Work from 2017
User research has been central to my work. At Plume, Talk to the City, Open Ballot, and Spont, my work has been informed by research. In many cases I've run structured research myself. I see research as an essential feedback loop for grounding design decisions in user behavior. Otherwise it's guesswork, and you won't even know where you failed…
https://x.com/DesignUXUI/status/715246993283555328?s=20
I'm a fan of Design Sprint and its user research framework developed by Michael Margolis at Google Ventures. In this article, I describe how I adapted a method built for digital products to improve the communication of a physical one. Grandma Zophia Meals makes traditional Polish soups from all-natural, dried ingredients. I used the Design Sprint framework to improve the product's shelf communication and designed five additions to the series.
My work covered the full project: strategy, user research, three design iterations, final packaging design, color scheme, illustration, and print production.
We ran three Design Sprint cycles of five days each. Each sprint covered the full loop: aligning stakeholders, generating design directions, creating prototypes and validating them with real customers.
Each sprint began with interviews with the company's stakeholders and domain experts. From these we built a customer map and collaboratively generated a wide range of design directions. I then created a realistic mockup of the packaging.