UX Know-How: Design, Research & Strategy

AI & Creative Technology

I think of AI not only as Artificial Intelligence, but as Accelerated Imagination—powered by Human Intelligence. Technology can expand the speed and range of exploration, but intention, judgment, empathy, and meaning remain human responsibilities. I use AI as a creative and strategic collaborator: a way to explore possibilities, challenge assumptions, and give form to ideas without surrendering the human perspective that gives them purpose.

I incorporate AI throughout the creative and strategic process—not as a substitute for design thinking, but as a way to expand exploration, make ideas visible earlier, and move more efficiently between concept and execution.

From Prompting to Creative Direction

Working with AI is not simply about writing a prompt and accepting an output. It involves defining intent, providing context, directing visual and conceptual choices, evaluating results, identifying what does not work, and iterating toward something purposeful.

The value comes from the conversation between human judgment and computational possibility.

What AI Accelerates

Exploration, visualization, iteration, comparison, documentation, prototyping, and production.

What Remains Human

Intent, empathy, ethics, contextual understanding, aesthetic judgment, prioritization, decision-making, and responsibility for the final experience.

Selected Applications

In my work, this has included developing visual narratives for case studies, exploring brand-transition concepts, creating contextual interface mockups, evaluating alternative content structures, refining UX documentation, supporting front-end problem-solving, and transforming complex ideas into visuals that stakeholders can understand more quickly.

AI increases the range and speed of what I can explore. My role as a designer is to determine what deserves to exist, how it should work, what it communicates, and whether it meaningfully serves the people for whom it is created.

UX... what?

There are three pathways or buckets within the UX field: Design, Research and Strategy.
All of them solidly based in understanding the users.

Design
Research and Evaluation
Strategy

Interaction Design (IXD) IXD
Visual Design VD
Information Architecture IA
Information Design ID
Service Design SD

Interaction Design

Focuses on how to create efficient and effective interaction between users and interfaces.

These interactions could happen within screens, between screens or even beyond the screen.
You may sketch out screen-based interactions or even interactions beyond the screen. Later you can iterate those screens and interactions, based on a real-time input from a team of stakeholders.
You may also sketch out screens and create static mock-ups by using like power point, visio, omnigraph.
You may create interactive wireframes or clickable prototypes that lets stakeholders or clients click through and experience a basic level of interactivity. Software like balsamiq or Axure.
Or you may do some of this using some web coding with html and css.
Whether static mockups or interactive wireframes, when designing you will be focus on:

Where text will go?
What buttons and functionality will be present?
How will de meus be placed?
How headers and footers will be structured?

We Will essentially simulate real functionality before developer spends the time. Remember to annotate your visual representations and present supplemental documentation.

Visual Design

Creating meaning in elements and interactivity on a screen through the use of typography, colors, images, and space. Goal is to create polish and attractive design.

Often starts with the output from an Interaction Designer. These are separated but overlapping roles.

Design controls
Help with guidelines
Update old style guides to better promote design consistency
Establish guidelines

Information Architecture

Focuses around the organization of the information. It refers to how information is organized behind the scenes and then presented to user.

You may be the person talking to stakeholders.

Groundwork for product design

Who are the users?
What do they know?
How do you structure information?
You may also be involved in some preliminary user research activities, validating whether stakeholder’s information about site structure is accurate.

Activities you may do:

a card sorting. (Tool: OptimalSort) to find how users of groups naturally sort those terms or topics together.
Usability testing of an existing website before a redesign. Ask user to get from Point A to point B in order to provide. To validate effectiveness of this site structure.
A tree study (Tool: Treejack)

Goal is Creating a meaningful site structure. Menus, submenus or hyperlinks in the body of a page. Creating a controlled vocabulary Creating a taxonomy. This is developing a system of classification which allows for the tagging of information as it is added over time.

Information Design

Making sure that content can be consumed as intended.

You will need to make sure content is user friendly and written in plain language while also meets business goals and perhaps legal constraints that may be required in a given industry.

As Technical writer, Making sure that important technical information is understood by the intended audience group.

Service Design

It goes beyond the screen assuring the quality of a customer's entire interaction with a company.

While Interaction Designer and Visual Designer both deal with screen-based designs, a Service Designer approach is a bit broader.

Service designer looks to design the entirety of the interaction that a customer has with a company. Interactions electronically or screen based, through the telephone or personal with brand and staff.

Similar to IXD but simply with a wider scope. Sketches, storyboards or even through dimensional mockups.

User Research UR
Accessibility ACC
Human Factors HF
Ergonomics Erg

User Research

Finding out more about users and usage of products.

Needs to understand users but also business goals and capabilities of what can be created.

User researcher will use this holistic understanding (Del todo o que considera algo como un todo.) to evaluate interface, often by involving actual or representative users in search studies.

You’ll often start with available data sources if the exist, such as web analytics, call center data or market research data in order to gain some basics about who the users are.

This will help you to decide:

Who should be recruited for quality research studies?
What attributes should candidates have so they are representative of the of the population of actual users
You work with the product team to determine What information is needed
And which research techniques are most appropriate in gathering the right information

You may first conduct what is known as a Heuristic or Expert Review.

You will use whatever information is available about users and usage to identify problems that can be easily fixed before research is conducting.

The research may be as well Ethnographic (ethnographic research) by observing users in their own environment.

Contextual Inquiry

Observing users as they demonstrate their typical behavior.
The most common technique used is Usability Test. It is a one-on-one method.

