Hi there. We're on lesson three, analyze the use process for design decisions. One of the things that I carry in my back pocket, so to speak is a process flow. And this tool is especially useful when understanding how our users are going to use our product. At some point, we're going to develop our product design into a concept, even if it's a high level concept. And with that concept comes a way for the user to use it. Now, I'm not talking about the things that the product itself does, but I'm talking about the way the user interacts with it. Now, we've been exploring concepts with our cross functional team. Before product design, we're getting to better know the users, the use environment and the use process. And in this lesson, we're exploring the general use process of how we're going to get from A to B, how our users are going to get from A to B without getting into details about any features of our product design. So we're looking at high level functions of what our design needs to be able to do. There are a lot of different analyses that we can do with a process flow diagram. And it's especially helpful to do in a team setting. You may find that there are additional information about the youth space and use environment that come out of performing this type of analysis. Here are the specific objectives we have for this lesson. We're going to be constructing process flow charts to develop our design concepts. And we can do this if we look at the high level functions of our product design. But we're also going to be able to analyze these flow charts with our team to be able to get design inputs. And we'll choose when we want to iterate from those high level concepts to a more detailed analysis. We want to work with our team to learn more about what it is we're developing and process flow charts can help us do that. Let's just talk about what a flow chart is. It's really a map of a process. It's also known as a process flow diagram or just flow chart for quality practitioners. It's considered one of the seven basic quality tools. And well, I guess that depends on who you ask. I use it frequently on my own and with teams and when built out with a team, it provides a lot of clarity with everyone involved and it prompts a lot of discussions, a lot of manufacturing and industrial operations, use process flow charts and we also use them for business processes. So it's not like this is a new quality tool. They're used in a lot of places and flow charts we can use for the customers process because the actions that our users are taking with our product, their interactions with it is a process. And we can evaluate that with a process flow chart. Let's talk a little more about how we would construct a flow chart. There are some basic symbols of flow charts that everyone uses and these are the ones that you really need to know to get started. The first is probably the smallest to see which are the arrows and they connect shapes and show what happens in sequence. There is a start and an end of a flow chart and they're designated as ovals and they define the scope of what it is. We're analyzing. They're the book ends of the process. We always need to have one start and an end process steps are rectangles. They're actually functions usually presented as a verb and a noun lift this assemble that, that sort of thing. And a decision is a diamond. At least two arrows should come from a decision diamond and they represent the options of the decisions that we're making. We usually label the options on the arrow. In this example, we use Y for yes and N for no flow charts are a great team exercise. They're very approachable. They're graphical, people can understand what it is we're trying to accomplish rather quickly. And we can invite people to contribute and to arrange things and prompt discussions about our process. We can have a meeting that's in person or we can also use online white boards to be able to create these with our team. A benefit of a team using a whiteboard or post. It is that we can move items around. Now later, for posterity, we can make it fancy with a graphical tool but to start and especially with a team, do it on paper, do it on a whiteboard, use post its do anything but try to fill it out and create it on an online flow chart software program. Now, what can we do with our flow charts? How can we analyze them for design inputs? We've been doing other things to explore the concept space. We're getting design inputs from benefits and symptoms and the things that our users experience. And we're going to continue doing that with the use process for our use process. We're going to be looking at the process from where our users start to where they end. And this is something that we need to define to keep ourselves focused on the user at the concept. We're making it about the user and not the product. What is it that the user is doing? Not necessarily, what is it that our product is doing? Why would we want to do this at a high level function before we even have a product? Design, we can derive a lot of design inputs from it at concept development before we even really know what we're designing for. One, it gets us alignment with our cross functional team. Then we all understand what specifically our customers are expecting to gain out of using our product. We'll get clarity around the users, all of the users, we may have one particular end user. But through process flow diagram, we may realize that there is somebody else that's interacting with our product during the use process. So it can help us identify different users, which also may have different needs. We can also explore what is ideal versus actual. And what do I mean by this? An ideal process is one that if we could dream up anything, this is what we would have happen or what our users would want to be able to do. And it actually is maybe the status quo how things are done currently or what a competitor's product is doing or what our version one point oh product is doing, doing a process flow chart with our team can help us understand what those differences are. Identify the gap. So we can identify design inputs at a minimum. It's going to give us and our team some jumping off points to ask users more questions. When we start this flow chart with our team, we may end up with more questions than we have answers for. But that's a good thing. Because we're learning more about the use concept space and understanding more about it so we can design for it. And that's not all we can also get interface requirements. We have a product, it's being used by somebody somewhere. Are there other things that it needs to interact with? In order for the job to get done, a process flow chart can help us identify the steps where that has to