Starting a New UX Project

- When I start a new UX project, two of the most important things I need to identify are the level of effort needed for the project and deliverables I need to produce. I use a few specific techniques to clarify these objectives. When the new project begins, I come to the first project meeting with a list of questions regarding the project and our user.

My list of questions takes the form of a kick-off meeting questionnaire with questions such as: who is our target user? What are their top tasks? How does this project make our organization more successful?

These are a sampling of the questions I ask. I typically go through these questions verbally with the team. By doing this, it serves multiple purposes.

It identifies the critical UX questions that we need to answer in order to make the product successful. By asking these questions in an open way, it serves to reinforce what we know about the user and identifies gaps in our knowledge. And so wherever there is a gap and we don't know the answer, we can add a placeholder for potential UX work.

So this in turn reduces resistance to key UX activities because the team acknowledges that we don't have answers to these critical questions. Once the gaps are identified, I can create a UX project plan and corresponding timeline to engage in my work. Hopefully, I can sit down with the project owner to plug in our newly made UX timeline into the master project plan.

Finally, this process sets up an expectation for the UX contributions, not only on this project, but for future projects as well by educating others on what we do. This approach introduces UX as a data-driven group with established methodologies. So for example, if I ask questions in a kick-off meeting such as, what are the user's top three tasks when using this website?

And if no one can answer this question with data, then I say, "Okay, let's find out the answer. " I then mark down that UX needs three days of research included in this project to identify and understand the user's main tasks. Then that research work and deliverable goes into my project timeline.

This approach allows me to create a meaningful UX timeline for my project and it won't blindside the team. It should fit nicely into both Agile and Waterfall development processes. All these questions and interactions with the team helps to establish my role and expertise while exposing them to my UX work and hopefully, the result will be a deeper understanding of UX and a greater acceptance of our process.

These tools not only shape our effort on the current project, but they lay the foundation for our future projects as well.