Understanding workflow or understanding goals

For any designer, understanding a product's workflow is a critical part of the design process. Many times a project is ramped up so far that a designer only has time to re-create a workflow, just apply a new skin. The problem is that just understanding the current workflow may not solve usability issues. Evaluating the "as is" workflow for a redesign project doesn't provide the depth of knowledge that a designer needs to know to make the right design decisions. Users may not know the full context of the workflow or outside elements that may impact the workflow. Product Managers may focus on the feature set of the workflow.

Rather then focusing on the workflow, we should understand the goals of the user. When the goals are understood, you can think outside the current processes and perhaps come up with something that wasn’t considered before (or wasn’t possible because of system constraints).

Understanding the users' goals may not be as simple as it sounds. They can often describe their current processes and procedures, but may not know why each part of the process is important, or who it’s important to. Knowing the right people to talk to is the biggest challenge for a designer. If you are working on a product, perhaps the Product Manager could align the proper resources or customer service staff could provide a pool of contacts.

Once you understand what the goals are, you can see how the existing processes and procedures fit into making that happen, and possibly come up with better workflows.