Design process

Design is an act. As designers, we should encourage a collaborative process that includes people with different skills and helps them make informed decisions towards the end product.

Identify stakeholders who need to participate in the design of product
Don’t forget to include the users in the design of your products.

Understand the problem being solved
This is the part where you ask a lot of “why”. Try to help all stakeholders understand the problem in depth, and why it’s important to solve it. Try to learn about these things:

• Who is affected by the problem (aka users)
• How do they solve this problem today (aka journey map)
• What are the most inefficient parts of this current state (aka opportunities or HMW notes)
• What is the change our product will bring in their life (aka outcomes)

Things you can do:

• Run a workshop to identify opportunities and challenges. It can be very efficient to gather what interal stakeholders know about the problem.
• Workshops are also good places to help stakeholders align on the most important opportunities. You can’t solve every problem in your first release.
• If a workshop is not possible, do stakeholder interviews to gather insights.
• Conduct secondary reserch to learn about users.
• Collaborate, organize, communicate.

Solving the problem
Designers are expected to be good problem solvers. However not every problem is equal. Often, as designers, we may lack some skills to solve a problem effectively. This is when it’s important to put our ego aside and bring people with the right skills.

• The solution doesn’t need to be creative, it needs to work.
• Iterate early and often to learn what works and which idea to let go.
• Wireframes are efficient when you are not confident about the solution.
• Show prototypes to people in the company and watch their reactions.