In this piece, I share my UX design process, a refined approach shaped by extensive experience and collaboration. It’s a journey of transforming user needs into effective design solutions, adaptable to the unique demands of each project.

Typically, this journey begins when a Product Manager (PM) or someone from leadership brings a potential user issue or opportunity to my attention. These insights are providing the foundation from which we build our design strategies.

They could come from:

• Close interactions with users by internal team members
• User feedback, whether as recurring pain points in our data or direct input from surveys
• Market insights or competitor analysis conducted by sales or marketing teams
• Strategic business decisions made at the leadership level

Initial Planning and Empathy

With these initial insights, I collaborate with the PM, focusing on laying out the necessary research initiatives. At this point, the user problems are typically broadly defined, requiring a deeper exploration to fully grasp their nuances.

As a designer, my first task is to empathize with our users, delving deep into their experiences and challenges to ensure that our solutions genuinely address their needs.

Guiding Framework: The Double Diamond Model

My design process has been refined over years of experience and is now guided by a tailored version of the double diamond model.

Some context: The Double Diamond process is a visual and structured approach to design and innovation, originally developed by the British Design Council in 2005. Its purpose is to provide a clear and comprehensive roadmap for the design process, encompassing both problem identification and solution development. The model is divided into four distinct phases — Discover, Define, Explore, and Deliver — which are grouped into two main sections: the first diamond focuses on understanding and defining the problem, while the second diamond concentrates on developing and delivering the solution. This framework emphasizes the importance of divergent and convergent thinking in both understanding the challenges and creating effective solutions, ensuring a thorough and user-centered approach to design.

First Diamond: Identifying the right problem

In the first diamond, my focus is on discovering and defining the user’s problem. The goal is to broaden my understanding of the user’s needs, pain points, and the context of their environment.

This phase is crucial for aligning the team on our objectives and ensuring that we’re not basing our actions solely on assumptions. Relying on assumptions can be risky; it could lead to the team wasting time, money, and effort on solving a problem that may not be significant or impactful.

Taking time to “discover” problems

This phase involves gathering detailed insights into user needs and pain points. Activities include:

• Performing explorative research and conducting interviews with key stakeholders and users
• Analyzing data from user analytics tools (like Pendo, Mixpanel, or Amplitude)
• Running market and competitor research to contextualize user needs
• Documenting all findings in tools such as Dovetail and Confluence to ensure transparency and accountability

“Define” the problems

Here, I transition to synthesizing the collected information to articulate the user’s problem clearly. Activities include:

• Creating service blueprint, user journey maps, and storyboards
• Highlighting the essential “jobs to be done”
• Collaborating with the PM to formulate and prioritize problem statements
• Aligning identified problems with the company’s OKRs and defining high-level success metrics
• Starting to plan the project and timeline with the PM and relevant stakeholders

Let’s recap: At this point, we have a clearly defined set of problems. I sit down with my PM and relevant stakeholders to validate what problem and what outcomes to aim for. We finalized the problem statement: a description of the problem, backed up with evidence that details how big it is and why it’s important.

The research done so far and our decisions are documented in a Confluence page that serves as a background when kicking off the design project.

Second Diamond: Designing the right solution

Once the problem is clearly defined, the focus shifts to conceptualizing and delivering the solution.

Exploration Phase

In this phase, the aim is to explore a broad spectrum of potential solutions. This phase involves:

• Crafting “how might we” statements that would help during ideation
• Conducting brainwriting/brainstorming sessions with cross-functional teams to generate diverse ideas
• Developing sketches and laying down user flows
• Constructing wireframes and prototypes, and iterating based on team feedback (PM, engineering lead, and wider design team)
• Circling back to users and/or stakeholders to show prototypes and validate ideas

Delivery Phase

This phase is about converging on and finalizing the solution, encompassing:

• Crafting high-fidelity UIs in alignment with brand guidelines and design systems
• Conducting collaborative reviews with the product squad, including PM, engineering leads, and the wider design team
• Writing detailed requirements with the PM. This task consists of a back-and-forth between designs in Figma and project management tools such as Confluence or Google spreadsheet
• Preparing comprehensive hand-off notes for the engineering team. I also record walkthroughs of my design to support hand-off notes

Implementation: Adaptation and Quality Assurance

After the design hand-off, I remain engaged in the process, overseeing the implementation and making necessary adjustments. This involves reviewing the engineering plan, performing quality control via renders or staging, and being available for design tweaks as implementation challenges arise.

“Bonus” Third Diamond: Continuous Improvement

At this stage, the project might be released, but it doesn’t mean my work as a designer is finished. For projects where post-launch evaluation is key and budget is allocated, I incorporate a third diamond into my process: Monitor and Iterate.

Monitoring

The initial phase of this diamond focuses on monitoring the recently launched solution to verify that it effectively addresses the problem identified earlier. Key activities in this phase include:

• Measuring project success metrics
• Observing user interactions with the new features
• Identifying areas for improvement

Iterating

The second phase of this diamond is dedicated to iterating and enhancing the newly released solution. In collaboration with the Product Manager, we allocate time for these iterative cycles, understanding that a project is not truly complete until we see positive user outcomes and make necessary adjustments to the solution.

• Refining the UIs based on the monitoring phase’s insights
• Collaborating with the PM and engineering team for any needed re-implementation

In conclusion: A Fluid and Adaptable Process

This description encapsulates my design process, which, while structured, is inherently flexible and adaptable to the unique constraints of each project. It emphasizes empathy, collaboration, and continuous improvement, ensuring that each solution is user-centric, limits technical and design debt, and aligns with strategic business goals.