My design process under ideal conditions.
Explore & Discover
Who are my users, and what problem are they trying to solve? What data can I dig up? Are there experts I can tap into? Who (or what) is my competition, and what can I learn from them—both the good and the please-don’t-do-that? ChatGPT and Gemini have been amazing additions to this part of the process, as I use them to do deep research or just spitball ideas.
Find Opportunities
What pain points have surfaced? Am I iterating on an existing product or building from scratch? How can I make my users' lives easier? Where’s the opportunity to create a little unexpected delight? And most importantly—how do I measure success?
Sketch, mockup, and share
AI has disrupted the old model. Now, this may include writing and refining prompts in ChatGPT or Gemini, using those prompts to get wireframes from Motiff, and using that output to create high-fidelity mocks in Figma. AI aside, I still use whiteboarding sessions, FigJam, or manually created wireframes and high-fidelity mockups to bring the vision to life.
Prototype & Test
A clickable Figma prototype may not be pixel-perfect yet, but it's great for user testing and receiving stakeholder feedback. Intuition < User Feedback < Intuition + User feedback.
Iterate, iterate, iterate
Once testing wraps up, I finalize designs and prep for dev handoff. But the work doesn’t stop at launch. Post-release, I analyze data, gather user feedback, and refine as needed because great UX is never done—it evolves.