Category: Design

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Design Web design WordPress

WordPress Support

I’ve had recent enquiries from new clients about WordPress support which has been a service that I’ve offered for many years. I thought that I’d give a little detail on what this process looks like.

I start this process with a consultation where we look at your WordPress website and discuss your requirements for support. Next I’ll login and assess the health of your website and feedback what you could or should do and how I can help with that.

This is a tried and tested process which I’ve used to onboard clients that are still with me now. My service can include WordPress maintenance should you require this support. So if you feel that your WordPress website is a bit beyond you and you’d like some help and support just get in touch.

WordPress is a great system and I’m happy to help with a jargon free expert appraisal of your WordPress website.

Categories
Design Design Ops Design Team UX UX Design

UX Cross Functional Collaboration

I’ve been looking at cross functional collaboration and training after reading posts on UX forums. It’s interesting stuff and also the views that go with this subject. I think it’s important and something that I’ve done for all of my design career.

Briefly, some benefits that can result from a well trained UX designer in your product team include improved collaboration and efficiency with wider product team. This results in a quicker time bringing products to market. A range of diverse perspectives will lead to more creative solutions and improved team adapatability.

Along with improved employee engagement there are clearly advantages to deepening your understanding the way your product team works. So start today and improve your collaboration and efficiency working with yur product team.

Categories
Creative Design Digital Photo Projects Photography Poems Product design UX Design

A Creative Future

I’m pleased to reflect on my recent career and the diverse nature of creativity and projects that I’m currently working on. My Lead UI/UX Designer role is winding up as I prepare for part-time study in photography. I want to continue working in the UX field as I really enjoy the creative aspect of my role and working with design and product teams.

I’m excited about doing more photography and starting new projects with old-school film and digital cameras. This work will be focusing on landscape and portrait initially but I will be working in other photographic disciplines going forward.

I’m also working on my solo singer/guitarist set with a solo gig lined up in Manchester in early September. This is a welcome addition to my band which have been going for a few years now.

I’m also writing more and working on my own songs for both the band and my solo work. I started writing every day in 2020 during lock down which I’ve kept up. I’ve started a book project which I hope to self publish when I feel ready.

So lots going on and the weather is great outside, whats not to like! I feel that these creative projects feed into each other and I’m really enjoying this experience. I’m building a creative future and I feel very positive about that prospect.

If you are feeling creative I would encourage you to just do it as there is no time like the present!

Categories
Design Design Ops Design Team Product design UI Usability UX UX Design

Internal Design Agency

I’m working on improving our product design across our live NHS solutions for our company. This process is to formalise our design resource with an organised approach to production with our wider product team. To implement this I’m starting to run my design team as an internal design agency with a group of ‘clients’ which are our business stakeholders and senior product owners.

Introducing a unified approach to our product design has multiple advantages and this will help us to innovate and explore the best ways to help our end users engage with and use our products. On an internal level we can manage and guide our stakeholders and product owners using a design to production process that is clear and accountable.

We can approach projects in the same way with clear phases of requirements gathering and ideation. Then moving to wireframe and prototype design and iteration. Once signed off we can support the development and test teams with efficient design hand overs to build out the agreed features that match the final designs.

As we progress I can refine our design to production process to streamline the way my design team works within our wider product team. I aim to fully integrate with the wider business and become an even more valuable internal digital design resource.

Categories
Design Design Ops UX UX Design

UX Benchmarking

I’ve been working on implementing a UX Benchmarking strategy for our products. We’re gathering more data now and it’s going to be a busy year for us with new products coming to market.

UX Benchmarking is a great way to show our progress as our products develop and we get better at what we do. Being able to demonstrate how our users are responding to our systems in the real work will be great for our stakeholders.

Also UX Benchmarking is a valuable process and putting together our process has been an enjoyable process.

Categories
Design Design Ops Design Team

Design Leadership

I’ve been reading around the subject of design leadership to apply to my current role. As I lead a design team I want to produce and see created the highest quality design work. For this to happen I aim to inspire my team members as much as possible.

Clear direction, team motivation and communication are key and this can be challenging as all of my team work remotely. This is the workplace post Covid so I use collaborative software and team calls to try and bridge this gap.

I trust my team to be as creative as possible as this is where innovation starts and seeing great design going into our product teams and the wider business is a good feeling!

Categories
Design Design Ops UX

Design Teams

I’ve been working on expanding my design team to further support our product owners and development teams. Increased design capacity can help to support a wide range of visualisation and creative outputs that will benefit the whole company.

Getting the right fit is really improtant and ensuring that a new designer feels comfortable and welcome in the design team is key. Stakeholder engagement and being able to support projects in the discovery and elaboration phases is also on my radar. Also being able to provide prototypes for the sales team as they engage new clients becomes possible with more design team members.

I look forward to the new year with increased design capacity and more hands on my design deck. So we’re able to tackle the creative challenges that the new year will being!

Categories
Design Design Ops Design Systems Digital Product design

UI Review and Design Systems

I’m leading on a UI review of one of our premium products looking at common UI components. This is to unify our front end to further improve the professional look and feel for this product and to ensure that our screens reflect our brand.

I’m also looking at UI consistency so that common elements render in the same way across all screens. This process helps this premium product to look professional and can be easily identified as one of our branded products in the marketplace.

Having a comprehensive collection of UI elements ensures that nothing is missed in our style guide. This helps to speed and streamline our development and test processes and increases our speed to market for new features.

This is also a positive step towards a future design system which would include code snippets for the UI elements. I’m very happy to contribute to this production process as it helps new starters and junior members of our scrum teams understand our approach to contemporary software production.

Categories
Design Digital Product design UX UX Design

Design Concepts

I’m currently working ahead of production on design concepts for our projects that are in the discovery phase. Based on stakeholder requirements these concepts help to flesh out the digital solution that will eventually be built by our development teams.

The concepts will typically cover the key screens that will enable users to perform certain tasks or access what they need from the specific service. I design the screens in Figma which are then built into prototypes that allow stakeholders and product owners to visualise how the digital solution will look. They can then review, discuss, feedback and adjust the concepts which can easily be edited.

These prototypes give insight to the product’s user journey and allow for early user testing to validate the design concepts. I enjoy this creative process as it helps early understanding of a proposed digital solution and it is an efficent process for digital product production.

Categories
Design Mobile Product design UX

Mobile Competition

I’ve been looking at the competition for our app in the healthcare sector here in the UK. It’s a good process to review what’s available to our clients and the NHS trusts that we supply.

There is a limit to what you can see without access to these systems but you can see reviews, ratings and end user feedback. You can also see what examples of the mobile screens from marketing material and app store submissions.

Put all this together and you get a feeling for the UX and then I can compare our app against the wider market. This is useful info which can be fed back to the business, it will also give us an idea of how we can improve our app’s design.

A product design review is something I like to carry out on a periodic basis as this helps to keep the look and feel fresh. A review also allows for new feature concepts to be considered by stakeholders and product owners.