In the world of graphic design, what do you think are the most important aspects to take into consideration when designing a product? Most of you are probably thinking maybe product scope, features, information architecture, user journeys, content, color scheme, layout, fonts, visual graphics … Well the answer is, all of the above. They are all of equal importance when it comes to designing a product. That is, because all the items added together are what create the products UX, user experience. Whether it be for web, mobile, IoT or chatbots, each aspect of the design has an integral part of forming the overall user experience.

One of the most insightful resources that has helped transform my thought process as a graphic designer has been the book Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden. Lean UX explores the ways in which traditional design processes have adapted to keep up with the ever-changing tech industry. One of the most important lessons I learned through reading this book is the understanding of design thinking, and how it is a mindset, not just business practice. For me, design thinking consists of taking a problem that our clients have, and figuring out how to solve them. Instead of focusing first on what features need to be included and what documents need to be created, our team focuses on what works and what doesn’t work.

In a sense, our design is a proposed business solution, a hypothesis. And the goal is to validate the proposed solution as quickly as possible through customer feedback. And they way that we validate these solutions at such a fast pace is through agile software development, and the process of rapid prototyping. ( You can learn more about these processes in Lean UX and The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.)  Having short project cycles allows for our team to have early deployments and it also allows us the ability to receive feedback as soon as possible. And as a graphic designer, getting feedback early and often helps me create the best possible solutions for our clients.

This process has become a staple for how we do business at Kova. Personally, I am able to work in a more dynamic and efficient way . As a team, we are able to work in a faster, more collaborative way. And as a company, we are able to deliver beautiful products to our clients.

Our motto is to test, fail, learn and test again. And the only way that we are able to do so without spending lots of time or money is through the Lean UX methodology.

Random Tidbit

Jeff recently hosted a book signing in Richmond at the Carmax headquarters and we were able to meet him and get him to sign our book. Total geek out moment.