Design Approach

“People first, not last”

I have over 5 years of experience as a UX / UI Design Consultant with Telstra Purple, a professional services division of Telstra Enterprise who’ve combined expertise in areas like cloud solutions, cybersecurity, software development, data analytics, and IoT (Internet of Things) to help organisations improve their technology infrastructure and digital capabilities. I’ve worked with clients from different industries ranging from banking, government, mining, health, agriculture.

Collaboration and Impact

I was part of the 30 person NSW Digital team who have practices in Design, Data and Development. We worked on client-facing projects and occassionally internal projects.

Design Team Dynamics

Within the design team there were 5 designers ranging from consultant, senior, lead and principal roles whom I got collaborate with and grow.

Karlo the Design Consultant.

What does a typical project look like?

Duration

3 - 12 Weeks

Typical Process

  1. Pre-sales / Statement of Work sign-off

  2. Internal Kick-off
    Agreement on roles, team canvas, leave/absence booked.

  3. External Kick-off
    Validate project plan, identify product owner, determine cadence for working in agile/scrum, identify risks and impact.

  4. Team Planning and prep
    Delegation, start internal kanban board, determine project plan and deadlines.

  5. Discovery
    More detail below!

  6. Delivery

Human-Centered Design (HCD): A Shift in Perspective Human-centered design (HCD) significantly departs from traditional approaches to product, system, or service design, which typically centre on an organization's needs or goals. Instead, HCD focuses on the people at the heart of these products, services, or systems, designing solutions based on their needs and how they access them.

The Double Diamond Framework The HCD process is illustrated by the double diamond framework, which outlines two distinct phases:

  1. Discover and Define: Through research, we uncover users' behaviors, challenges, motivations, and needs, gaining insights that help us clearly define the problem space.

  2. Design and Deliver: We then move into synthesizing and ideating, where we conceptualize various ideas, prototype, test, iterate, and refine our solutions to address the defined problems effectively.

This method emphasizes a deep understanding of user needs, ensuring that solutions are both relevant and practical.

The Approach: Human-Centred Design

The 1st Diamond - Discover | Define

Examples of planned activities

Discover / Research Phase

  1. Stakeholder Interviews

  2. SME Interviews

  3. Contextual Enquiry

  4. Desktop Research

  5. Context Mapping Workshop

  6. Current State Flow and Validation

  7. Pain Point Identification and Validation

Define / Synthesis Phase

  1. Insight Synthesis / Theming
    Insights from interviews, contextual enquiry and desktop research.

  2. Pain Point Prioritisation Workshop
    Impact vs Frequency Matrix.

The 2nd Diamond - Design | Deliver

Examples of planned activities

Develop / Ideation Phase

  1. Brainwriting Workshop
    Each participant is allowed time to ideate on a prioritised paint point. After each round they move onto the next participants idea and enhance it, at the end of the session they vote.

  2. Future State Flow

  3. Low-fidelity screens based on ideation

  4. Mid to High-fidelity designs and prototypes

  5. Showcase and feedback session

  6. Iteration

Deliver / Implementation Phase

  1. Solution Prioritisation Workshop
    Value vs. Effort Matrix

  2. Backlog Creation
    As a…I want to be able to…So that I can…

  3. Strategic Roadmap

  4. Project Delivery

  5. User Testing