Design
Researching and designing to meet the ultimate goal
User research
User research helps you to learn about the people who use your services. Find out what problems you are trying to solve, what to build, and if it will actually work for real people.
Planning and conducting user research is one of the first things we should do in design, and should be revisited after every sprint in delivery, as well as after go-live.
User research means you can:
- save time by only building the things users need
- reduce risk by learning quickly whether the things you are building work well for users
- respond to changing user behaviour and feedback to continuously improve the service
Sometimes our customers opt to do the research themselves, to bring down costs.
Research methods
Pick and mix the methods below to find the data that best highlights user needs. This will help you design the right thing.
Benchmarking data
Customer surveys
Diary studies
Heat maps
Identifying priorities
Journey mapping
Shadowing
Site visits
Interviews
Ultimate goal
Validate a concept
The ideas lab
Pick and mix the methods below to explore problems and test potential solutions. Always test assumptions.
Create a concept
How might we…?
Idea workshop (6-8-5)
Journey mapping
Lego!
Prototype
Scenarios and storyboarding
Share observations
Ultimate goal
User stories
Validate a concept
Design sign-off
At the end of the design stage, we present our research findings to the product owner. This includes a service blueprint, mock ups or wireframes, and a list of features to make up a minimum viable product (MVP).
Before the build begins, the product owner prioritses the user stories and signs off the acceptance criteria for each one. This will become known as the backlog, and will be worked through task by task, during delivery.
Service blueprint
A service blueprint is a flowchart of the front end user journey integrated with the back end business process.
Wireframe mock up
A wireframe is a rough illustration of what the user will see when they use the service.
Feature list
The new service is presented as a list of high level features for the product owner to prioritise and sign off.