Hi! I’m Montse
I’m a creative systems thinker who uses design to map and solve complex human problems.


 
 

Skills

UCD Research

I empathize with users’s needs and turn research insight into valuable design guidelines.

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UCD RESEARCH
Think Alouds

Think Alouds are a one of the best ways to test a prototype when you're dealing with a special population (like children) or when you want to observe user's emotional reactions and hear about their mental models first-hand.

UCD RESEARCH
Affinity Diagrams

I find Affinity Diagrams a great way of making different types of data bites collected during research to mix and blend on the wall, unveiling new relationships between them and allowing for new insight to emerge.

UCD RESEARCH
Flow models

Flow models are a great way of synthesizing user data form contextual inquiries. These models are specially useful to understand the jobs to be done in a human system, the workflows that come naturally to users, and where in the workflow lay the key pain points.

UCD RESEARCH
Scenario Branching

By consolidating sequence models created from several contextual observations and interviews, it becomes clear which parts of the sequence are shared across users and which ones are outliers or a hint that you've (yay, surprise!) discovered a new scenario to consider.

UCD RESEARCH
Heuristic Evaluation

I use heuristic evaluations of competitors and legacy systems to better understand the expectations and frustrations of current customers.

UCD RESEARCH
Flow & Sequence Models

The key to designing solutions to complex problems is to start by mapping and understanding the pieces of the problem.
While Flow Models allow us to understand how information passess hands in a system, sequence models organize thoseinteractions in time.

UCD RESEARCH
StoryTelling with User Stories

Sometimes you don't get to do all the research you'd want to. Instead, you get a laundry list of user stories from a client. In those cases I find it very useful to reorganize those stories into a narrative, maybe even draw a storyboard, and quickly validate the sequence with users to identify interaction priorities.

UCD RESEARCH
A/B testing

Sometimes you just need to jump online and quickly compare the effects of subtle design variations. Your users may not always consciously pick up the difference but they may react very differently to each version.

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UX Strategy /IA

I use user-centered design to inform and architect product paths that support both end-users and businesses.

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UX Strategy and IA
User Flows

Mapping user flows for different users and scenarios allows us to strategize when we're building one feature that will be adjusted and re-used across scenarios and when we need to fork our path and potentially treat scenarios as different feature sets.

UX Strategy and IA
Persona Set touchpoints

Understanding the role of secondary and supporting personas – such as Buyer and Data Provider personas– in the system can really help you make your primary persona's job easier.

UX Strategy and IA
User journey

We use user journey diagrams to map the expected/observed emotional state of users during different stages of their experience, these diagrams then inform when our system needs to be engaging, when it needs to be supportive and when it needs to just leave the user alone!

UX Strategy and IA
Product Strategy Map

This is an amazing technique described by Jon Kolko in his book Well Designed that I've used when dealing with product suite designs.
This map helps understand the overall scope of a product vision and allow product teams to focus on specific branches of value at a time.

UX Strategy and IA
Thumbs and Sitemap

When redesigning a website: start with the basics! Content structure and overall layouts for content pages.

UX Strategy and IA
'Jobs to be done' Timeline

Mapping tasks that must be completed in the system with the 'responsible' persona. This map also accounts for tasks that must be completed outside the system.

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UX Strategy and IA
Persona entry-point

Mapping different personae to their entry point to the system helps designers visualize persona interdependencies. It also helps developers identify database requirements, and lastly, it helps product managers sequence the work of the teams to deliver early value to key personas.

UX Strategy and IA
Task/multi persona table

Often times in enterprise UX the user needs for same apparent workflow may actually vary a lot depending on the specific personas' goals, expectations, data access, organization size, etc.
These persona table allow me to keep track of common needs and identifiy outliers for each feature we work on.

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UX / IXD

I design system behaviors to support users goals and create all sorts of artifacts to communicate those designs to developers and stakeholders.

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UX and Interaction Design
Whiteboarding

Whiteboarding is the starting point of a collaborative design process (and one of the steps of the process I enjoy the most).
Whiteboarding allows me to rapidly iterate through rough concepts by getting them out of my head to discussing with teammates early on and get feedback.

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UX and Interaction Design
Brainstorming

Throw all your initial ideas on the wall. Gatherwhat you currently know about the problem at hand, aknowledge you biases, allow space for gut-ideas, then start questioning and go out and validate!

UX and Interaction Design
Flow sketches

Again, when in doubt, go back to the basics.
Pencil sketches are not just a way to come up with a creative solution to a problem, but a tool to document your rationale and open questions.

UX and Interaction Design
Interactive Prototypes

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a prototype you can interact with is worth a thousand images!

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UX and Interaction Design
Pattern flow

Even when you have a fully clickable prototype, conveying the different states of an element may be challenging. Using flows as a way to complement interactive prototypes helps everyone get on the same page about what to expect in the clickthrough.

UX and Interaction Design
Pattern Library

Keeping the rules and use cases for different behaviors on the same widget documented.

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UX and Interaction Design
Documenting inline validations

Little demos are a great way to convey validation rules.

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UX and Interaction Design
Interactive Prototypes

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a prototype you can interact with is worth a thousand images!

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UX and Interaction Design
Screenflow

Convey at a high-level and envisioned feature set and the user's flow between screens.

UX and Interaction Design
From sketches to high fidelity

Quickly move from idea to deliverable.

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