I led different workshops for internal teams or stakeholders. I’m responsible for setting goals/expectations with stakeholders, planning the activities, and managing the logistics. Every workshop is not always the same! As a facilitator, I always pay attention to participants' attitudes and answers to change the workshop plan based on what emerged. In some workshops, I was an observer for taking research notes. I always communicate the results through slide decks, reports, and meetings. making a report with the results.

I lead a workshop for:

• collecting information about an existing product/service, or a team/company

• mapping existing or new experience

• generating ideas

• co-designing solutions (with lo-fi prototypes)

• defining strategies

• prioritize goals, vote decisions, and create KPIs

• making proto-personas

• mapping team or company processes, constraints, goals, needs

• making a project or team retrospective

Methods: Design Thinking techniques, Graphic Facilitation, Co-Design, serious games, paper prototyping, mapping, dot voting, LEGO® Serious Play®.

Tools: paper, post-it, lo-fi materials, and canvas (in some case, I had created specific canvas or games for the workshop), Miro/Mural, Keynote/Powerpoint.

In this phase, I make sense of all data collected during the research or workshop. I usually aggregate data to create insights, maps, or reports to inform the stakeholders/teams, create actionable and meaningful narratives, and prepare the Ideation/Prototyping phase. In general, I combine different techniques to give different perspectives.

Here a list of deliverables or techniques I usually use:

• proto-personas (from assumptions)

• personas (from research)

• scenarios

• user stories

• user flows

• user journey mapping

• customer journey mapping

• user story mapping

• service blueprints

• roadmaps

• matrix (e.g. SWOT, Plus Delta, …)

• charts
  

Tools: post-it, paper canvas, Miro/Mural, Keynote, Excel, Figma, Illustrator.

Information Architecture (IA) it’s not only about navigation maps!
IA help to connect contents to the user needs.

My IA skills are:

• defining which content(s) can help users to reach their goal

• defining the relationship between contents across the product/service (ontology)

• creating the content structure with metadata and their hierarchy (taxonomy)

• defining the labels and categories for organizing the information (with or without card sorting)

• defining how users interact with content (choreography)

• defining how the users can move through information (navigation map)

• making tree testing and content inventory

Tools: Excel, Mural/Miro, OptimalSorting, TreeJack, Figma.

That's my favorite phase!
I love jamming with colleagues, letting the creativity flows, and putting my hands on paper.
Sometimes, I facilitate the team or the stakeholders in creativity sessions with games or co-design activities.

If I ideate alone or with others, in general, my creative session will include:

• put on the table all tools as possible like pens, paper, pencils, markers, scissors, stickers, glue, post-it, … (the rubbers are not allowed!)

• reading information from personas, mapping, or other deliverables

• 1-2 ice-break games, to set the right flow

• making some Crazy Eight and then some high-level storyboards

• dot voting the best ideas with different techniques

• prototyping with paper the most important interactions, features, or key screens

• presenting the ideas to the others and starting a discussion

• sometimes, I make an interactive paper prototype with Invision (or similar) for presenting to stakeholders

Tools: paper, pens, pencil, post-it, stickers, glue, scissors, markers, Miro/Mural, Invision

Here, I define how the user will interact across the product/service on specific pages or into a flow.

Depending on the project, I do different stages like:

• defining high-level interactions with user flows, user stories, wire flow, or interaction diagrams

• designing lo-fi wireframe (with paper or Balsamiq)

• designing hi-fi wireframe (with Figma)

• designing interactive wireframe or micro-interactions (with Invision or very rarely with Axure RP)

• presenting prototypes to the team, product managers, developers, architects, and stakeholders

Tools: paper, pencil, markers, post-it, Balsamiq, Figma, Axure RP, Invision, Keynote/Powerpoint, Zeplin, Abstract.

Usability is a core part of user-centered design and allows me to validate prototypes, measure KPIs, and continuously improve it.

My usability skills are:

• leading and managing user recruitment and -logistic (including screener surveys)

• writing and reviewing usability scripts with tasks

• analyzing passive data (e.g. HotJar, Analytics, heatmaps, emails to Customer Care, …)

• conducting usability testing (in a laboratory or remotely)

• observing and taking notes (in a laboratory or remotely)

• making heuristic evaluation, usability surveys, A/B testing

• making UX QA (Quality Assurance) after sprint, demo, or release

• communicating usability best practices

• making reports to share results and possible solutions

Tools: laboratory, block notes, Validately, Morae, HotJar, Keynote/Powerpoint, post-it, Miro/Mural.

In the past, I managed projects and led small teams of 2-3 junior designers. In all these projects, I did different activities such as planning, task management, capacity evaluation, KPIs measurement, and managing the relationship with stakeholders.

Also, I facilitated retrospectives to understand the status of a project or a team.

Often I've been a mentor to help designers in their career path, or the use of a specific UX phase/technique, or give them feedback on their projects.

Tools: Wrike, Jira, Kanban board, Trello, Miro/Mural, Basecamp, Keynote/Powerpoint, Abstract, Slack.

I always work in teams or companies that believe in Agile Methodology. Agile is a very useful way to communicate, keep all aligned, and ship your product in the real world!

For me, it’s usual to work side-by-side with scrum masters, product managers, architects, and scrum teams in all the stages of the process like sprint backlog, sprint planning, daily scrum, demo, and sprint review.

In 2020, I also got a certification for Certified Scrum Product Owner® (CSPO) by ScrumAlliance.

From a Product Thinking point of view, I work closely with product managers to define the problem, create the product vision board, create the user stories, groom the backlog, and prioritize the tasks. Also, I coordinate the developers to work together on the new functions.