Gather Ideas

Define some users. Existing price conscious users, potential users (people who use Google Maps already), and maybe even other users that don’t seem like our users. We want to capture all the possible ideas, and get our brains going in all directions.

We ask many open-ended questions to get a picture of the different scenarios and usage. We ask the users, “How would you use this information?” to form an idea of the use cases.

We also want to develop alternative scenarios that allows us to generate some supporting concepts.

During this stage there will be lots of back and forth between talking to users, and getting out there in the real world to observe. Many brainstorming sessions will be held to dream up the different use cases, and of course, documentations. Mind maps and some card sorting would work great when juggling many different ideas

Communicate

This is when we hit the ground running. We will conceptualize the core concept and supporting concepts. Talking within the team and business owners to make sure everyone is on the same page. We want to define the relationships between the core concepts and supporting concepts, this will allow us to prioritize functions/features.

This is when we think of the actual product.

Does it have its own name?
How would we describe it to other people in one sentence?

We want to know what’s out there already to scope the product, so a competitive & comparative analysis would be necessary.

At this point, it might be good to write down a simple 1-page ‘product sheet’ to illustrate the concept.

Validate

We build and validate our concepts. This stage involves a lot of iterations. We would build a rapid prototype, this can be a paper sketch, or any other type of low-fidelity mockups. We show it to the users see how they would use it. This will help us refine the concept. We go through the iterations as many times as we feel comfortable doing.

We refine the prototype based on what we learn from the users to build high-fidelity prototypes. While the refinement is going on, we involve the dev/tech team and the business analysis; to get everyone’s input.

The thought is that this validation process allows us to build something quick, validate it against the product concept, and use cases. Refine it. Validate it. Repeat. The refinement process eases from prototypes into actual development, while the UX team still acts as support.

Many wireframes, prototypes, and development support later, our core concept should be developed. This means that there will be a beta product/feature/function that is ready to be rolled out.