Design thinking: a journey into co-design with our UX team
29/06/2023
A few years ago, I fondly remember taking part in a workshop with PwC Italy on the topic of design thinking.
At that time, Aton was already attentive to user experience–driven design, which involves alternating creative, divergent phases with convergent ones, where ideas are rationalised and tested with the client.
Today, we have a dedicated team focusing on these aspects, and one of my dreams has come true: making the design of new application solutions a systematic process, moving through co-design with our clients and their users.
What I can reveal is that this approach has allowed us to deliver innovative solutions and avoid costly rework in the advanced stages of implementation – something that often happened when projects were developed starting from a purely textual functional requirements document, without taking user interaction into account.
We had a chat with Federica, who leads our UX team.
To organise a co-design session effectively, it is essential to create a comfortable environment where the various stakeholders feel at ease and ready to contribute their experience to the project.
It should be a place where the designer plays the crucial role of both guide and interpreter for the different participants who, with their diverse skills and roles, must feel comfortable sharing ideas, pain points, and input for the project design.
The process begins with a clear agenda of activities to facilitate the timing of the different design phases, and then moves on to hands-on work on a real or virtual workspace, where canvases, post-its, and any other tools that support participants’ expression can be applied.
Clear communication, asking the right questions, and putting people first are key elements in this stage.
To prevent the working group from becoming static and to ensure that all alternative options are considered, it is good practice to repeat the same questions in different or parallel co-design sessions.
It is essential to always encourage all participants to remain critical, and to welcome dissent or challenges to the prevailing opinion.
The UI is one of the final parts of the project, and to get there you first need to go through essential steps such as:
To test the most complex interfaces, we create interactive prototypes that allow us to collect user feedback.
Through listening, observation, and setting up various user tests – both guided and unguided – we can identify areas for improvement and the issues encountered by users.
In this way, we can move forward with a more effective and efficient definition of the solution, always keeping in mind that a product’s design must be:
To turn stakeholders’ dreams into reality, in addition to smart design, you also need an excellent development team.
With the right methods of sharing and communication, the project can be replicated and made functional using a range of increasingly advanced tools.
Constant alignment and a strong connection between the design and development worlds ensure that the product is well-organised and synchronised.
One of the most recent projects was carried out with a client who asked us to support them through a series of workshops. The goal was to create a next-generation B2B portal solution that you will soon see among our success stories.
The opportunity to work collaboratively and to gather feedback and ideas directly from the members of the working group made the project dynamic and the result satisfying for all parties involved.
