My Approach

What I've learnt about design over the years.

It's not easy to explain what my approach to design really is.
I've faced so many projects from such different industries that it's quite impossible to shape it in a unique way.  What you'll find next is a list of the main design process phases and my approach to each one of them. 

"What makes the difference between good or bad designers is not what they do, but how they do it".

USER RESEARCH

It always begins with a problem to solve.

Over the years I understood how research is important to give a deeper understanding of users' needs and behaviours.

I can lead interview sessions with real users from set-up to execution. I learnt a variety of observation testing methods to find experience and usability issues.

I'm firmly convinced that time spent in research is not just the best way to get useful insights but it also helps to better define the scope of a project, save energies and lower costs.

COLLABORATIVE DESIGN

Together is better.

When many stakeholders sit at the project table it's time to take their hands and bring them into design process with me.

As a designer I never put my self in the shoes of a "problem solver hero", but I'd rather be the one who facilitates collaborative design moments where people share and discuss on problems, opportunities and solutions.

Design Thinking help me a lot, especially co-design workshops in which I've always felt huge involvement and collaboration between participants.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Make it better, not perfect.

Data-driven design is the one I really prefer.
It basically consists in developing a minimum viable product (MVP) and begin the process of test-and-learn throughout weekly sprint iterations. I usually do experimental design to explore commercial opportunities, collect quantitative data and justify a needed business case to start a project.

Even if It's not easy to make companies accept the risk of failure, every time I had the chance to apply this methodology, it turned in a success both in terms of final product and stakeholders involvement.

INTERACTION DESIGN

Experience is like a story to tell.

After defining the right problems to solve and collecting business requirements and goals, it's time to dive into solution fit.

As an interaction designer I always start from mapping experiences producing flowcharts, storyboards, userflows, and other useful visual representations.

When possible I like to share everything with stakeholders, within dedicated workshops, in order to analyse and evaluate all scenarios especially those beyond the happy-flows.

UX DESIGN

Wireframes and prototypes.

When comes to design screens my passion and background experience come to light. Over the years I learnt how to combine rapid prototyping, interaction, motion, and visual design to transform problems into solutions.

I perfectly know that everything I've designed must be coded at some point. Thanks to my technical background I can keep a open collaboration with developers creating even more complex prototypes and providing functional/design specification.

USER TESTING

Users have always the last word.

Ok I have just designed tons of wireframe and shared with stakeholders. It seems working well! Am I done?

Absolutely not! I can't say it untill I don't see users interacting with what I designed. Over the years I learnt to create interactive prototypes at different level of complexity to test my solutions with real users, ask for feedbacks, collect insights and iterate on them until they're ready to be coded. 

Actually, my work should never end even after final lounch. As UX designer I feel responsable for monitoring and continuously improving design.

And here we start again from beginning.

UX COMMUNICATING

The need of advocate and evangelize UX.

Nowadays it's quite common to find UX designers or even teams inside a huge number of digital companies. However I still find myself in contests where UX is still a blurry discipline. This might turn into bad enagagement and lack of design activities.

Over the last 5 years I felt the need to care about this aspect. I've learnt to wrap up my activities into eye catching presentations and share them during project retrospective meetings.

I also keep frequently informal meetings in which I and my collegues spread the "UX verbo" within the company underlining the importance of a customer centricity approach and showing how we can concretely help other teams on daily basis.