Research is the bedrock of our process. With enough research to begin, we launch a rapid cycle of incremental changes. The iterative process allows us to explore lightweight and innovative concepts as quickly as possible.
This mitigates risk because we develop only the best ideas. As the process moves forward, we incorporate feedback, continue research, test possibilities, and increase attention to detail as we narrow in on a final solution.
Understand
Often, the understanding phase of the process actually generates the data that needs to be communicated. If the data has already been generated, the understanding phase gives a team time to become expert in it.
Expert consultations
Talking to experts is often the shortest path to the richest information.
Product dissection
There is a lot to learn by taking things apart.
Observation
Observing behaviors and interactions goes beyond asking direct questions. Observation can add insights that users themselves cannot or would not think to.
State of the art
Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t need to. Take a look at how other people and products have addressed similar issues.
Ethnographies
These accounts of observational research help build empathy, which is key in building meaningful user experiences.
Study culture
Doctors have a culture. Bankers have a culture. Understanding these cultures, and how they participate in the larger culture, is often insightful.
Discussion
Make sure the team has shared assumptions before embarking further on the process. It’s hard enough even if you do have the same understanding of the topic and the data.
Define
Considering your audience, context, and scope will help give shape to problems and define goals. Who will be using the product or service to do what?
Users
Thinking of the end users can help focus your vision. Who are they? What do they need?
Profile
Once you have your end-users in mind, group them into profiles. These will make it easier to understand and spot overarching trends.
Identifying audience
Beyond your users may lie other groups, equally and possibly more important. Will your users present at a conference of peers or to senior management? This is a useful filter for what and how to present.
Criteria development
As you define the goals for your visualization, you can also define what information it must contain, and how that it uses that info.
Need finding
Identify needs independently of solutions.
Writing brief
As the problem takes shape, the needs, goals, and objectives can come together in a brief that sets the stage for the work to be done.
Personas
Manufactured users that typify a particular segment or type of user.
Strategy
Incorporate larger goals in the goals of the visualization. It offers useful contextualization and reminds audiences why they care.
Conceptualize
Generate as many possibilities as you can. The point here is not to find the answer yet, but to pursue options that might lead you to the answer. Go for diversity and variety – you’ll have time to narrow the options soon enough.
Write copy
Visualization is important, but so are the words you use to explain what you are thinking. Seek a balance between images and words.
Identify patterns
Patterns in data can summarize more information effectively if they are visual.
Brainstorming
You can’t always tell which ideas are better than others until you try them out and compare them. It helps to develop an understanding of what works and what doesn’t.
Create flows
Flows help account for each step in a process and can help unearth problems and opportunities.
Write scripts
Scripts provide the narrative of the story. This allows people who have not been immersed in the details to follow along.
Wireframe
Wireframes are quick ways to represent screens and functionality. They are generally easy to make and edit.
Storyboard
Storyboards are an important tool for storytelling. You can use them to see how your piece of the puzzle fits into a larger story.
Sketch
These ideas are not final yet. Sketching lets you try many ideas quickly and noncommittally – learn and move on.
Prototype
Prototyping just means creating more polished drafts of the most promising concepts from your conceptualization. More than just ideas of how our visualization might look, these should fully communicate your ideas.
Illustrate
Go simple. Make silhouettes of things, trace photographs. Go for subtle over highly stylized. See what kind of visual assets you might have access to.
Apply brand guidelines
Brands are useful filters. Things fit or they don’t; they belong or they don’t. If there is a brand involved, your visualizations should be brand-appropriate to emphasize a good fit.
Visual design
This is about visual fundamentals: colors, lines, planes, etc. Experiment with basic visual tools that imply relationships simply and powerfully.
Visual frameworks
For uniting a team and communicating strategy, it helps to have visualizations of big-picture information that everyone can share and refer back to.
Apply rules
Establishing rules can help maintain a consistent user experience.
Hierarchies, views
Make sure that the most important information looks the most important.
Validate
“Test” your designs to judge effectiveness. Watch people reviewing your work and try to discern where they experience difficulty. Ask them to explain the work in their own words. Compare your findings to the goals established earlier. Have you achieved the goals, or is another “rev” needed?
Present
Put it all together and show it to a test audience. It is a primary way of learning what you have communicated.
Code review
Does the code live up to the established standards?
Copy review
Is the brand’s voice reflected in the copy? Is it clear and concise?
Artwork review
Does the artwork support the brand and experience?
Find + fix problems
Make adjustments to your work based on feedback. Learn and adapt.
Test scenarios
Have people walk through specific scenarios. Make the experience as real as possible.
Question
By this point, you are familiar with what you want to say, but you aren’t an objective judge of whether you’ve communicated clearly. Ask others for feedback. Listen.
Refine
Do it all again. Revisit goals. Brainstorm solutions to any issues that have been exposed. Make adjustments. Incorporate appropriate feedback. Polish, polish, polish.
Codify
Capture all of the decisions and rules for use in future iterations.
Final revisions
Make final changes.
Documentation
Record the process, decisions, and work.
Specifications
Generate visually rich specifications that demonstrate the experience, along with all of the technical information to build the product or experience.
Checklist
Make a list of the changes to be made. You may want to sort your checklist from smallest changes to biggest changes.
Packaging
Attend to details around the presentation, finishing, and entry and exit points of the process.
Production
Make the final product. Or at least final for now…