I lead with curiosity and listen empathically to understand people's behavior and goals. I translate those into creative solutions that bring user needs, business goals, and technical capabilities together to forge great experiences.
I'm a problem solver at heart. Designing means solving problems. In order to sovle problems systematically, a clear and shared understanding of what a problem is, is crucial.
Design is part of the product development process. That means close collaboration with other disciplines and team members. It means clearly articulating my needs and listening to what others need to achieve a common goal.
I start with an assessment of the product development cycle and identify areas where I can bring the most value. Sometimes that means starting with redesigning an existing product, sometimes it means discovery research to guide the product roadmap. Every situation is different and I taylor my approach to what works best in any given context.
I have deep experience in conducting interviews and field studies to gain insights into user behavior and goals. Here is a partial list of user research methods I use:
Synthesizing the research findings is a key step in making them actionable. Two of the most common outputs of this phase are personas and user journeys.
Personas represent user archetypes. They have two functions. They capture important aspects of user's goals, behaviors, motivations, atitudes and the as a communication tool they create a shared understanding and alignment among the team.
Like personas, user journeys create a shared understanding of the problem space and align the team. They are a model of the problem space. They also form the basis to evaluate the design during usability testing and iterate before commiting major investments to building a product.
User journeys form the backbone of product design. They allow the team to break down the problem into steps and capture feature ideas, assumptions, and questions in a systematic way that is tied to actual user needs.
Features are then organized in accordance with user's mental models to make sure the system matches their view of the world.
Screen flows are the backbone of the design phase. They capture visual design and detailed interaction that can readily be turned into prototypes and tested with users. Figma's collaborative nature allows for asynchronous reviews with the team to finalize the design.
Prototypes are a great way to present designs to stakeholders. They are also critical to test the design with actual users to identify shortcomings and make immprovements before launching new features or products with costly mistakes.
Iteration is a key part of the design process. Feedback, prototyping, and testing at different stages of the process, the design is improved. The risk of launching the wrong product or launching a product that is not usable is minimized.
Iteration is a key part of the design process. Feedback, prototyping, and testing at different stages of the process, the design is improved. The risk of launching the wrong product or launching a product that is not usable is minimized.
