The goal of designing my own website is to create a website for anyone interested in my professional achievements and goals that is simple to update, worth reading and easy to look at on any device in any browser. All updates to this project can be found on the main project page.

My second week of studying UX design, I focused on the strategy phase. Last week in the discovery phase, we spent time learning about our goal, our audience and our strengths and weaknesses. The Strategy phase is when we get to combine those things into something useful.

Prioritizing and Brainstorming

The journey map is going to tell you where your problems lie. Now it’s time to figure out which problems are a big deal and which ones can wait until later. Remember to keep your goal in mind when prioritizing.

Once the problems are prioritize then it comes the fun part: brainstorming. Remember to only brainstorm. Come up with as many answers as you can to the problems regardless of their feasibility. Ask questions like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if <persona> could… ?”

Storyboarding

Storyboarding is like waterboarding, but instead of using water you tie your subject down and bore them into submission with crappy stories. No, wait…

Storyboarding is actually drawing out what would happen if your personas used your brainstormed ideas. Do this until you have a story that you believe your personas will like being involved in. If able, talk with users that the personas represent and get their opinions on the stories.

For more about storyboarding, check out this series on Storyboarding and UX [Part 1], [Part 2] and [Part 3].

Prototyping and Testing

Now we’re at the point that we have good ideas that our personas like so we have to figure out the best ways to make those good ideas happen. This is not the time to make your perfect solution. It’s not the time to make wireframes. It’s quick and dirty prototyping time! Do enough to make it work then test it out then fix the things that don’t work until they do work. A great way to make sure your prototypes are quick are to set a time limit. One way is to spend 5 minutes coming up with 6-8 concepts. After that find someone to critique your idea then narrow down your prototypes to 2-3 good ideas (http://www.uxapprentice.com/strategy/)

As much as I love my technology, I will probably use paper prototypes because it’s easier to quickly come up with ideas.

Site/App Map

With prototyping done, it’s time to set out the plan for your project. If the project is a website, this is when you come up with your site map. Since you want to create the most important, goal oriented parts of your project to happen first, it’s important to highlight the pieces needed for your minimum viable product (MVP). Your MVP is your barebones product. There are no bells, no whistles no extra offers, just the basic parts.

The strategy phase is all about finding out what you want to do to fix your problems and make your personas happen. We’re not fixing things yet, we are just finding out the best ways to make those fixes.

Next week, getting down to business with the Design Phase.