Apart from designing some of my interests include doodling, illustration, sketching random ideas, and cooking something interesting.🎨 I believe these activities are not only a stress reliever but also part of my Ikigai. I also enjoy reading interesting things in design, psychology, and non-fiction.📗 Click on the images below.
My design philosophy & process
When I say design philosophy, I mean a set of values that I follow as a designer. These are guiding principles that go hand in hand as I design.
1.
Being an empathetic ally for the user.
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Taking the user's pain-points as my own.
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Being an active user advocate while designing.
2.
I am only the designer, not the user.
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To not let my own design preferences interfere with what can be right for the user.
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Keeping an open mind.
3.
Deconstruct biases and assumptions
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Identifying any assumptions or biases that may overlook. I often ask this question- “Am I just confirming my assumptions, or am I challenging them?”
4.
When in doubt, TEST.
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For iterating upon the ideas and designs it's best to get feedback by testing the solutions to understand different perspective.
Now, coming to the design process I follow...
The process I follow is like a funnel at first the scope is broad and exploratory. As the steps go ahead I am able to understand the problem better, along with coming up with ideas to tackle it. However, based on project requirements the guiding steps do inter-change. The key core steps are as follows:
1.
Explore, Ask and Listen
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Explore the problem space- Taking a note of secondary insights, analyzing current solutions- interface design, workflows interactions of existing solutions and the overall pros-cons of the experience.
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I also conduct primary research with likely users to understand and analyze the problem and needs.
2.
Streamline and define
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In this phase I clearly articulate the needs of the user and the business.
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Understanding the opportunities and challenges I define the problem statement, constraints and HMW's. This phase helps in defining the direction to be taken ahead.
3.
Pick my grey cells
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This is one of my favorite phase is to ideate on possible solutions to the problem space.
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At first I let my creative mind flow freely to come up with ideas. I push my grey cells to brainstorm on different approaches.
4.
Conceptual wireframing
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Breaking the concept into user flows is the next step I follow. This allows me to understand the different steps required for the user goal to be achieved.
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I create conceptual wireframes of the solution. I get feedback of stakeholders, users on the workflow.
5.
Design and Prototyping
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Here, I create the high fidelity designs with an aim of keep the UI simple, smooth and the experience intuitive and delightful.
6.
Iterate, Iterate and Iterate
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To not get attached with designs, iteration based on feedback from users and stakeholders.
Iteration and feedback is what makes design thrive. I believe in constant optimization and not going with the first solution.✨