Mercedes Mendaza - UX Designer & Researcher

The process

1. Discover

1.1 Desk research

I began the project with extensive desk research—diving into UX research books and articles recommended by my mentor and colleagues. This foundational reading gave me the confidence to draft a Word document summarizing a curated list of research methods.

Ultimately, this document became the basis for the content in the final tool.

1.2 User research

To understand user expectations and needs, I conducted interviews with five of my colleagues. The goal was to:

Assess their opinion of the content in the Word document
Understand how they envisioned the tool
Gather practical suggestions for improvement

I chose interviews because they allowed me to quickly empathize with users and ask follow-up questions to clarify their thoughts.

2. Define

Insights from the interviews helped me define clear design requirements:

A filtering system to quickly find the right methods
Visuals aligned with the company’s brand style
Aesthetic appeal
Minimal text for ease of understanding
Interactive interface
Easy maintenance and content updates
Have an overview that helps comparing the methods

3. Ideate

I started ideating with solo brainstorming, a technique I’ve always found effective.

For the ideation, I decided to do individual brainstorming, since this is a technique that always gave me good results, and I felt comfortable using it.

To select the final direction, I hosted a feedback session where colleagues used sticky notes to vote for their favorite ideas. Concepts involving classic filtering and tags were the most popular. I chose the classic filtering approach as it aligned best with Studyportals’s existing UX.

Results of the sticky-note voting session.

4. Prototype

I built the first prototype using HTML and CSS in Sublime Text to create a functional MVP. You can interact with the early version here.

Screenshots of the initial prototype.

However, my limited coding skills constrained design freedom, so I recreated the prototype in Sketch to fully realize the vision.

Before designing icons, I asked colleagues what mental images they associated with each research method. Their responses inspired the visual metaphors used in the tool.

Users’ mental pictures for each method.

5. Test

I shared multiple prototypes with my UX teammates, observed their interactions, and collected feedback. We discussed which suggestions to implement and refined the tool based on their input.

The solution

The result is an interactive, brand-aligned, visually clean tool that makes it easy for UX designers to explore research methods. The design allows for filtering, clear comparisons, minimal reading, and effortless updates.