Design thinking

• Consumer insights and rapid prototyping
• Quickly get beyond assumptions to know if we are building the right product
• Get beyond assumptions that can block effective solutions
• Good design is a competitive advantage.
• Understanding your user is the competitive edge

Discovery phase of User Research

Stakeholder and customer interviews

Business Model Canvas

• Trends in tech and social
• Efficiency >> Value
• You can compare your business to another competitor or benchmark in each box

Value Proposition Canvas

• Products and Services
• Gain Creator
• Pain Remover
• Understand the customer profile
• Pain reliever – already exists
• Gain creator – something new
• Compare value map and client profile to see where they align

Journey Map

• Visualize your research
• Done create one just to make one
• Tailor it to the project you are working on
• Usually it is printed out so you can see and discuss
• Put the timeline of the vision across the journey
• What are the patterns you are seeing? Use those as quotes
• Thinking, feeling, doing
• List the opportunities: ways the process can be improved

Story mapping

• At the end of the discovery phase
• More concreate about what we are creating
• What are the jobs and tasks that people have to do
• You can use the story map to guide your agile sprints

Growth hacker

• Marketer / front end coder / hacker
• Run a/b tests
• Create versions that can be quickly tested and changed

Usability Testing

• Do this to understand why people use or don’t like your site or service
• Get a better understanding of their behaviors
• We need to understand who we are building for.
• We need to be cure that we are creating value for that user.