How I Work
Good UX doesn't start with a wireframe. It starts with understanding the problem well enough to know whether a wireframe is even the right next step. My process is rooted in the engineering design process — the same foundation I taught in high school technology education and have applied across 13 years of professional practice. It is iterative by nature, which means every step informs the one before it as much as the one after.
Identify the Problem
Define goals. Establish priorities. Understand what success actually looks like before any design work begins. This is where I ask the questions that save the most time later.
Research
Learn the specifics and let the information lead. This means understanding the user, the business, the industry, and the competition. I fill in the blanks so the design work is grounded in reality, not assumption.
Develop Solutions
Brainstorm based on what the research confirms. Break everything down — a good system has to work at its smallest part before it works as a whole.
Select the Best Possible Solution
Measure options against the original goals. Remove bias. Ask whether it meets the objectives, works within technical constraints, and can be built by the team that will build it.
Prototype
Depending on where we are in the project, this ranges from a rough sketch to a fully clickable prototype. The fidelity matches the question being asked.
Test and Evaluate
Put the solution in front of real users. Qualitative and quantitative methods — task completion testing, card sorting, tree-diagramming, surveying — depending on what needs answering. No single test provides all the proof.
Share Results and Move Forward
Document findings clearly for developers, designers, stakeholders, and leadership. Be specific. Don't promise something that can't be built. This step is where good process pays off — because everyone already knows the goals and understands why the solution looks the way it does.
Redesign
The loop starts again. Every project is ongoing in some form. Refining based on analytics, user feedback, and changing business needs is not a failure of the original design — it is the design working as intended.
There is no replacement for a good process. It is what you look back on when you need to know where to go next.