At it’s simplest I adopt a build, measure and learn approach. Which means each project starts with a challenge that has been observed and figuring out how I can improve that for your customers.
What I like most about the BML approach is its flexibility. Not every project is the same, but every project should have the ability to be validated and measured in its success.
With the overall aim of having an objective process, it facilitates discussions & collaboration. This leads to happier customers and importantly you.
Let’s get into the preprocess
You can’t just dive into a project, as much as your intuition may want to get ahead of itself. There needs to be a plan.
Challenge
Identifying the challenges means forming a brief and detailing each individual challenge.
A challenge might look like “why is there such a high drop off rate on a particular phase of the checkout”.
Discover
Now that the challenge has been indentified, you need to apply enough research to get an understanding of the problem. This can be anything from analysing data to usability testing.
Looking at your data you may see a number of people leaving a particular checkout phase are associated to entering a phone number.
Define
Finally, that leads to defining the project. Allowing us to establish the problem statement, hypothesis and how success will be measured.
Now the build can begin.
Now for the design process
Now there’s a plan, how do you validate your ideas? There’s many ways to approach the challenge with varying levels of effort.
If a project is new, you may start simpler to get feedback earlier. If a project is established, it may need iterating on through more functional design. It all depends on where the project is in its lifecycle.
Build
- Sketching
- Wireframes
- Visual design
- Prototyping
- Fully functional
Measure
- Usability testing
- Split URL test
- Design surveying
- Analytics
- A/B testing
- Customer feedback
Learn
The final step—what’s been learnt in the previous stages? Has the idea been validated? Is it ready to be released? Time to document findings and determine the outcome.