Role: Digital Product Designer
Year: 2020
We, the Experience Design Department at Chekkit Technologies have documented our ideal
product design process. This is the process we use to launch and continually improve
our products across the company.
We’ve created a range of products across the
health and pharmatech landscape successfully applying this process for all
our internal product build.
Prior to introducing our process we as a design department faced several challenges:
👉 There was a lack of understanding of UX from the wider business.
👉 The lack of understanding meant it was difficult to get stakeholder buy-in and apply a user centric approach to all projects.
👉 It wasn’t clear what our role was to the wider business. Our aim is to solve problems, but we were mistaken as artwork-ers or wireframe-ers.
👉 There was an inconsistent approach to different projects, making them a nightmare to manage and
resulting in key stages being missed.
By introducing our process we’ve reduced the impact of the challenges we face.
We have defined our process into 7 key stages. For each stage we explain what it is and why we do it . Throughout we have used three people who represent the key people within the project team.
Let’s begin,
Time to grab the popcorn 🍿 Enjoy!
01 — Kick Off Meeting
The kick off meeting happens on the first day of the project. The whole project team
comes together to define the project. 3 things to come out of this stage are:
1) why are we doing it? 2) who is it for? 3) what are the KPI’s? — oh and not
to mention we make sure everyone is clear on their roles. Whilst everyone is
in the same room this is also a great opportunity for people to share their
expert opinions and ideas.
02 — Research
After gaining clarity on the initial project definition both the Product Team and the
Design Team dig deeper and investigate the project through research. The Design Team
focuses on investigating user needs, the existing market and what the key business
stakeholders want. In the meantime The Product Team investigates the key business
constraints and ultimately how the product will make money.
03 — Requirements Alignment
Once user and business requirements have been gathered, the project team re-groups.
Within the alignment meeting the team create a series of project goals. This is
where we make compromises with the aim to satisfy as many business and user
requirements as possible.
04 — Ideation
Once project goals have been identified we feel it is important that everyone has a
chance to express their ideas. As well as giving the whole team a voice it is
another great opportunity to get a diverse range of ideas and expert opinions as
everyone comes together.
05 — Part 1: Ideation & Prototyping
This stage of the process is all about creating tangible outputs which can be shared with
the team for discussion and furthermore used for usability testing. As famously
quoted from David Kelley, our goal is “Fail Fast, to Succeed Sooner”
This stage can range from low fidelity prototypes which could be quick sketches
linked together to make a clickable prototype. Or high fidelity prototypes that
mimic the final user interface, these are more suitable for usability testing
and demonstrating ideas to developers or stakeholders.
We use Sketch as our go to software for creating wireframes, high fidelity
UI screens and Specs. We use InVision to create clickable prototypes and
Principle to explore interactions adding finesse to them.
05 — Part 2: Usability Testing
We can now put prototypes in our hands and our colleagues hands. Most important, though,
is the opportunity to get them into our users hands. This helps us spot issues before
it’s too late as well as being able to validate ideas as we create them.
Using our prototypes we can quickly perform usability tests, allowing us to iterate on our ideas/prototypes. Two methods we commonly rely on are hallway testing, and remote testing (via Userbrain), although we also contact users or perform usability tests in the streets to gather quick feedback. Other methods we use are quick data gathering tests to validate our decisions. For this we use remote services such as Optimal Workshop or Usability Hub.
Using our prototypes we can quickly perform usability tests, allowing us to iterate on our ideas/prototypes. Two methods we commonly rely on are hallway testing, and remote testing (via Userbrain), although we also contact users or perform usability tests in the streets to gather quick feedback. Other methods we use are quick data gathering tests to validate our decisions. For this we use remote services such as Optimal Workshop or Usability Hub.
06 — Design Delivery
We validate our prototypes as much as possible before passing them onto the development team to build. This is our way of eliminating as much risk as possible.
We communicate our design via a high fidelity InVision clickable prototype. This gives a feel of how the product will work. Alongside this we also supply all our designs using Sympli. This allows the developers to click on the designed screens and get the specs for each individual element. With many of our development teams based around the world effective communication is essential.
Throughout the build we constantly communicate with the development team to address any issues as they occur and guide them to the finish line as smoothly as possible.
07 — Measurement & Analysis
Once our product is out there and being used by users we take the time to review it’s
performance. We use analytical tools such as Google Analytics to review numbers/traffic
and Hotjar to enable heat maps on our products — both are great ways to gauge user
behaviours and check patterns. Getting feedback from users is essential.
To validate the analytical insights we conduct further hallway tests or
further remote user testing, this provides validation for our insights.
Once we have our insights we discuss our actions as a team and our strategy
to make the product better.
Interested in discussing design, user experience, products, or research? Do you need speakers for a conference you're planning? Are you a fan of Formula 1 and would you like to discuss it? You can contact me via email or LinkedIn. I'd love to hear about your experiences and share some of my own with you. Together, let's get some knowledge! :)