This is a weekly blog which documents the design process techniques completed during class. These entries focus more on the concept of the techniques and my understanding of them having explored their uses, rather than their use in my projects, which is detailed in the project blogs.
During class, we took part in a group ideation workshop around the idea of autonomous vehicles. While it was a simple workshop of generating ideas it was really beneficial to my project. I had had a general idea of where I wanted to take my project but getting to participate in this really widened my mind to what my project could be. Group ideation workshops are so beneficial to all participants and definitely, something I’d like to continue to use in the future.
User Stories are another useful tool in the same vein as User Personas and Empathy Maps. To explore how they can be useful I wrote a few for my current project.
When I call the GP reception. I want to not have to wait on hold. So I can get on with my life.
When I’m waiting on hold. I want to not have to listen to the hold recording. So I can do other things while waiting.
When I’m listening to a hold recording. I want to have a visual version of the information. So I can avoid the impracticality of having to listen.
I can see how these come in handy as another way to think like the user and are maybe more relatable than user personas or empathy maps. They really help to create more practical scenarios to design from rather than design from abstract thoughts and feelings, so I think they could be really useful early on in directing a project and finding what direction I want to take a project.
While looking into these I found this great Twitter account called @shituserstorys which posts really bad examples of user stories, however, it made me think about something else I read about recently.
As a young designer, I need to realise that the design process is a tool, not a checklist. I think at this level there’s a tendency to treat the design process as a list of things that need to be done to ensure a successful project, but this isn’t really the case. Yes, all steps in the design process have a use, however, simply doing them won’t ensure good work. You need to really think and consider each step to have the process work. It’s something I’m really going to aim to do this year and I’m glad I’ve recognised it early on, as it should enable me to produce better work.
In the discovery phase of a UX project, a problem statement is used to identify and frame the problem to be explored and solved, as well as to communicate the discovery’s scope and focus. As part of my Autonomous Vehicle project, I had written a problem statement at the start to help me target the problem I wanted to solve. I found this a really useful technique as it looked at the situation before any thought around ways to solve the problem. I can see how this could be really useful when paired with User Stories as writing the problem statement first would define the problem the user story would help to define the direction to go to solve the problem.
