When producing a design, I look for inspiration from competitors and trending themes for what I am creating. Then I sketch out a plethora of ideas onto paper to ignite the creative process. I will pick the top 3 ideas and create comps which are then presented to the client. After one is chosen, revisions are made to customize it to their preference.

When creating effective and easy to use user experiences, the first step is to establish the target market through user research and persona creation.

Keeping the key users in mind, the next step is to review content and determine what should be kept, altered, or removed. The checklist I follow is:
1. Usefulness and Relevance (Does it meet user needs, goals, interests, business goals, and current?)
2. Clarity and Accuracy (Is it understandable, organized logically, coherently without errors?)
3. Influence and Engagement (Does the content use appropriate techniques to influence or engage customers?)
4. Completeness (does the content include all, little, or too much relevant information?)
5. Voice and Style (does the content have a brand voice that is consistent?)
6. Usability and Findability (is it easy to scan or read?)

Then I utilize this website to determine my personal heuristic evaluation rating and disperse it amongst the team to determine their perspectives. Once all the information is collected, a combined score is utilized to establish where improvement is needed most. With this knowledge, information architecture is the next challenge to resolve. This is done by creating a site map through card-sorting surveys. The survey results are the grouping of information provided by the website, categorized in words that are user defined. Often, I feel that a bottom-up approach is the most appropriate method for organizing hierarchy as titles on a navigation should be defined by all the content that follows. This also helps keep within the parameters of a 3 click methodology.

After the site map is developed, usability testing is done to confirm the hypothesis developed in previously stated research. This involves an initial script introduction, a pre-test questionnaire, scenarios and tasks, and then a post-test questionnaire.

I then create a presentation with my team that includes an executive summary, introduction, methodologies used, results, recommendations, and conclusion. After approval, comps are made, then prototypes (preferred software is Adobe XD), and continued usability testing is done. Testing and the maintenance of general surveys should be undertaken in multiple iterations to make sure a user experience is adapting to the standards of design.