{"id":7859,"date":"2015-09-11T12:21:31","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T19:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proxystudio.uxpin.com\/?p=7859"},"modified":"2020-04-29T15:49:05","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T22:49:05","slug":"when-the-best-ux-design-process-isnt-a-process-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uxpin.com\/studio\/blog\/when-the-best-ux-design-process-isnt-a-process-at-all\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Best UX Design Process Isn\u2019t A Process At All"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is your process working for you or against you? Are you sure you know the answer?<\/p>\n

Design process gets a lot of typing action. The online article pile collects more opinions every day. To be successful, they say, you must have a repeatable process. You can\u2019t win on dumb luck. Not more than a few times. And man do we love to jump in. We can\u2019t get enough of those design process debates.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve gone through all the possibilities, too. Over the past couple of decades, we\u2019ve seen and tried every process we could. We\u2019ve got LEAN. We\u2019ve got Agile with a capital A (despite that almost no one is strict about it). Before that, we had User Centered Design (which then became \u201cdesign thinking\u201d). Before that, it may have just been called \u201cwinging it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"image00\"<\/p>\n

Photo credit: Dean Meyers<\/a>. Creative Commons<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Has the hype about process helped us? Does your<\/i> process stick to the rules the world keeps trying to lay out for you? Does it even stick to your own<\/i> rules? It\u2019s easy to \u00a0latch on to the first thing you try and turn it into a life lesson. But the truth is, the best design process is a flexible process. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been walking into corporate and startup conference rooms as a consultant for the last 10 years or so, and as an in-house design-slinger for a few years before that. If I\u2019ve learned anything, it\u2019s that absolutely no one has a process they can rely on all of the time.<\/p>\n

Constraints change on every project \u2014 resources, time, budgets, skills, technology \u2014 you name it. If it affects a project, it\u2019ll be different next time around than it was this time. You can meditate on your theoretical process all you want. That very real project you\u2019re about to start is going to kick you in the head.<\/p>\n

Process may be repeatable, but it doesn\u2019t guarantee success. It can\u2019t. There are too many variables on any given project, not the least of which are the skill sets and motivations of the people involved, which can make a dramatic difference from one day to the next. Success is a vague and elusive thing on the best of days. We can\u2019t possibly expect to achieve it in its many forms by applying the same process template to every layer of complexity it throws over us. We\u2019d spend half our time redefining \u201csuccess\u201d just to make it fit what we get.<\/p>\n

\u201cWinging it,\u201d it turns out, has merit.<\/p>\n

Running with Scissors: The Value of Improvising With Tools<\/b><\/h2>\n

Jared Spool has done some research on this. You know the guy \u2014 he\u2019s the one who\u2019s been running a design research company<\/a> and think tank since the \u201890s . Few people have spent more time talking to designers and companies than Jared. <\/p>\n

Know what process he\u2019s learned is the one employed by the most consistently successful design teams? It\u2019s the same one I find every time I walk into one of those conference rooms with a great team.<\/p>\n

The improvised process. The one defined specifically for that project, and often not defined at all.<\/p>\n

\"image02\"<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the teams that do measurably good work on a regular basis, with the fewest issues and the fewest failures, are the ones without<\/i> a de facto process. They\u2019re teams which devise a custom process for every project, and frequently go into a project without one at all. Conversely, the teams which most consistently accomplish the mediocre \u2014 that dirty, awful word \u2014\u00a0are the ones who live and die by their processes.<\/p>\n

I know. It\u2019s nuts. But is it? Think it through.<\/p>\n

The teams who succeed the most are the teams full of people who work well together \u2014 who communicate<\/i> well together \u2014 and who have a broad range of skills and tools they can apply at any given moment. They approach problem-solving in a way that works with the constraints of the situation. They have all the UX tools you can find \u2014 strategy definition, user research, UI design, prototyping, usability testing, data analysis, and on and on. To do their work, they pull out what they need, when they need it. <\/p>\n