexities, and feasibility limitations. We need to
act constructively and efficiently on new
information.
bricolage (in art or literature)
construction or creation from a
diverse range of available things

12. Streamlined
◍ Deliverables are about action (not about archives)
▒
User-centered
▒
Each deliverable has a clear takeaway,
not an abstract future possible use.
▒
Summarize, prioritize
◍ Tools and time-savers: templates, checklists, heuristics
▒
Take planning down close to zero
▒
Communicate correctly
▒
Cognitive artifacts: think & remember on paper
▒
Avoid errors
No wasted energy !

13. Optimized (for best results)
Goal
Explore the design space.
Find the best design
solution.
Inverted
pyramid
process.
Iterations +
Variations
Project in a day
Start a project in a
workshop, walking
through every step in
miniature.
◍ Root concept
◍ Target audience
◍ User interviews
◍ Personas
◍ Scenarios
◍ Task inventory
◍ Thumbnails
◍ Screen flows/IA
◍ Wireframes
◍ Storyboards
◍ Design options
◍ Layouts
◍ Functional prototype of key
interactions
◍ User test
Spiral model

14. Hill climbing Our designs sample points in the design space,
and we refine to improve to similar designs.
Design is an applied science.
Designs are embodied theories of human behavior. We test
to refine those theories.

15. Innovative ⚗
◍ Innovation = Solving problems
◍ Informed
▒
Do the research: user research, trends, competitors
▒
Embrace knowledge. Do not fear bias.
◍ Thinking
▒
Make time for high-level analysis
◍ Aspirational
▒
Set a high bar, do better than expected.
◍ The adjacent possible
▒
Rapidly iterate in small steps to get to large steps
▒
Know when and how much to diverge

16. Innovative ⚗
◍ Brainstorming tips: Questioning the received wisdom
• Brainstorm independently
• Don't vote, at least not classically
• Divergence: yes, for people without ideas.
Convergence: for those with a lot.
• Relevant: ideas fit the problem spec.
• Ideas are for improving, not shooting down, but…
• If an idea has no merit, put it at the bottom of the pile.
• Drop pet ideas. After working through an idea, you have
something specific and reasonably feasible or you have nothing.
(Want to keep it? Write it down. Revisit it on your own.)
Great resources
◍ Gamestorming
◍ Innovation Games

17. Collaborative
◍ Design is multi-perspective.
▒
Solve all the constraints. Involve all
roles and disciplines.
▒
It’s not easy: weak skills, alternate goals,
alternate philosophies.
▒
Collaborate early.
◍ Pairwise problem-solving.
Group-wide context sharing.

18. Parallel design
◍ Challenges
▒
User scheduling
▒
… and waiting for analysis
▒
… and waiting for inspiration
◍ Use ‘em when you got ‘em & keep movin’
◍ Evaluate using the latest, and minimize turnaround time
Bottlenecks & idle cycles ☹
▨▨ ▨ ▨ ▨ ▨ ▨ ▨
▽ ▽ ▽
Design iterations
User availability

19. Parallel design
IA / Flow Visual design Content Interaction Backend
Automate your prototyping
Low to high fidelity
User research - Industry research - Concept development
➤➤➤

20. Le Corbusier
“I prefer drawing to talking.
Drawing is faster, and leaves less
room for lies.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Sense and Non-Sense
“Conception cannot precede
execution.”

21. ◍ Solve the concept first
◍ Focus on user needs
◍ Big picture priorities are the
experience
◍ Details will overcommit to a
false direction
◍ Your prototype is your
thought. Without it, you
don’t think.
◍ Avoid abstract, ungrounded
discussions.
◍ Reduce risk to completion.
Concrete
Bottom upTop down ◈vs
Do both: test grounded prototypes against high
level goals, question failures of the prototype.

