Original subtitles

You now understand how we use the

How Might We and Crazy Eights

exercises to come up with more ideas.

It might seem odd that

both these exercises are

part of the same ideation process.

After all, one method is

practical and the other is more creative.

With the How Might We exercise,

you carefully considered a very specific user problem

to create a list of questions,

and with the Crazy Eights exercise,

you sketched solutions to that problem with

no limitations and no thoughts to practicality.

Solving a problem requires

both pragmatic and creative thinking.

In this video, we'll consider how

the user journeys you outlined

earlier will affect your designs.

As a refresher, a user journey is the series of

experiences a user has

while interacting with a product.

Building off personas and stories,

journeys help you think and feel like the user.

Earlier, we defined this problem statement:

Olivia is a parent who needs a way

to ride her bike with her two-year-old son,

Luca, because he can't ride his own bike.

But we didn't actually create

user personas for Olivia and Luca.

As a refresher, personas are

fictional characters that represent

a product's user groups.

They're created to identify a user's behavioral patterns.

In the real world,

we would have completed research

before beginning our designs.

For example, consider the kid's bike seat

that's in front of the rider.

This is a pretty great solution for

toddlers who are small,

but still strong enough to sit upright.

But what if Luca were an infant?

A small baby wouldn't be able to sit

upright in that seat or wear a helmet,

so it's not a safe solution for Luca.

Or if Luca is much bigger,

but isn't able to ride

his own bike because he has special needs,

or there's too much traffic for a child to ride alone,

that seat arrangement won't work either.

It's okay if a specific design doesn't work for everyone

who shares Olivia's problem of

needing a safe bike seat for her child.

But part of the research process requires you,

as the UX designer to figure out who

you're designing for and what their needs are.

Olivia might need an entirely new solution.

So, think back to your user journeys for

the problem statement you outlined and designed for.

Did you keep those personas in mind while sketching?

If not, go back and add

their stories and needs into your designs.

Maybe you're not sure you have

enough research to make the call

on what solution Olivia really needs.

In this hypothetical interview,

did you forget to ask Olivia how tall her child is,

or what his specific needs are?

What about Olivia's needs?

Some of our bike solutions from before

could create an extra hassle for the rider:

I'm looking at you side car.

If Olivia rides her bike on backcountry roads,

that might work perfectly.

But if she lives in a big city with

designated bike lanes on busy streets,

the size of the side car

probably wouldn't be a good solution either.

It's okay if you didn't ask

the right questions; you're still learning.

Plus sometimes in the ideation phase,

new blockers come up that never occurred to us before.

If this happens, consider whether you have

enough information to go forward,

or whether you need to go back to

your research and collect more data.

This work you've done, from writing user personas,

to mapping the user journey,

to exploring design concepts through sketching,

is a great story to tell in your portfolio.

It might not be a final project that you decide to share,

but telling the story of the research, the problem,

and the proposed solutions,

is good practice for

the more detailed case studies you'll have in the future,

and it's something employers might look

for when reviewing your portfolio.

We've reached the end of the ideate phase.

Let's review what you've learned.

Understanding design ideation,

conducting competitive audits,

brainstorming approaches like

How Might We and Crazy Eights,

and determining if we need additional research.

See you soon.