ABOUT
Hello, I’m Christopher, UX researcher and product designer based in sunny
San Diego.
I study people, their behaviors and motives in order to create elegant, functional and seamless experiences.
My passion lies in collecting and making sense of data, perfecting the fine details of interactions and visual assets, and helping guide the overall direction of the product or service with a holistic approach.
PROCESS
4. Testing
I believe usability testing should be conducted early and repeatedly. Methods used early on such as diary studies and surveys could be deployed again. I’m fond of A/B testing for digital products while “wizard of oz” techniques might be simulated to test service designs.
3. Designing
I always start with pen and paper, to sketch and wireframe visual assets and layouts that reflect research findings and design directions.
From styles guides and custom icons to mockups and high fidelity interactive prototypes, I strive to create pixel perfect visual components that meet WCAG accessibility standards.
2. Understanding
Ideally with an abundance of both qualitative and quantitative data now, I will begin sense-making by journey mapping, affinity diagramming and by building personas.
By assigning weight to issues and tallying the frequencies at which they occur, I try to logically and systematic make sense of seemingly abstract qualitative data. New insights then help me transition into brainstorming and rapid prototyping while focusing on embracing ambiguity and diverse approaches.
1. Discovering
To make all design efforts effective and worthwhile, I often start my process by conducting stakeholder/internal interviews to identify known facts, issues, and contextual constraints. This is also a good time to conduct secondary research to mine for existing data and known facts to avoid wasting time.
It is also now that I identify knowledge gaps, possible assumptions needing to be validated or discarded to then decide on the appropriate data collection methods to use and questions to ask. Methods such as field observations and ethnographic studies might also be utilized to supplement user interviews and surveys.