Resources

A single problem statement. A set of agreed assumptions. Problem Statement example: Given that: (Business situation), How might we help: (Person/group), To (do/be/feel/achieve): (Their goal), So that: (Measurable outcome).

Who, What, Where, When, Why

Objectives and goals of the project, Budget and schedule, Target audience, Scope of the project, SWOT analysis.

Establish your target user to research. Who are they, what kinds of activities will you engage them in? How will you reach them?

Competitive Analysis, POS data, User data, Market research

Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” Clayton Christensen says, “People buy products and services to get a job done”.

Go to a person’s home, work, or play location and interview and observe using open ended questions. Why, how, what. “Tell me more about that.”

Follow someone through an activity or process to understand more.

Gaming, sorting, ranking, diary, empathy map, etc. to get the user out of their comfort zone and thinking freely

A way to categorize the types of observations from in-place interviews

Five whys is an iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem by repeating the question "Why?" five times. The answer to the fifth why should reveal the root cause of the problem.

Based on highlights or themes from multiple data sources

Shows the potential causes of a specific event or process. Commonly used in product development to brainstorm and outline the different steps within a given process. Can be used in service design and brand marketing to show potential motivations or constraints. Starts with a specific problem statement of Job to Be Done. Organize into specific influences or categories. Useful for various levels of influence, Self, Family, Friends, Neighbors, Town, Country, World.

In software development and product management, a user story is an informal, natural language description of features of a software or service system. Stories are written from the perspective of an end user or user of a system, and may be recorded on index cards, post notes, or digitally in project management software. User stories are a type of boundary object. They facilitate sense making and communication; and may help software teams document their understanding of the system and its context.

At the end of a discovery, the team should come together, agree on the top things it found out, and use this knowledge to frame design challenges. To prevent individuals from suggesting their pet solutions, which might have little resemblance to the problems found, construct How Might We questions that frame the problem(s) for ideation. How might we ensure more people pay their taxes before the deadline? How might we help employees stay productive and healthy when working from home? How might we make customers feel that their information is safe and secure when creating an account?

The service blueprint is a technique originally used for service design, but has also found applications in diagnosing problems with operational efficiency. The technique was first described by G. Lynn Shostack, a bank executive, in the Harvard Business Review in 1984. The service blueprint is an applied process chart which shows the service delivery process from the customer's perspective. The service blueprint has become one of the most widely used tools to manage service operations, service design, and service.

A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information into a hierarchy, showing relationships among pieces of the whole. It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those major ideas. Can be done internally or with customers and stakeholders.

It may feel silly to visit an Apple store when you’re designing for those living in difficult circumstances, but you may unlock the key to a memorable customer experience or a compelling way to arrange products. Analogous Settings can help you isolate elements of an experience, interaction, or product, and then apply them to whatever design challenge you’re working on. Besides, getting out from behind your desk and into a new situation is always a great way to spur creative thinking.

Similar to a Service Blueprint but including future state innovations that the team may produce or create.

A storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a brand or service sequence. The storyboarding process was developed at Walt Disney Productions in the 1930s and has been used for storytelling, media production, and design prototyping.

In the UX field, wireframes are a common deliverable to show page-level layout ideas, whereas flowcharts are useful for documenting complex workflows and user tasks. However, despite the fact that both of these deliverables remain in common use among UX professionals, there are situations in which they are suboptimal tools for communicating design ideas, particularly when documenting apps or service interventions that don't have unique pages, but instead feature a few core pages which change content (or layout, or service action) dynamically based on user interaction. An alternative deliverable called Wireflow has emerged as a solution to these issues, used to show designs in the context of common user tasks.

A focus group is a group interview involving a small number of demographically similar people or participants who have other common traits/experiences. Their reactions to specific researcher/evaluator-posed questions are studied. Focus groups are used in market research to understand better people's reactions to products or services or participants' perceptions of shared experiences.

A/B testing (also known as bucket testing, split-run testing, or split testing) is a user experience research methodology. A/B tests consist of a randomized experiment that usually involves two variants (A and B), although the concept can be also extended to multiple variants of the same variable. It includes application of statistical hypothesis testing or "two-sample hypothesis testing" as used in the field of statistics. A/B testing is a way to compare multiple versions of a single variable, for example by testing a subject's response to variant A against variant B, and determining which of the variants is more effective.

A beta launch is an important stage of a software release process. It marks the first time that external users will be exposed to a new software product and is a great opportunity for companies to collect valuable feedback. In the case of launching a new brand campaign, feature, or service offering, creating a beta launch for selected user or customer groups can build buy-in, brand equity and give valuable customer feedback.

If a Live Prototype is a quick look at how your solution behaves in the marketplace, a Pilot is a sustained engagement. Pilots can last months and will fully expose your solution to market forces. At this point you’re not testing an idea—should my product be green? do I need a different logo?—you’re testing an entire system. Ideally you’ll have run a few Live Prototypes before going to Pilot so that some of the kinks are worked out. During a Pilot you’ll fully execute on your idea finding out if it truly works the way you envisioned by running it with all the staff, space, and resources necessary. You’ll learn if your idea really is desirable, viable, and feasible, and what it might look like to do it at scale. If it’s a success, you’ll head to market.