occur. We can also prioritize what needs to happen for a success versus what we just have people doing that needs to be done. In order to do it, we can also look at costs and quality as part of our use process and maximize on that. These are benefits of us just doing a process flow chart with our cross functional team. There are also other specific ways we can analyze our flow charts. Let's take a look at four different specific ways we can look at the use process at design concept. First is an alignment process flow chart. And the whole reason to do this is to get alignment with our team and then also set expectations for what it is. Our product is going to be doing. The types of things we can ask are what is the start and end, what's the scope of what it is we're trying to achieve. And again, we can get clarity on our users, the use environment and the customer needs and expectations. We can also get clarity around what steps the user might need to do in order to go from start to end. And this can help us identify those hidden needs and line expectations. And we also get agreement on basic functions. A second analysis that we could do with our process flow chart is a critical to quality analysis where we're going to be able to get functional and interface requirements for our concept product. We're going to get specific about our inputs. The who what when, where and why. And this is going to help us clarify our users and further understand our use environment. Then we're going to get some agreement on specific outputs. Again, the who what when, where and why we're going to identify the hidden customer needs or the benefits that maybe our customers don't even know how to voice. Then we look at what process steps or what functional steps affect our output. And this is going to help us identify the functional priorities of our concept design. Then we look at what steps are affected by the inputs and this is going to give us those interface requirements. Our product is being used by someone somewhere and there are effects by that someone in the somewhere that could have an effect on the use of our product. So we want to be able to identify those interfaces so we can design for them. A third analysis we could do with our process flow chart is a value added analysis. The main purpose of doing a value added analysis is to maximize our customer's satisfaction. So we look at what adds value and we're going to highlight those steps green. In this case, we're identifying the high priority functions that we definitely want to implement in our product design. What steps are not value added in this case, we're identifying areas or functions that we should simplify, that we can reduce or eliminate. And what is just something that must be done? We're going to highlight those yellow and those are areas that maybe they have to be done. But is there any way we can make it easier? 1\/4 analysis of our process flow chart is a deployment flow chart really. This happens when we have more than one user and we need to understand who is doing what this can also help us understand if there are parallel activities going on, mapping it out. This way helps us identify design inputs. Now we have flow charts. When should we iterate them? When do we do? Which analysis? Well, we want to start with the alignment process flow chart because that's going to get everybody on the same page and understanding the same concepts. Then we ask, what is it we really want to learn? Is it that the process steps are confusing? Then we can start with what we've got. But then we may need to continue with our flow chart with a narrower scope. Maybe our broad ideas are are fine, but there are some process steps that are confusing and we don't quite understand, we can break those out and do another sublevel process flow chart, do what you need to do with your team in order to better understand your use process. Another thing we may want to learn is about the interfaces and the inputs that affect the use process. So again, we start with the alignment process flow chart and then we can continue with a critical to quality analysis that analysis would help us identify those interfaces and inputs. If we want to understand where we need to simplify, we could look at a value added analysis. And if we need to better understand who is doing what at what point in the process, we can use the deployment flow chart. Now remember that we're exploring concept. So like other things in development, the more we learn, the more detailed we can get so we can focus on the priorities of the use process at the design concept. And then as we better understand how it is, we're going to meet the needs of our customers with our product design, we can further refine those design inputs and do more detailed flow charts. Later on priorities we can continually use and iterate on process flow charts as we need with our team. So we can better understand the product that we're developing. If we choose priorities in our process flow chart. Like the value added flow chart, we have identified some process steps that we want to simplify. We can do more detailed flow charts later on in development. As we understand more about what our product design is really going to be looking at. It can help the product design in so many ways like being consistent with its use or flexible. If it needs to be flexible, we can tailor it to different users or make sure that it operates with other products, modularity, navigation options and help or explanation. Prompts may be needed for our user to properly use our product. We can also use more detailed flow charts to reduce errors and mistake proof. We still can use those critical to quality value added analysis and deployment flow charts in more detail flow charts as we learn more about our product. So what is it we talked about today? We talked about using process flow charts, constructing them with our team to help develop design concepts. Before we even have a product that our user can manipulate, we can get a lot of design inputs from it. And most importantly, we get alignment with our team. We also talked about four different ways we can analyze the process flow charts for those design inputs. And we can choose when we want to iterate them from high level concepts to more detailed analysis. Like other things, we don't have to do process flow charts on everything we can prioritize what's important and use them as a tool for learning. Regarding these four different ways to analyze a process flow chart for design inputs. There are bonus trainings at the end of this video, I hope you can see how a process flow of a use process can be good information for product design decisions. I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson.
