DESIGN RESEARCH
Working in collaboration with stakeholders,
I use and adapt
a Design Thinking methodology and
Human-Centered Research and Design methods
to conceive, define and validate innovative solutions.
DESIGN THINKING
Non-linear Iteration
Empathize
Empathy is a way for researchers and designers to gain a deep understanding of what users and other stakeholders are needing and wanting to accomplish and why.
Empathy also leads to an understanding of the constraints, dependencies, limitations and capabilities that impact and influence successfully achieving desired outcomes.
The researcher uses empathy as a means to gain insight and understand the needs, wants, motivations, and struggles of users and other stakeholders. In this way the concept of what will be created can be defined from the perspective of the stakeholders.
I have used several qualitative research methods to obtain the needed understanding. These include immersive techniques such as ethnography, shadowing, and contextual interviews that put the researcher with users in real-world contexts. I have used techniques that ask users to generate various data such as activity diaries and other reflections on a product or situation. I have also used methods in which the researchers perform various scenarios themselves as user surrogates -- putting themselves literally in the user's place. I have generated storyboards, personas, journey maps, and empathy maps from the data obtained. These research artifacts can be used in later phases of the Design Thinking process.
My goal in using these methods is to move outside the researcher's assumptions and enable a co-creation process in which researchers, designers and stakeholders all play an integral part in defining solutions.
Define
The information collected from the empathy research is analyzed and synthezed to formulate descriptions of the problems to be solved. Solutions to these problems will be formulated in later phases -- the Define phase is concerned with understanding and stating the problems.
The analyses and synthesis of collected information is iterative and continues the co-creation process with stakeholders. Problems are defined and stated from a user-centered perspective with consideration for the needs of all stakeholders.
Ideate
The statements of the problems to be solved provide clarity and guidance to generate solution ideas.
Ideation methods foster the generation of solution possibilities that are innovative and novel and which focus on the underlying problems to be solved. I have used several ideation techniques with users and other stakeholders. The techniques involve various forms of brainstorming and guided questioning to generate out-of-the-box ideas.
Prototype
Initially, the constraints on and viability of ideas are explored further with low-fidelity prototypes. Some ideas will be discard, others will be refined with higher fidelity prototypes that can be evaluated and tested.
Some of the tools I have used include: Sketch, Azure, InVision and Mural
Test
Low and High-Fidelity Prototypes can be used in various reviews, evaluations and tests to collect both objective and subjective data regarding each solution.
Some of the methods I have used include: Heuristic Reviews, Cognitive Walk-throughs, Usability Metrics, Usability Testing.
AGILE
Software Development predominantly takes place within an Agile process comprised of a series of short cycles called Sprints.
In each Sprint, a limited number of functions, that had been previously researched and designed are selected from a backlog of requirements in the form of user stories.
Software releases of developed functions can occur after one or more Sprints are completed and the functions have been tested.
Agile provides several benefits. Requirements can be flexible and easily redefined. Added capabilities are given to the users regularly and quickly, and the process is not overly burdened with documentation