Accessibility

Making sure products are usable by anyone regardless of any kind of disability such as vision, auditory or motor impairments. Or certain kinds of cognitive impairments.

Follow Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) USA only is called Section 508. (US Federal Standards)

Human Factors

How physical products are used in light of human abilities capabilities.
Perhaps medical devices, or products for aviation, or the military.

You make sure products comply with safety related and regulatory guidance by doing a heuristic or expert review, similar to the user researcher.

“A heuristic technique ("find" or "discover"), often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method, not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, logical, or rational, but instead sufficient for reaching an immediate goal. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples that employ heuristics include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, a guesstimate, profiling, or common sense.”

Ergonomics Assuring that intended audience can use products both easily and safely.

UX Strategy UXs
Content Strategy CS
Customer Experience (CX) CX

UX Strategy

Aligning business goals with the user experience of products.

Why is the business intending to create the products that they want to create?
Which business needs are the most important?
What are the budgetary requirements of product development?
Simultaneously you need to understand How the user experience fits into these business goals.
How can the business move towards a successful product that users enjoy using?
How do stakeholders’ perceptions of users line up with the reality of actual users?

You need to do a lot of discovery, talking with stakeholders and with those in the ux team (en mi caso Business analyst) to gather and synthetize the necessary data.

Content Strategy

Aligning business goals with the content found in a product or website. Consistency.
Create style guides or editorial guides to help the many content writers within a company. Focused on do’s and don’ts of content creation.

Customer Experience

The interaction between users (customers) and a business.
Are the users interacting with the company in the expected ways?
Are there pain points with user expectations and company interactions?
Responsibility:
Customer journey map

How do I do it?

The methods and the tools used throughout my career and, the deliverables I've produced as UX Designer have varied according to my specific role at each work team I was part of and, conditioned by time constraints.

Since I have held some hybrid positions in my career, I had the opportunity of applying many of my skills at the same time. Performed user interface design, graphic design, html coding, gave support based on my past background in development while I applied my organic UX skills. My creative process at all levels is always oriented towards the best and most effective usability for the user. I shall say in many cases, thinking and design processes, had occurred almost in parallel.

Interaction Design 100%

Prototyping 100%

Visual Design 90%

Information Architecture 80%

Information Design 80%

Customer Experience 70%

User Research 70%

Graphic Design 90%

UX Strategy 90%

Responsive Design 100%

Designer
Technical Skills & Tools ^(Years)

I lead user-centered design processes that connect user needs, business goals, brand identity, and technical execution.

I facilitate ideation and visual design while collaborating proactively with product owners, stakeholders, and development teams. I translate identified requirements into cohesive experiences and partner with developers to carry the design vision through implementation.

I create wireframes, user flows, mockups, prototypes, and other visual resources that support exploration, communication, and collaborative decision-making. I am experienced in developing low- and mid-fidelity prototypes using industry-standard design tools.

My capabilities extend beyond the traditional Research, Concept, Design, and Test cycle. When a project requires greater realism, I can create fully functional, code-based prototypes using HTML, CSS, and the Bootstrap framework—allowing teams to evaluate interactions and technical considerations before committing to production.

Years of experience are shown in parentheses.

Skills —

UX Design ⁽¹²⁾ Prototyping (Coding Based) ⁽²⁰⁾ Prototyping (Image Based Software) ⁽⁸⁾ UI Design ⁽²⁴⁾ Responsive Design ⁽¹²⁾ Mockups ⁽¹⁷⁾ Wireframing ⁽¹⁸⁾ Interaction Design ⁽²⁴⁾ Visual Design ⁽²⁴⁾ Digital Experience ⁽²²⁾ Front-End Development (GUI) ⁽¹⁹⁾ Email Marketing Design ⁽⁸⁾ Graphic Design ⁽²¹⁾ Web Generalist ⁽²⁴⁾ Branding ⁽²⁰⁾ Social Media ⁽⁵⁾ SEO ⁽¹⁾ HTML5 ⁽¹³⁾ CSS3 ⁽¹³⁾ HTML ⁽¹¹⁾ CSS ⁽⁸⁾ Bootstrap Framework ⁽¹²⁾ jQuery ⁽⁹⁾ JavaScript ⁽⁹⁾

Tools —

Adobe Creative Suite ⁽²⁰⁾ Adobe Photoshop ⁽²⁴⁾ Adobe Illustrator ⁽¹⁵⁾ Dreamweaver (Adobe) ⁽¹⁹⁾ Dreamweaver (Macromedia) ⁽⁴⁾ Notepad++ ⁽⁵⁾ Adobe Flash ⁽³⁾ Adobe InDesign ⁽²⁾ Microsoft Access ⁽¹⁹⁾ WordPress ⁽²⁾ Microsoft Office Suite ⁽²²⁾ Google G Suite ⁽⁹⁾ Slack ⁽⁴⁾ Basecamp ⁽¹⁾ Microsoft SharePoint Designer ⁽¹⁾ Adobe XD ⁽⁵⁾ Invision ⁽¹⁾ Microsoft Visio ⁽¹⁾ Figma ⁽⁴⁾ Assembla ⁽¹⁾ TFS ⁽¹⁾ Jira ⁽¹⁾ Audacity Audio Editor ⁽¹⁴⁾ Filmora Video Editor ⁽²⁾ Adobe Premiere Pro ⁽⁴⁾