The human-centered approach to UX design — tailored to be adopted for any project in life.
The human-centered approach to the "User Experience Design" process is something we're extremely passionate about at SeaLab. Our passion comes from our belief in the ideology's goal: to empathetically create the best experience possible for stakeholders, businesses, and users by looking at the problem holistically and tackling its parts iteratively based on feedback and testing.
Though we're a design shop whose bread and butter is using the UX process to create digital experiences for our clients, we're proponents of approaching problems of all kinds with a human-first mindset. Whether the experience is for the guests at your next party, or for yourself and how you want to feel after you finish that craft or project, the UX process can be applied to all areas of life. For that reason, we've spent time defining the UX process in the most simplified and approachable version possible — to easily adapt to any challenge, in design or in life.
If you've ever searched for "UX design process" online, you'll know that there exists far more than one solution out there. Look closely, however — every UX process shares a few similar characteristics:
- Steps are iterative and cyclical
- Incorporates design thinking
- "Human-centered" at its core
Iterative and cyclical. The iterative and cyclical nature of this entire process is important for the success of any human-centered design project. Rapid prototyping at lower fidelity in response to consistent feedback gathering from the right people allows more ideas to be explored and shared before committing to the final direction. This saves overall production time without sacrificing the exploration breadth of new ideas and directions.
Incorporates design thinking. Design thinking is what injects the "user experience" into our "user experience (UX) process." At its core, design thinking is a human-centered practice that allows everyone to solve creative problems of all sizes. As mentioned above, design thinking is a cyclical practice that shifts views and mindsets during brainstorming, allowing for questions to be addressed from different and unique angles — which can reveal new and interesting directions and provide solutions to newly unearthed problems.
Human-centered core. Finally, being human-centered is the heart of the term "user experience." Having a process be human-centered means that research, feedback collection, and iteration based on that feedback is essential to having a successful project. This means being transparent with progress and open to adaptation. Don't make assumptions about what the target audience wants — find out. Only once we understand our target audience can we know we're helping solve problems.
The UX process SeaLab has detailed out is no different and contains all of these three elements. However, as a service shop that handles clients with all different timelines, budgets, and other constraints — and also being big believers that the UX process can be adopted toward any phase of your life — we've adopted and detailed out one of the simplest UX processes out there to allow for easy adaptation to any project: Define, Design, and Deliver.
Define
Every project, large or small, begins with a research-gathering phase. This is the time to meet with your project's benefactor(s), your benefactors' target audience (if applicable), and any other stakeholders involved in the project. The goal of these meetings is to learn as much as you can about the project as a whole, ask questions, and clarify the goals and constraints of the business stakeholders, technology to be used, end-users — essentially learning where things stand and how to define a "win" from here.
Identify goals and objectives. This is the single most important part of any project of any size. Whether this initial phase takes place in 5 minutes face to face, 2 hours over the phone, or several half-hour meetings over the course of 2 months, it's crucial to spend the necessary time to fully understand the goals of your project. This means identifying items such as "who am I building this for?", "who is paying the bills?", "what are my timeline, budget, technology, and other constraints?" Don't be afraid to ask follow-up questions after the initial meeting as they come up.
Once goals and objectives have been identified, make sure to set expectations as the final step to this stage. From cost to timeline to touchpoints, make sure who you're working for knows how the time together will be spent and what they can expect going forward.
Perform assessment. Now that goals and expectations are established, it's time to get a snapshot of the current state of things. This means collecting information on the project and the situation surrounding the project as it currently stands.
The next thing to assess is the competitive landscape and what your project is working against. What do competitors do? How do they advertise? What do their customers have to say? By getting these data points — and what other people like and don't like — a strategy can be created going forward on how to stand out and learn from mistakes and triumphs others have made.
Craft personas. Even for smaller projects, persona creation provides value and is advisable at this stage. By giving target users a name and face and taking the time to identify and put their pain points into perspective, it becomes easier to build empathy with the target demographic and begin to put yourself in their shoes for future problem-solving and use cases.
Write use case scenarios. Use cases are important for deciding how to best execute the design phase. If the project is a website, knowing a scenario a user might have would help determine which screens will be built out as part of this situation to make sure they get adequate attention. For example, a checkout flow use case might be written as "a user forgot to purchase bananas as part of his previous grocery order and needs to purchase them quickly and add them to his existing order." This allows the design team to craft not only the shopping interface and the search interface, but also some of the user's profile pages, existing orders flows, and even error and success screens — which may not have been considered without thinking through this use case ahead of time.
Map out systems. While many projects could get away with less done in this section, larger, more complex projects could really benefit from some extra time spent mapping out systems. This step can include identifying existing flows through flow diagrams, identifying established architecture information through site maps, and even creating user journey maps going through the use cases defined in the previous step.
Design
As a design agency, this is by far SeaLab's favorite part of the UX design process — where we now have a full and complete look at the project and its goals and objectives and get to dive straight into brainstorming, sketching, crafting, creating, prototyping, iterating, and finalizing our project.
Ideate. Now that we've defined the problem as best as we possibly can within our given project constraints, we can start generating ideas for how to succeed. The goal is to create as many varying ideas as possible, come together to identify the one or few feasible options forward, and then explore and flesh these chosen ideas out in more detail. Some of our favorite design thinking brainstorm techniques:
- Mindmapping
- Worst Possible Idea
- Storyboards
- SCAMPER
- Brainwalk
- 6 Thinking Hats
- The 5 Whys
Whenever possible, it's a great practice to include stakeholders and even customers in this brainstorming process. They likely know the problem better — and differently — and can offer insight and ideas that wouldn't have been brought forward without their contributions.
Sketch and wireframe. With ideas identified, we move into translating them into low-fidelity wireframes — fast, rough visual representations of the solution. The goal here is speed over polish. We're testing comprehension and flow, not aesthetic. This is where we make our mistakes cheaply and learn from them quickly.
Prototype and test. Once our wireframes are solid, we connect them into clickable prototypes and put them in front of real people. The questions we're trying to answer: does the flow make sense? Can users accomplish their goals without help? Where do they get stuck? The answers shape our next iteration.
Deliver
Deliver is where we bring everything together — taking all the research, feedback, and iteration from Define and Design and producing a polished, production-ready final product.
High-fidelity design creation. Low-fidelity designs are a form of formative research — rapidly iterating and continuing to test based on current understanding. The goal of low-fidelity is to rapidly find a solution so we can arrive here, at the final stages of high-fidelity design where we polish our creations and spend time on the details with confidence. Now we can focus on adding the sparkle and shine and make sure all our research leads to a beautiful, usable, and desirable product.
Design system and documentation. As high-fidelity designs are approved, we document everything into a design system — a single source of truth for colors, typography, components, states, and patterns. This is what allows development to build accurately and what allows the product to scale without breaking down over time.
Handoff and implementation support. The deliver phase doesn't end when files are handed over. SeaLab stays close during implementation — answering questions, reviewing builds, and making sure what ships matches what was designed.
Iterate based on real-world feedback. Once the product is live, the cycle starts again. Real users generate real feedback. That feedback feeds back into the Define phase and the process begins anew — which is why the UX process is always a loop, not a straight line.
Want to apply this process to your product? Let's talk.