UCD Process by Vijay Shankar

Stage 1: Understand domain

Stage 2: Understand Medium and its limitations

Stage 3: Understand and Analyze stage of the project/product?

What are expected additions/changes in 2 years (Release Cycles)?

What is present project status?

Business goals? Changed in business goals from the project?

Design goals?

Existing Design and user problems it solves?

Competition?

Stage 4: Develop Design Strategy (Skip this stage based on project status: This stage will work best in redesign or addition of new features to an existing product)

Who are the target customers?

Get usage data:

§ Contact Marketing team for data – User Expectations

§ SQM data/Research data – User feedback

§ Customer Care

Understand usage pattern:

§ Interviews (Depends on budget)

§ Field Observation (Depends on budget)

§ Surveys (Depends on budget)

§ Stakeholder meetings (Cheaper option)

§ Screen snapshots

§ Error logs

§ Site Analytics

Stage 5: Write scope and limitations. – Involve Management

Stage 6: Build up proposals – Involve Management

Stage 7: Analyze team size and incorporate new members based on requirement

Stage 8: Analyze impact of changes on existing UI? Convey them to the Management, Dev and Test and get their buy offs.

Stage 9: Take care of Branding, Guidelines, Client specifications

Stage 10: User Experience Development - Set timings and abide by them.

· Develop profile

· Develop personas (If there are personas, see if the personas meet the expected changes/additions)

· Develop Scenarios

· Develop Tasks flows

Stage 11: Brainstorm on design ideas for the existing task flows – Always keep heuristics in mind.

Stage 12: Develop wire-frames for the design ideas

Stage 13: Run Low-Fi usability tests with paper prototypes/mock ups – Use Think aloud protocol

Usability test with the real users (Expensive)

Cognitive walkthroughs

Stakeholder reviews

Stage 14: Design Hi-Fi UI/information architecture

Layout

Language - Speak the user language

Images

Color

Font

Controls - be intelligent in minimizing controls

Accessibility

Stage 15: Present the all flows to the stakeholders get acceptance

Stage 16: Run Usability Tests with real users

Eye tracking

Think aloud protocol

Remote usability tests

Stage 17: Re-design UI and flows based on user feedback

Stage 18: Present to the client – Always support your design with UX research

Stage 19: Deploy