Empathize

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You achieve this by being curious about your user, engage in conversation, acknowledge your assumptions, observe patterns and pain points. It’s taken for granted that you capture as much as possible at this stage, which is why you need to be meticulous. Not all research methods can all be applied at one time, planning is key.

Skills: Empathy maps, research repo, survey, interview script writing, transcribers

Define

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Feedback comes in a wide spectrum: focused or broad, sometimes it might throw you off a tangent, or you’ll start stumbling over the same patterns. At some stage mapping and grouping (synth) feedback helps you to identify patterns. 

Skills: Synth workshops, journey maps, personas, documentation and reporting

Ideate

Based on commonalities defined in the problem-solving exercises, quick whiteboarding and wireframing can get a team far and wide engaged. It’s a cheap way to align, but as well explore the art of possible. This process is iterative, but good research should give you enough deliverables to start off.

Skills: Ideation workshops, wireframing, customer journey

Prototype

Prototype your pitch and test your hypothesis. Exhaust yourself in perfection in iterative cycles. Remember you are not the user, let others guide you through feedback on why the prototype needs finesse. Keeping in mind device responsiveness, accessibility and error handling.  

Skills: Prototype, usability tests, AB testing, treejack testing

Test, revise, and iterate

Iterate based on more feedback if releasing an MVP, scale up your user test group, use actual users, stress test your product. Being open to feedback, will allow you to pivot to a sharper design or proposition

Skills: Observational testing, usability tests, feedback sessions