What are you like?
One of the main things I’m trying to figure out when I’m on a designer’s portfolio is the answer to the question, “what’s this person like to work with?” I assume you’re here trying to figure that out too. So, I’d like to use this page to give a little insight into what it’s like to work with me.
Intake & Initial Research
My process typically begins with asking a lot of questions. I usually try to keep this just shy of a really annoying amount (at least the product owners/managers I’ve worked with haven’t complained yet). My goal is to uncover pain points and understand what’s trying to be accomplished. If the design work involves improving a product/feature that already exists I’ll get a demo of it from a product owner or someone who’s deeply familiar, and then ask for access to play around with it in an environment that won’t break anything. I’ll also look to get hold of any previous designs/research that exists.
“Brandon is a very seasoned and insightful designer and a pleasure to work with. While many designers need an exact brief of what you want, Brandon helps in the ideation process (which is great when you don’t have the exact vision of your project yet) making it a more collaborative and helpful experience. He is consistent and timely and always delivers excellent work.”
If I’m working on a brand new product/feature I’ll find out what other things are out there that are similar and determine what type of research needs to be done. If I can get access to demos or trials of competitive products, I’ll test them out. This was fairly easy when working on website and eComm projects, but enterprise SaaS has proven far more difficult. If I can’t get access to a demo, I’ll typically resort to YouTube to see if I can find a product in use outside of a glamourized marketing context (I’ve had decent success with finding training videos).
Collaboration
Aside from product owners and stakeholders, I talk with the engineers to understand any kind of technical constraints I’ll have to design around. Few things are worse than turning over designs only to have them immediately shot down because they ignored back-end architecture. I know it sounds buzzwordy, but I truly do like to work cross-functionally with everyone involved in a design project. I like to break down the perception that only designers can design – I’ve gotten some great ideas by talking with developers.
“Brandon’s UX designs are always well thought out and edge cases are identified making it very easy for the development team to implement. He’s a pleasure to work with.”
I didn’t accidentally forget to replace this, I just thought it would be funny to stick a stock image of “collaboration” in here.
Flows & Sketches
Once I feel like I have a good handle on all the foundational pieces I’ll put together a flow using Miro (or, more recently FigJam), with the goal of addressing any edge cases. If there’s no obvious flow, this will be the stage to do some research activities, whether that’s interviews or card-sorting to understand how people either typically use or want to use the product.
After that groundwork is laid I’ll brainstorm and sketch out ideas. I’d love to claim that I always start with paper prototyping, but honestly, I’ve been using InVision Freehand as a digital sketchpad (so much that they contacted me to find out what I was using it for) and that’s been working really well. With sketches in tow, I’ll go back to the PO/PM to present the ideas, discuss, and revise. I also typically shop the designs around to the internal design team for additional feedback.
“I enjoyed working with Brandon on various projects at iCIMS. He is an outstanding product designer to work with. He values the importance of research and understanding the problem at hand. Brandon also ensures the best solution is being provided through collaboration with all team members and customers involved throughout the process.”
Prototyping & Handoff
Once we’re at a point where it feels like everyone’s comfortable with the direction it’s onto prototyping/high-fi comps. I’ll typically prototype “happy paths” for a feature (aka, the most expected route for a user to take). If specific edge cases need to be addressed I’ll prototype those too. Then it’s off to presenting to stakeholders and users for feedback. This typically results in another few rounds of revisions.
Once I’ve got the blessing to proceed to development I’ll prepare my files for handoff – I’ve honestly done this a variety of ways depending on the granularity needed by the development team. Also, and I realize this is just semantics, but “handoff” makes it sound like the designs are delivered and it’s onto the next thing – during development, I like to stick around to answer questions and provide any additional designs that may be needed.
These are some detailed specs I created for a reusable component to be added into our design system.
Rinse & Repeat
Then we release the feature and users will tell us what we could have done better (or what they absolutely love, sometimes that happens too!) and the process starts all over again.
Outside of product work I also enjoy contributing to design systems. I like creating use cases/rules for how and when to use components and then building out the variants in Figma.
If you’ve made it all the way to the end of this page, then congrats! Hopefully, this has provided a preview into what it might be like to work with me. If you have any questions or just want to say “hey!” feel free to connect through the links below.