Design Process
A good design process is cyclical, redefining and refining along the way. No process is linear and with each project, the starting point varies. Below I’ve outlined the flexible approach I take when kicking off a design project or fine tuning and implementing.
1 // Understand
At the start of every project its crucial to gain a solid understand of the landscape, from competitors and marketplace to current implementations and product setbacks.
2 // Discover
A design project should start with identifying assumptions and the problem space -- for what and who (personas) are we trying to solve? In the discovery phase, I try to gather as much information as possible from competitive analysis, secondary research and business requirements.
3 // Define
At this point in the project, it is important to define the design goals -- or design principles -- in collaboration with stakeholders. This phase also includes user research, creating user personas and mapping out user flows.
4 // Ideate
Once our goals are identified we start sketching to generate solutions and refine ideas. I ask myself questions like “How does each concept solve the problem statements above?” and we identify primary functionality and secondary functionality. Each design principle is reflective in the concept.
5 // Iterate and Test
Now it’s time to get our concept in front of users for feedback with a prototype. Depending on the timeline, the medium can be anything from paper to a fully developed interactive prototype. Once we gather the data from the user testing, it’s time to synthesize and iterate.
6 // Implementation (and test again)
This is the point in the process where design artifacts are created and shared with development for implementation. From there, we continuously evolve the design release after release to improve the experience.