Methods

Here are some of my favorite UX Design & UX Research strategies featuring examples I’ve created in the past.

Feel free to reach out with any questions about what you see here or to inquire about other work samples!

Header text: accessibility - considering all experiences

“Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can equally perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with websites and tools. It also means that they can contribute equally without barriers.”Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

Header text: affinity mapping - organizing facts

“Affinity diagramming has long been used in business to organize large sets of ideas into clusters. In UX, the method is used to organize research findings or to sort design ideas in ideation workshops.” – Kara Pernice (NN)

  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 1.11 Affinity Map"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.2 Certainty"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.3 Compliance"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.4 Distance"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.5 Empathy"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.6 Facts"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.7 Masks"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.8 Procedures"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.9 Products"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.10 Sanitation"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.11 Signs"
  • Information graphic with organized information hierarchy that reveals what make people feel safe titled "Chart 2.12 Vaccination"
Header text: brainstorming - conceiving potential

“Brainstorming is a method design teams use to generate ideas to solve clearly defined design problems. They produce a vast array of ideas [and questions] and draw links between them to find potential solutions.”Interactive Design Foundation

Camera snapshot of a sketch of Information Architecture UX brainstorming for Starsdance Mystery School's homepage in my notebook of graphic paper
Header text: competitor analysis: assessing performance

“Data on what works well or poorly on other sites saves you from implementing useless features and guides UX investments to features that your users need.” – Amy Schade (NN)

Header text: focus groups - investigating needs and goals

“The proper role of focus groups is not to assess interaction styles or design usability, but to discover what users want from the system.” – Jakob Nielsen (NN)

Header text: heuristic evaluation - verifying usability

“Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the ‘heuristics’).” – Jakob Nielsen (NN)

Infographic of Heuristics Checklist ratings for Starsdance Mystery School website: ten categories are featured with assessment descriptions below each header that describe how Jenni met those standards
Header text: Human-Centered Design - Empathetic Solutions

“Keep focus on people and the entire system to solve the right problems. Human-Centered Design (HCD) is not about following processes: it’s about principles.” – Don Norman (NN)

Header text: Infographics - educating through compositions

“Information graphics translate data into a visual medium that is easy to understand and engaging.” – Lexie Kane (NN)

Header text: interviews - listening to perceptions

“User interviews have become a popular technique for getting user feedback.. Use them to learn about users’ perceptions.” – Kara Pernice (NN)

Transcript of interview with Stacy - Subtitled "Contextual Insights, Covid-19 Shopping Photo Diary" page 1
Header text: moodboards - inspiring emotions

Boards that transfer the right mood and bring the emotions expected from a product or service.” – Tubik (UX Planet)

Digital moodboard collage as a grid of images and HEX color codes that inspired starsdancemysteryschool.com, images are diverse, dreamy, colorful and bold
Header text: personas - empathizing with others

A fictional, yet realistic, description of a typical or target user of the product. A persona is an archetype instead of an actual living human.” – Aurora Harley (NN)

Header text: photo diaries- understanding experiences

User logs (diaries) of daily activities as they occur give contextual insights about real-time user behaviors and needs, helping define UX feature requirements.” – Kim Salazar (NN)

Slide deck of images from Participant #4: Sarah's Covid Shopping Experiment trip with a quote that says "At that location I know they have a capacity number that they allow in the store. When I go in there I'm not constantly around people, which makes me feel a lot safer. It is one of the reasons I shop there."
Header text: remote usability tests - verifying functionality

“The process of uncovering problems and opportunities in designs by asking participants to complete tasks then watching and listening for feedback.” – Kate Moran (NN)

Infographic slide of takeaway from UX research participant Pamela's feedback from usability test of accessibility
Header text: surveys - analyzing feedback

“The process of counting results (quantitative) or comments, feedback, suggestions, and other kinds of responses that aren’t as easily classified and tallied as numbers can be (qualitative).” – Susan Farrell (NN)

Header text: social media & outreach - building communities

“[D]igital social network that [enables users to] create and use social media accounts to communicate with loved ones and share news, ideas, and personal accomplishments”Interaction Design Foundation

Header text: thematic analysis - identifying concepts

“Identifying the main themes in data from user studies — such as: interviews, focus groups, diary studies, and field studies. – Maria Rosala (NN)

Header text: user interface design - composing experiences

Refers to the visual layout of the elements that a user might interact with in a website, or technological product. User interface designs must not only be attractive to potential users, but must also be functional and created with users in mind.” Pidoco

Header text: VPAT - Auditing Legal Compliance

A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT®) is a document that explains how information and communication technology (ICT) products such as software, hardware, electronic content, and support documentation meet (conform to) the Revised 508 Standards for IT accessibility.” Section 508.gov

Header text: Wireframes - Simplifying Structure & Flow

Wireframes visualize a user path or flow, as well as page layouts, information hierarchy, and even interactions. Depending on their purpose, they can vary in fidelity — from quick sketches to detailed representations of the final design.” Neilsen Norman Group