Four: Professional Practice

Our focus this week is on the Professional Practice of UX. Most design firms have a process that includes the following steps. While listed here as a sequential process, the reality overlaps a bit and prototyping and testing should thread through each phase.

  1. Discovery
  2. Wire framing, prototyping and testing
  3. Design development and testing
  4. Content production and tech development
  5. Testing and QA
  6. Launch
For smaller projects these steps are sometimes combined and for larger projects expanded but important to note that the process involves rapidly testing ideas after understanding what the project objectives are and establishing a baseline for assessing the success of the prototypes.

REFERENCE
Success By Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers by David Sherwin [book]
Scaling Your UX Strategy by Robert Fabricant in Harvard Business Review

SAMPLE RFPs
Sample one
Sample two

ASSIGNMENT
The second part of the assignment has two objectives. The first is to get familiar and comfortable with using Balsamiq, a software tool for creating mockups. The second is objective is to have you focus on best practices in UX and translate your counter device to a software application. You can choose to mockup either a desktop application or a mobile device. Using Balsamiq, create at least 3 screens that explain the user experience of your application. One should be the first screen, with a clear invitation for the user to do something, the second screen should show how the user is prompted to customize the application to their particular need and the third should be the display screen that is the public-facing view of the one screen should be the application showing how the application accomplished the counting..  There is a brief tutorial of Balsamiq here. Focus your work on the core idea: Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication – Leonardo da Vinci