Thanks for checking out my work! Below I'll highlight my normal creative process for UI/UX design.

Step 1: Empathize

The first stage of my design process focuses on user-centered research. I want to gain an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. Reaching out to experts to find out more about the area of concern and conduct observations to engage and empathize with your users. I find the best way is to immerse yourself in your users’ physical environment to gain a deeper, personal understanding of the issues involved—as well as their experiences and motivations.

 Empathy is crucial to problem solving and a human-centered design process as it allows design thinkers to set aside their own assumptions about the world and gain real insight into users and their needs.

The main aim of the Empathize stage is to develop the best possible understanding of your users, their needs and the problems that underlie the development of the product or service you want to create.

User Persona's

In order to solve your problems, you need to get to know your users! A user persona is a real or fictional user of your service. Below are a few different examples of User Persona's created in previous projects.

User Journeys

A user journey highlights your user's thoughts and reactions in the journey of accomplishing the intended task.

Step 2: Define

In the Define stage, I will organize the information gathered during the Empathize stage. I'll analyze my observations to define the core problems you and your team have identified up to this point. Defining the problem and problem statement must be done in a human-centered manner.

The Define stage will help my design team collect great ideas to establish features, functions and other elements to solve the problem at hand—or, at the very least, allow real users to resolve issues themselves with minimal difficulty.

Identify Pain Points

Identifying your user's pain points is the first step to creating a solution. Pain points give clear problems for designers to focus on and focus on during user testing.

Pain points can usually be categorized as the one of the following:

1. Positioning Pain Points- “No one knows who our company is.”

2. Financial Pain Points- “We’re not selling enough to keep the lights on.”

3. People Pain Points- "We lose our best employees to higher-paying positions elsewhere."

4. Process Pain Points- “Our hiring process is unwieldy, and we struggle with finding highly qualified candidates.”

5. Productivity Pain Points- "We spend way too much time in meetings."

6. Small Business Pain Points- “Posting across all of our social media channels is really tedious.”

Competition Audit

Sometimes a problem you are having has already been solved. If your competitors are providing a better user experience, than they will attract more business. A full audit looks into local competitors and compares features and offerings in an organized document.

Step 3: Ideate

This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to identify the best possible solution for each of the problems identified during the first stages. The solutions are implemented within the prototypes and, one by one, they are investigated and then accepted, improved or rejected based on the users’ experiences.

Prototype

Once a solid design has been outlined, it's time to add some functionality. Prototypes are essential for user testing to see if the user experience is enhanced by the changes.

Step 4: User Testing

User testing is a simple way to gauge the success of a product, feature, or prototype from the point of view of one of your customers because it allows you to watch, hear, and review their interactions with your design.

Common Forms of User Testing Include:

• Usability Testing- provide a real customer or member of your target audience with a product, prototype, or feature so they can assess and test its usability. can be moderated or unmoderated.

• Surveys- Surveys are a great form of user testing if you want to obtain real, quantitative data from your customers about your product.

• A/B Testing- A/B testing is when you split your test subjects into groups and test different versions of a product to determine their preferences.

• Focus Groups- Focus groups are where you sit down with a small group of real users (usually 10-12 people total) to discuss various attributes of your product, prototype, or feature. 

• Beta Testing- Beta testing happens during the last stages of your product, prototype, or feature’s design. It’s when you provide your customers and target audience with the item you’ve created in a state that closely resembles what it’ll look like upon distribution. 

Reiterate and Test Again!

Once the insights from the user testing have been compiled and examined, it's time to make corrections and adjustments based off of user suggestions. User testing should continue until all goals of the study have been achieved.

Final Accessibility Audit

Test your product with a diverse group of people to ensure that there was not overlooked accessibility.

Finalize the Design and Prepare for Developer Handoff

Once the user studies have shown that a design has solved the issues at hand, it's time to polish off the design and organize our elements and components for our developers. Fonts and other assets will be neatly organized and set up for developer convenience.

As a junior developer myself, I have the benefit of identifying design elements that will prove to be difficult or impossible to achieve in the final product.

Celebrate with the Team!

We did it! We completed a full user experience design process and solved our user's issues. The work is not over however! User experiences are in constant need of updating adjustments. But for now, it's on to the next challenge!