Designing the Design Process

I've learnt a lot in the last three semesters which I spent abroad in Switzerland and Germany as well as in the UK, studying, interning and working in different fields of the creative industries.

A digital media module which I undertook in Zurich ignited a passion for usability and experience design. Working in the publishing industry in Munich gave me an insight into how old and new media work together (or sometimes not) and taught me traditional, analogue user interaction devices such as typography, layout or visual storytelling. When I returned to Bristol I was lucky enough to work with City ID, a renowned information design studio whose work I've admired since I first came to this city. They are a multi-disciplinary team of information designers, planners, urbanists, interaction designers, cartographers and product designers. That's an incredible mix of creativity, knowledge and strategic thinking which I had the opportunity to feed from.

I had the chance to dip in and out of different interesting projects, picking up useful knowledge and inspiring ideas to take and research further. When I was offered the opportunity to undertake a personal project--which would make a good portfolio piece and something to take home after the experience--I decided to combine what inspired me in Zurich and what I had learned at City ID and create an educational poster out of it.

The visiting lecturer who taught on the digital media module in Zurich is a user experience designer at Skype and she's not only very knowledgable but also very creative (check out her recent presentation on sketchnotes). Her lecture about the UX design process was based on the model of an iceberg. The visual part of a design is only the tip of it, the actual process lies underneath the surface. I took this model and started reading into Jesse James Garret's ideas and models described in his book "The Elements of User Experience". Talking to the interaction designers and information planners at City ID and reading through many of the great books in their library made me realise that there are a lot of models and ways to describe this process all underpinned with a myriad of principles, methods and techniques--but they all come down to a cyclical nature. A user centred design process is an iterative cycle where every step is evaluated against initially identified requirements of the users and then changed and improved until these requirements are met. For every stage of this process there are various principles and techniques that can be employed to move onto the next stage. At City ID I learnt that it is crucial to consider how a user interacts with your product. They design orientation and wayfinding solutions for cities around the world and the aim is to create an identity or sense of place through the experience that people have with the system. It is important to go through the information requirements at every stage of a user's journey to make sure that people get exactly the information they need at any given point following the principle of progressive disclosure.

Interestingly this also applies to webdesign or even editorial design. Working at the magazine in Munich, I experienced how a reader's "journey" is carefully planned and how visual cues, narratives, conventions as well as breaking with conventions impact on the reader's experience. A user centred design process is a universal principle and the key to an effective, efficient, engaging and intuitive product, interface or service in any field of design.

I'm very grateful that I had the opportunity to learn all this so far and to visualise the results of my learning. I've only just started to unravel the world of usability and experience design and I'm sure that I will learn a lot more in years to come. After I've finished my degree next year, I'd love to study either Information Design or User Experience Design at MA level.

I've set up a microsite to give you more information on the UCD poster project. You can download the poster for free as PDF or JPEG. You can also get a printed copy in A1 when you contribute a donation towards the cost of printing. What's left over goes towards my education. The poster is released under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to share it, use it or improve it as long as it's non-commercial and with attribution.

Thanks again to Eva-Lotta for the insightful workshops in Zurich and City ID for the experience and opportunity. You've started something.