Balancing Human-Centered Design with Business Outcomes (Part 2: Shift from Design to Build)

Balancing Human-Centered Design with Business Outcomes (Part 2: Shift from Design to Build)

by Sarah Reid

https://by.dialexa.com/balancing-human-centered-design-business-outcomes-shift-design-build



Dialexa

We are on a mission to make every

company a great technology company.

We work with organizations to define and

execute digital transformation strategies to

improve business operations and customer

experiences. Our services include:

• Multi-Year Technology Roadmap

• Platform Engineering

• User Experience Design

• Custom Software Development

• Hardware Prototyping /IoT

There’s no doubt that design research provides the base necessary to create products that drive business outcomes. But research is just the first step in the product development process.

Get the full write up of this slideshare HERE

https://by.dialexa.com/balancing-human-centered-design-with-business-outcomes-research





The role of a design team isn’t just to conduct research or add aesthetics to a finished product. Design teams play a critical role in synthesizing research into tangible outcomes for a product and transitioning to the build phase.




To read more you can find the full article at https://by.dialexa.com/balancing-human-centered-design-

business-outcomes-shift-design-build



Managing Design/Development Overlap Through Hybrid Waterfall/Agile




Designing for business outcomes means creating products that are validated throughout the development process. This may sound like designing for business outcomes hinges on an agile methodology, but that’s not the case.


https://by.dialexa.com/dialexa-designing-for-business-outcomes




We’ve spent time discussing the waterfall vs. agile debate in the past, but not necessarily from a design perspective. There’s a fundamental challenge with each approach that can make it difficult to design for business outcomes:


https://by.dialexa.com/waterfall-vs-agile-is-it-still-worth-asking

https://by.dialexa.com/waterfall-vs-agile-is-it-still-worth-asking



• The issue with waterfall is that if you make everything perfect before moving into development, it could take so long that you fail to adjust to changing market needs.




• The issue with agile is that you may not have a fully baked idea but it needs to be implemented. Agile tends to make a designer look at the piece rather than the whole which could cause a seamless user experience to get lost in the shuffle.




Following a hybrid waterfall/agile approach can help you compensate for the challenges of each individual approach.




Developers and designers should be working together throughout the product creation process, but it’s important to structure the processes to support positive business outcomes.




Do you understand why design thinking is important, and how it can improve your business performance?

Download or free eBook:




3 Steps to Shift from Design to Build




Developers should be involved in your initial research activities. At the same time, you don’t just go from researching market needs to building a product. These are the steps to consider when shifting from product design to the actual build.




• Getting Stakeholders Involved in Concepts: When research is complete, you can go through different activities to get stakeholders to conceptualize the actual product. Story mapping can help you take a step beyond collecting a spreadsheet of user stories.




Use story mapping to think about each particular piece of a product—the purpose of each screen, the goal of each development phase, the job of each person involved in the development process, etc.




• Site Mapping: In this phase, you start to consider what you’re actually going to include in the product, whether it’s an application, a piece of hardware or something else. Start with a high level visual story, defining the site map through sketches.




From here, you can build a schematic or blueprint of how the application will actually work—a high level perspective of application pages and where certain features or user stories will live. From here, you can start getting concrete.




• Wire Framing (Where Build Overlap Begins): This is where you start putting structure and content into all of the screens of a site map. In wireframing, design works with developers to focus on product function rather than visual design.




By combining waterfall and agile at this stage, design can keep the build phase on track and ensure that user needs are continuously met—even if that means refining the original concepts.




People often assume design is relegated to the high-level aesthetics of a new product, but design thinking is really aboutdriving new product ideas to a point where they can meet market needs and help you realize competitive advantages. This is not just a high-level function.


https://by.dialexa.com/how-design-thinking-leads-to-real-competitive-advantages





PROPERTY OF DIALEXA LLC ©2017 - CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

Thank You

Doug Platts

VP of Marketing

[email protected]

If you are looking to undertake a digital transformation initiative, contact Dialexa today and see how we can help make your company a great technology company.

Get the full write up of this slideshare at https://

by.dialexa.com/balancing-human-centered-design-business-

outcomes-shift-design-build

mailto:[email protected]


