Far too often, companies and projects face obstacles that are deemed insurmountable by many. That's where we come alive!
Our Approach
Leading with Empathy and Data-Driven Design Decisions
If you want to build a successful product, application, program or service that adds business value and provides users with something they want to use, there is a tried-and-true process to follow and ensure success.
Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a creative approach to problem solving that is used to understand the people for which we are writing policies, creating programs and services. It is a process that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor made to suit their needs.
Understand the people, gaining empathy for what problems the people face is key when coming up with solutions for those problems that are specifically designed for them and WITH them. Our user researchers derive insights gained through various interviews and observations with the users, get feedback, iterate and revise our designs until we meet or exceed all expectations.
When you follow the Human Centered Design process, you will find there are no problems that are unsolvable; only pain points and opportunities for improvement.
- With Business Thinking, the client provides the requirements and the developers implement solutions to satisfy them.
- With Design Thinking, we take the time to understand the people, gain empathy for what problems generated the requirements in the first place and address those pain points; preventing the root cause from happening.
Our approach focuses on evaluating the root causes of the problems from many different perspectives. Instead of relying on the Subject-Matter Experts (SMEs), we use their knowledge as a starting point on which to base our own user research, before our team engages with the actual users, to discover and document the journey through many view points.
| Strategy | Listen to and understand the people you're trying to help | Be open to alternative ways of thinking | Get help from others | Try many ideas, even strange-sounding ones | Adopt an entrepreneurial attitude | Accept and learn from the inevitable failures | Try and try again |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What You Learn | Empathy | Creativity | Teamwork | Brainstorming | Risk-taking | Humility | Resilency |
| Strategy | What You Learn |
|---|---|
| Listen to and understand the people you're trying to help | Empathy |
| Be open to alternative ways of thinking | Creativity |
| Get help from others | Teamwork |
| Try many ideas, even strange-sounding ones | Brainstorming |
| Adopt an entrepreneurial attitude | Risk-taking |
| Accept and learn from the inevitable failures | Humility |
| Try and try again | Resilency |
Table content from The Power of Unsolvable Problems The Wall Street Journal
Innovation Without Limits:
- Blue-Sky Thinking: Without constraints, designers can explore ideas that might seem impossible or impractical at first.
- Emerging Technologies: Leveraging new and unexplored technologies can lead to the creation of entirely new products or services.
- Radical Solutions: Solving complex problems with out-of-the-box thinking can lead to radical innovations that revolutionize industries.
Holistic Problem Solving:
- Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration: By engaging experts from various fields, you can create multifaceted solutions that consider all aspects of a problem.
- Global Impact: Addressing global challenges without boundaries allows for solutions that can be adapted and applied across different cultures and societies.
Our HCD Process
If you want to build a successful product, application, program or service that adds business value and provides users with something they want to use, there is a tried-and-true process to follow and ensure success.
Learning directly from users, discovering pain points and opportunities for improvement
When leading a team, we analyze your existing and target users directly to learn what problems need to be solved instead of solely relying on the input or feedback from Stakeholders and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). We then create artifacts like this Customer Journey Map communicating what we’ve learned from users to visualize the process of each user persona; highlighting pain points and finding opportunities for improvement.
NOTE: Journey mapping is just 1 of 80 different methods, across all 6 phases of the HCD process, that I have to use and help you.
We conduct user research
- Understand the goals of the project
- Interview and observe users completing the tasks to find pain points and opportunities for improvement
- Captures baseline qualitative and quantitative metrics
- Creates visual artifacts to validate with stakeholders
Rapidly prototype
- Create low-fidelity designs in Figma for first round of user testing
- Capture feedback from users and observations from testers
- Design high-fidelity, interactive and responsive, HTML Prototypes for a 1:1 representation of what the final product will be implemented in a desktop, tablet or mobile device
- Revise as needed based on feedback and observations
Test with users
- Conduct usability testing to ensure the designs align with the project goals
- Test that the designs are accessible within the HTML Prototypes
The Result
By involving users in every step of the design process, we create products that are useful, usable, and delightful. We reduce frustration through intuitive user interfaces, decrease time to complete tasks, lower dependency on help desks (leading to cost savings), and create applications, products, and/or services that people want to use.
MAGIC Customer Journey Map: New and Improved State of MAGIC Gateway
BENJAMIN, 43, Data Analyst
User requesting pre-defined reports. Knows exactly what data he wants. Typically uses Cognos or Tableau or requests MAGIC team to email reports.
GOALS:
Wants to be able to see what data is currently in MAGIC, access and analyze it to help make better decisions for how to proceed with plans moving forward.
 |
 Gaining Access to MAGIC Data |
Viewing Reports in MAGIC Cognos | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Point | Accessing MAGIC Gateway | Easy Access to All Reports | |||
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Asks a co-worker how to access the data that is inside of MAGIC. Co-worker says to go to MAGIC Gateway page at magic.cms.gov and click on Need Access link. |
Completes one form with only necessary info while all other standard info is already included in the form submission and gets routed to the necessary people for approval. |
Receives an email within 48 hours saying access has been granted along with a link to log in. |
Reports are available in an All Reports page with descriptions, update mechanism, frequency of generating and other important information. Reports can also be found grouped by Domain and Datasets that are easy to browse through. |
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HAPPY |
HAPPY |
HAPPY |
HAPPY |
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Likes easy answer with simple URL. | Likes the simple and intuitive the process. Help tips were available and intuitively placed where needed (used it only to find the CMS Sponsor's name and email). |
No need to log in to AWS Workspace to access Cognos. All Reports page had reports easy to access, sort and filterable by criteria in a column. Reports were grouped by Domain and Dataset which were accessible via left navigation, breadcrumbs and other expected places. Individual Reports showed number of rows in the table, sortable, filterable and exportable. |
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Have clear directions for gaining access on the pre-login page of the gateway so user could go to website magic.cms.gov to get everything one needs in one location. | Place the content of the PPT on the Confluence page with an option to download the PPT. Help tips for each step should be embedded within the interface instead of in a separate document. Display video clips to show how to complete the steps along with text instructions. |
Can simplify the registration process by providing a pre-populated registration form with most of the required information. | ||
By involving users in every step of the design process, we create products with the following benefits:
Useful, usable,
and delightful experiences.
Little to no frustration
through intuitive user interfaces.
Reduced time to
complete all tasks.
Reduced dependency
on help desk = cost savings.
Applications, products, and/or services that people want to use.