Human-centered design (or Experience Design) is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, omnichannel journeys, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and relevant solutions. My goal is to establish an emotional connection between a brand a consumer.

I’m a Senior Experience Design Leader creating websites, and digital products for enterprise level clients including AT&T, DirecTV, and IBM. My UX approach is based on this principle: experiences that people enjoy form the strongest connections between a brand and its audience. My process always starts with the user. Through strategic design, I craft systems that keep users engaged and moving through the experience while providing deeper relevance and greater value.

Rather than feature a single project, I chose to showcase a wide variety of user experience methods I’ve utilized with my teams throughout project lifecycles. These activities reflect my training in design, human experience, my personal intuition and professional observations of more than six years. 

Gaining insights to better understand and define the problem.

STAKEHOLDERS

Stakeholders, simply put, are those who have a stake in the success of your research and in the end result. What you do matters to them, and what they think of your work certainly matters to you. In order to do your job well, you need to know what they know, and you need to know what they want or need to know in order to execute a successful build. For all these reasons, it’s essential to communicate early and often.

DATA

To build a competing product, you need to get out of your room and look around. You have to know what has worked in the market before, what has not worked and who are the biggest ones that provide the same product or service as you. What makes this specific product successful and how user experience affects the usage of another product?

USER RESEARCH

A well-thought-out UX design multidisciplinary process involves a fair amount of user research, ranging from basic analytics and heatmaps to elaborate enterprise research efforts that involve contextual observation, diary studies, surveys, interviews, and focus groups.

Establish a clear view of the problem, the goal, and most importantly the user.

UNDERSTANDING USER

In talking to people, a UX team will discover what real users are doing all day, and how the product or service currently fits within their lives. The designers will investigate things users currently like, as well as things that frustrate them – not only in the product being designed, but also in the other tools they use, as these often represent opportunities for feature growth or, at the least, patterns to avoid.

REDEFINE THE PROBLEM

In UX design, requirements should be just the start of a conversation. UX designers will validate requirements against research to make sure those requirements are addressing real needs, and then dig into those requirements with stakeholders to ensure we’re meeting them in the most optimal way.

Discover solutions to the problem with insights and exercises.

WORKSHOPS

Because of the collaborative nature of UX, workshops are an ideal way to save time, optimise communication, and generate great results as a team.

CREATION

Mapping, storyboards, user journeys, and user flow are a visualization of the process that a customer goes through. They can be used in many different ways to discover solutions to the problem.

Build and test ideas. Make mistakes quickly to succeed faster.

LO-FI PROTOTYPE

The main advantage here, at the cost of both visuals and functionality, is speed. These prototypes are made quickly, and can be thrown away and replaced just as quickly. They’re great for horizontal brainstorming in which you explore a wide range of concepts.

WIREFRAME

Aside from paper prototyping, I’ll create a low visual/low functional wireframe. Low visual/high functional prototypes give the best insight with very little time involved. They’re rough enough to encourage honest feedback, but features enough functionality to test user flows.

HI-FI PROTOTYPE

High visual/ high functional prototypes are helpful if you’re building a product with complex functionality, intricate visual design, or dozens of microinteractions.

Does the solution solve the problem.

USABILITY TEST

Usability testing exposes the usability of products by testing it with real users. Users are asked to complete tasks, typically while they are being observed by a researcher, to see where they encounter problems and experience confusion..

SYNTHESIZE

Synthesis is the process of understanding how the insight gained through research translates into the features of a product or service. This process will allow you to move from data to information (what can or can’t the research tell us?), information to knowledge (the application of information to questions of “how” something could be done), and knowledge to wisdom (knowing what to do and why to do it).

My Rideshare is a secure app that allows a user to schedule a safe ride with a network of people you choose. It is intended for kids of teams, school groups, neighbors, or co-workers. Beyond the convenience of carpooling, this app prompts social bonding of the groups that use the app. My Rideshare was a result of a personal project I developed through the UX/UI design process, from discovery and ideation, through storyboarding, personas, to information architecture and interaction design. Following the IDEO’s Human-Centered Design and Lean UX Design Thinking process, I initiated my study with research and ended with validation. The process provided me with a roadmap and solid foundation to base my design solutions on user needs and requirements.