UX Design Tip #2: Planning is part of the design process
Context:
If you would have told me earlier in my career, that to be a good designer means being a good planner — I would have told you UX is not for me. I am not one of those “natural planner” types. In fact, I have had to learn from my colleagues (shoutout to Leonie Slattery, Amy Tayler, Cheralee Brophy for being so patient with me) how to get better at planning. As you become more senior as a UX designer, you will more likely be involved in at least more than one project at a time — so the skill of being able to plan across projects is an absolute necessity. Over the years I would say I have improved significantly at this, even against my own tendency to veer away from planning.
Use Case:
I can hear you folks going, “Yeah yeah, but you still haven’t said anything about why I need to plan as a designer.” Well importantly trying to execute a project without a plan will lead to absolute chaos. To avoid this, let’s look at how the team could go about it.
Let’s say you’ve recently kicked off a project, whereby you, as the product team (UX, UI, PO/PM, etc) have had a scoping session with the client to understand the high-level scope of the project.
This may include areas such as problem statement, as-is challenges, user goals, business goals, client timelines, stakeholder identification (such as this hot mess) and any other areas that give the product team enough information to draw up an execution plan.
The next step is for the product team to create a roadmap/execution plan. This plan details how long the product team thinks they will need to reach the desired outcomes, the different tasks that will need to be done, and the milestones on which they will report to the client.
It’s important to note here that this is not the final plan, it may change based on what comes out through further analysis.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s look at a practical example to illustrate this kind of planning:
Out of the scoping session, let’s say the product team’s mandate is to investigate opportunities within the SME space. From there they propose a digital solution that could help business owners with the identified opportunities.
Below is an example of a roadmap the team has put together based on what came out of scoping. In the roadmap, there are clearly defined timelines, phases, and tasks that will need to be completed. Each phase has defined outcomes that help clients understand what to expect, and what the team is working towards. In this case, being a validated high fidelity prototype of the solution. This kind of planning not only helps the management of the project moving forward but also forces the product team to think through all the required steps that they will need to go through. The roadmap also serves as a tool to keep everyone aligned, manage expectations with clients, and provides a framework for the product team and client to think strategically around what they want to achieve.
Conclusion:
It’s important to scope, create a roadmap, adjust the roadmap as information comes in, and finally create products that people actually need. Also, I’m terrible at conclusions, so this is all I could muster up.
#YourFriendlyNeighbourhoodDesigner
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
