Design
Capability
To continue to deliver products that deliver meaningful value and impact to the university the team's design capability needed to mature.
To build on this I constructed a best practice toolbox aimed towards operationalising discovery research and embedding usability testing in the workflow.
-CHALLENGE-
Create an evidence-led design environment to diffuse competing anecdotal stakeholder feedback and concerns.
-SOLUTION-
Understand your landscape
To begin, like many projects, was to understand what the current landscape is. What does the business currently have at its disposal? How does this fold into your stack? What are the gaps?
I began by mapping out what platforms we had under the categories;
Product strategy, road mapping, task management
Collaboration and productivity
Analytics and tracking
Customer feedback
UI Design and wireframing
User experience testing, and
User onboarding
-SOLUTION-
Establish the environment
Establishing our ResearchOps environment with existing software suites increases the accessibility and usability.
Leveraging licensed enterprise software, I created a ResearchOps section within our team Notebook to document our platforms and processes and a OneDrive to house our personas, presentations, reviews, user journeys and user testing documents.
-SOLUTION-
Applying best practice
Now with a toolbox established, we strengthened it with research practice methods and best practice guidelines.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here, but many people don’t know where to even start. By leaning on established and credible institutions like Nielsen Norman Group, Google and IDEO, we were able to quickly document Human Centred Design (HCD) principles and methods into our own toolbox making it easier for our team to onboard and access.
-SOLUTION-
Fill the gaps
Now we can better identify the gaps in our capability. One such gap was the ability for UX/UI designers to be able to rapidly test ideas and visuals with real-world users.
To fill this gap I championed the Maze user testing platform as well as Lookback for user interviews and unmoderated testing. Our stack is extended with in-app hired testers in Maze as well as recruitment platform User Testing and Optimal Workshops Card Sorting for open card sort activities, and Mindmeister for various mapping techniques.
-SOLUTION-
Get it going
To start embedding these practices in our workflow we built out task groups within our project management platform with step-by-step sub-tasks and time estimates so our HCD processes can be factored into project timelines and milestones.
