Through my 20 year career I’ve honed my design process to blend together user centric design processes, vision driven ideation work, agile methodologies. I’ve driven collaboration across product, engineering, marketing, and commercial teams. I foster a culture of action and iteration, while also protecting a thoughtful and open environment. I’ve built teams to deliver on these methodologies both in person and remotely, with 15 years of remote work practices. Below is a deeper look into these philosophies.
TRIPLE DIAMOND DESIGN METHODOLOGY
DISCOVERY
During this first phase, we establish the problem to be solved. Ideally this is a high level objective as part of an OKR that can be researched and validated with customers. I’ve also used business assumption worksheets to help stakeholders express expectations early in the design phase to build executive alignment from the start. Once the objective is defined, we can investigate the space, leveraging a research technique like ethnographic research to observe and uncover user pain points and core user problems to solve through design efforts. The research findings also create a moment of iteration. You may find that your objective was too presumptuous, and now is a good time to revise those before entering into the design phase.
DESIGN
I’ve leveraged many tools across the design phase, all with the purpose of visualizing a concept adequately enough to validate the hypothesis. Journey mapping as a way to flesh out complex service models. Wire frames to express user flows and functionality. High fidelity mockups to reflect brand and expected user presentations. Prototypes to put in the hands of users for feedback.
The fidelity of design often revolves around the size of the project and the timeline. With larger design tasks, longer product horizons, and emerging 0-1 businesses, it’s important to establish how the product vision will live alongside the agile working teams. I believe that design works best when practicing dual track scrum, allowing design to work a sprint ahead of the scrum team, but still remaining embedded within the product engineering team. At the same time, a vision track of work looks at a distant horizon at the onset of a project, allowing the team to set strategy for longer term efforts that may require large investment, architectural changes, or organizational changes. This vision work can come from within the team or a dedicated area of the business with pros and cons coming from either setup. In either setup it’s important to revisit the vision, as it too should be informed by new product findings and requires iteration.
DEVELOP
The last phase of the triple diamond process is development, where it is critical for design and engineering to work closely together to craft the end product. Though there is a need for detailed specs and QA from design, this is also an opportunity for design and engineering to work collaboratively together to further iterate on the product to achieve a better outcome at a faster velocity that still maintains the design intent.
The classic triple diamond process works within product team structures and agile processes, but to achieve this process requires collaboration between three core product team functions: product management, engineering, and design, and I’m always in the pursuit of bettering this relationship.
Want to get to know each other?
Let's get in touch and see if it's a fit.