How I Work

A Fluid Design Process

The product design process should be flexible, because every effort may have slightly different goals, audiences, and starting points. However, some steps are crucial to creating the best outcomes.

I've spent nearly 20 years evolving my process, and iterating on how I describe it. In 2019, I was given the chance to capture a big leap forward in our industry, as CNN leadership encouraged me to help them shape how we work. So much has changed since I started in the field, including the impact designers have on digital products. We can and should be leaders. Now, with a few additional iterations applied, and a number of chances to test, I feel more equipped than ever to work in a repeatable way. Furthermore, I now know this is something I can use to help teams harness the power of design.

Though it's not entirely new to user-centered design, I've made a few meaningful tweaks to the industry standards that help promote flexibility. Most notably, the addition of a third phase, which isolates delivery functions from problem and solution analysis.

Core Principles

The first two primary phases are based in user-centered design principles, while the third phase is focused on tech development.

Understand the Problems >> Validate Solutions >> Deliver

Like many industry-standard double diamond processes, the phases are illustrated as diamonds to signify divergent and convergent thinking. They are bifurcated into six categories of work.

Making it Fluid

Each step can be tailored to include custom milestones, checkpoints, deliverables, and tools that are available within the organization. Each design effort is tailored to go as deep as necessary to meet project goals and timeline expectations. This process has been used for projects as short as a couple days, up top several weeks. Examples of work output for each step are shown below.

Analysis Tools

In-Depth User Interviews
User Surveys: UserZoom, SurveyMonkey
Beta Groups
Engagement, Loyalty and Behavioral Analytics
Internal Workshops
Virtual Whiteboards
A/B and Multivariant testing: Optimizely

Preferred Design Tools

Concepting and UI Design: Sketch, Figma, XD or similar
Experience and User Journey Mapping: Smaply, or drawing tools
Design Systems: Abstract or similar cloud library system
Prototyping: InVision, XD, Principle or similar
UI Specs Handoff: Zeplin, Git or similar

This is definitely what I would consider a high-level summary. For a full demo with relevant examples, let's connect. I would love to share a deep-dive into the details.