How I work
My goal is to build a shared understanding
I’m drawn to working in fuzzy and ambiguous spaces because I love to cut through uncertainty and create alignment. I’m a systems thinker and my work delivers solutions that create strategic foundations, clarify assumptions, and illuminate opportunities.
My process
Discover insights
Honing in on challenges to investigate by aligning user and business needs.
Investigate challenges
Cutting through the ambiguity to focus on opportunities to explore.
Iterate intuitively
Facilitating design thinking collaboration to form directional solutions.
Craft vision
Creating visual frameworks to share solutions and recommendations.
The discovery process I designed at athenahealth
I created a set of guidelines that my team used to conduct discovery projects. We categorized discovery work into Types and Flavors.
Discovery types
A Discovery Type depends on a project's needs, how much work has already been done in the particular subject area and the expected time it will take to get to design delivery.
Exploration discovery
An Exploration Discovery project will typically have a longer timeline and is used when the designer or product team has lots of questions and needs to define the problem to solve. Exploration Discovery projects generally take on more strategic and behavioral flavors but can also be visual in nature.
Definition discovery
A Definition Discovery project can be a continuation of an Exploration Discovery project in a specific solution space or can be kicked off independently when the problem is already clear. Definition Discovery projects generally take on behavioral and visual flavors but can also be used to further define the business strategy.
Discovery flavors
A Discovery Flavor is a high-level theme of methodologies that can be used during the Discovery Project. Flavors can be mixed and matched and are used at the discretion of the discovery designer and product team to meet the needs of the project.
Strategic
Used to understand the key moments and problem, stakeholder and business strategy, and the competitive landscape
MethoDS & ARTIFACTS
Problem definition
Product & design requirements gathering
Stakeholder interviews & workshops
Competitive audits & trend evaluations
Qualitative research & user interviews
Workflow audits & analysis
Storyboarding & eco-system maps
Success criteria
Behavioral
Used to understand a user's mindset or mental modal and their relationship to the business problem and solution opportunities
MethoDS & ARTIFACTS
Multi-disciplinary brainstorm sessions
Stakeholder & user interviews
User archetypes definition
Defining user jobs to be done
Storyboards & journey maps
Low fidelity wireframes
Concept & resonance testing
Design metrics
Visual
Used to convey solutions to better visualize how users will interact with new concepts and design approaches
MethoDS & ARTIFACTS
Use case definition
Storyboards & journey maps
User workflows
Blueprints
Taxonomies or information architecture
High fidelity wireframes
Key scenario / moment design
Interactive prototypes
Heuristic evaluations