Many years ago I was a member of BYU's premier a cappella group, Vocal Point. One day, on the way to a gig, a fellow performer turned to me and asked, "Why did you join Vocal Point?" My answer came quickly, "Because I love music and the amazing feeling of being on stage." His reply has vibrated in my brain ever since: "That's interesting. I enjoy it for the same reasons. But I'm here because I want to make people happy and I believe our group does that."
All too often, designers can adopt a similar mindset about their work as I did about performing, limiting their perspective to what's right in front of them: color, typography, etc. However, effective UX design requires a broader, user-centric approach that is intent of making a real difference in people's lives. A good UX process will ensure this kind of vision and help prevent a slide back into focusing on what can be easily seen and controlled.
There are many amazing takes on the UX process out there. Although nothing new, I chose to develop my own because doing so made it more meaningful and thus easier to remember and apply. I love words, and so I choose to label the phases with words ending in "ate," which indicates to me an action with a purpose. UX requires a lot of thought, but nothing is learned, designed, or built without taking thoughtful action in these seven areas.
This is the first part of any process or project where you take the time to understand the fundamental problem that needs solving or question that needs answering. Skipping this basic step can send an entire UX project in a wasteful and unhelpful direction.
Once the basic problem is understood, it's time to gather information to better understand how users actually understand, relate to, and respond to the problem or question. This step includes activities such as interviews, contextual inquiries, surveys, observations, and analytics.
Using the information gathered, it's best to explore a number possible solutions, pitting them against each other and seeing what wins out. I try to make my ideas and designs at this stage more conceptual than visual through assets such as workflows, sketches, and wireframes.
This critical step is often rushed or overlooked, but not without incurring great risk. It starts by adopting sometimes difficult mindset that, no matter how much thought we've put into a design decision, we could be wrong. Usability tests and other validation methods can tell us the truth. To me this means that the best designers have a humble attitude toward their own work and determination to get the best result no matter what.
Once validated, it's time to add the visual layer. Colors, typography, etc. Often these ideas are rushed in too early into the process, but they also should not be an afterthought. Effective composition and communication with these more visual elements are just as critical to the success of a project as any other step.
This step includes the actual building of the experience in code. While not always within the purview of the designer, he or she should not disconnect from the process at this point. Their design insight and leadership is almost always needed to ensure the goals of the design were properly executed by engineers and marketers.
After releasing our work into the wild, we must take steps to understand if our design has had the the effect we designed it to have. In other words, measuring whether user behavior has changed in ways that benefit both the user and the business. I chose to label to phase "Perpetuate" in order to show that this effort is continual: We must keep the product growing, evolving, and improving through quality measurement as we act on new information and insights.