Methodology

The double diamond framework

A feature doesn’t come from nowhere. It can start with a customer need, a business goal, an idea someone had, etc. I like to keep in mind the Opportunity Solution Tree from Continuous Discovery Habits (Teresa Torres) to make sure:

We are trying to address an opportunity (a customer need, pain point or desire) that answers a product outcome
That this product outcome should drive a business outcome making our company viable

From a selected opportunity, I use the double diamond framework to make sure we design the right product and we design it right.

ℹ️

This well-known framework is intentionally large: it is made so we can adapt it according to our needs and current context, not to apply it “by the book”

🕵️ Discover the customer problems

During this part, I will help you discover different problems related to your goal. This way we can make sure:

we are answering a customer need or a business goal
which users or customers this project is targeting?
what is the impact on the customers and the company

It avoids us to work only on instinct and guide us to build a customer-centric product strategy. It's important at this step to align with other teams working around the product, especially the marketing team to get information about the market opportunities and to already start thinking about how we will communicate.

Some methods I use depending on the project and the timeframe:

journey maps

customer interviews

in-situ observations

polls and surveys

analytics

user tests

card sortings

personae

🎯 Define the problem we want to solve

After we have found problems to solve, we need to prioritize them and start focusing on one and only. The prioritization will depend on several factors:

the impact on the users
your business goals
your vision and strategy

Once our problem is prioritized, we will finish defining it by digging more deeply into the data we have or by continuing our user research. We will formalize here a “How Might We?”, which is the question the team will rely on to take decisions during the solution phase.

How Might We example for Lydia investments feature

After we have found problems to solve, we need to prioritize them and start focusing on one and only. The prioritization will depend on several factors:

the impact on the users
your business goals
your vision and strategy

How Might We example for Lydia investments feature

How might we help our users to make a first investment in line with their values and hobbies?

With this, we make sure we work on a problem worth to be solved and we optimize team alignment.

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Deliverable → User Research key learnings and “How Might We?” definition with success metrics (slide deck)

💡 Ideate to find solutions

Now we can dig into the solution part. The goal of this ideation phase is to explore as solutions as possible before we select and prioritize the most promising ones.

Some methods I use:

Now we can dig into the solution part. The goal of this ideation phase is to explore as solutions as possible before we select and prioritize the most promising ones.

Some methods I use:

benchmarks

journey maps

brainstorms

crazy 8

what if?

storyboards

At the end of the ideation phase, we should have a list of rough solutions and be able to prioritize one or a few of them depending on the same factors as before, plus the development effort:

the impact on the users
your business goals
your vision and strategy
the development effort needed to develop the solution

At the end of the ideation phase, we should have a list of rough solutions and be able to prioritize one or a few of them depending on the same factors as before, plus the development effort:

the impact on the users
your business goals
your vision and strategy
the development effort needed to develop the solution

🏃‍♂️ Deliver the right solution with the best user experience possible

I will design the prioritized solution by producing user flows, low or high fidelity mockups and prototypes. Before and when designing a solution, I always talk to the developers to know their constraints, their ideas and what could be developed easily or not.

After designing the first prototype, we will run user tests to check if:

the flows are simple enough
the wording is explicit enough
the global experience is delightful and makes users happy

We can iterate from the first version to new ones thanks to our user tests and then apply the design system to the newly created pages before handing the project over to the developers.

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Deliverable → User Flows, Wireframes, Mockups, Prototypes, Design and Functional Specifications