22. Build. Understand. Think. Solve. Improve.
Build some more.
Build. If you're talking and not building,
Stop Talking.
Kill cynicism:
When someone says something can’t be done…Build it.
If they say it’s been done before, build it as a baseline, and
discover in the process that there was a lot to learn.
Cultivate the mental discipline of avoiding tunnel
vision, and steadily produce concrete alternatives.

23. Evolving
UX Capabilities Model
Plan your process evolution through a roadmap of
increasing capabilities.
6. Transformative
Don’t just deliver a product. Change the world meaningfully.
5. Insightful
Design with depth, insight, and the right voice.
4. Proactive
Design strategically and creatively.
3. Streamlined
Design with an effective process.
2. Skillful
Design well, responsibly, with skill.
1. Reactive
Design for the required features.
0. Accidental
Design happens because things were made.

24. Evolving
UX Capabilities Model
0. Accidental
1. Reactive
▒
Document carefully
▒
Track status and requests
▒
Prepare proper design docs/specs
▒
Meet deadlines
▒
On budget with appropriate manpower
▒
Collaboration/customer service to other teams
▒
Collect feedback from stakeholders
Let’s design if we can
squeeze it in.

25. Evolving
UX Capabilities Model
2. Skillful
▒
Heuristic eval
▒
Design reviews
▒
Establish procedures
▒
Design-quality checklists
▒
Accessibility.
▒
Browser compatibility
▒
Platform optimization: PC, phone, tablet
▒
Localization
▒
Performance optimized
▒
SEO
▒
Responsive design
▒
Quality control: style guides, process checklists
I’ve learned how to do it, and
I want to do it right.

26. Evolving
UX Capabilities Model
3. Streamlined process
▒
User testing
▒
Stakeholder input
▒
Iterations & Variations
▒
Fail early - prototype early
▒
Parallel work / no bottlenecks
▒
User driven needs/formative research
▒
Secondary research
▒
Monitor reviews/social networks/buzz
▒
Quantified goals and measurement
▒
Continuous A/B testing
▒
Multiple sources of user and stakeholder feedback
▒
Resolve large questions early, minimize late disruptions and risks
▒
Thoughtful and testable rationale
▒
Rapid prototyping
▒
Stakeholder integration
I’ve delivered on-time, on-
budget, repeatably, and well.

27. Evolving
UX Capabilities Model
4. Proactive
▒
Set the business agenda
▒
Strategy formulation
▒
Roadmap
▒
Risk tracking and risk strategy
▒
Scope management
▒
Leverage technologies & feasibility
▒
Leverage emerging platforms
▒
Leverage emerging business models
▒
Competitive analysis
▒
Connect to externalities: e.g.service design
I’ve done the research.
I’ve got a plan.

28. Evolving
UX Capabilities Model
5. Insightful
▒
Fit
▒
Top layout, flow, language, typography, IA, content, usability
▒
Task perfection: Call to action/completion, addictiveness
▒
Immersive pow: relevant 2d, 3d, motion, video, audio, etc.
▒
OOBE
▒
Voice/perspective (of the product)
▒
Emotion/humor/playfulness
▒
Differentiated brand & style
6. Transformative
▒
New products, product categories, major new markets
▒
Design with an agenda. Be inspired/driven by that agenda.
The designer’s voice.
▒
Empower people. Improve the human experience.
Make the world a better place.
I’ve thought about this a lot.
I’m ready to propose a new point of view.
Let’s do the impossible.
I have the passion, the vision, the
ability, and batteries fully charged.

29. The Action Plan
◍ Get started by developing a roadmap of deltas to
greater capability levels
◍ What changes can we make to our current processes?
▒
Design space exploration
▒
Continuous testing
▒
Concrete solutions from the outset
▒
Parallel design activities
▒
Adaptive optimization / bricolage

30. Your UX Process
Tom Brinck
simplytom@me.com
linkedin.com/pub/tom-brinck
Total Experience Design 2014
Nov. 17, 2014 3:30-4:30
Evolving