Design Process
My process is based on the science of design thinking from The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, affectionately called the d.school.
Both have 5 steps but I prefer to combine Empathize with Define and I like to include Build in the process.
Below is a brief overview of each stage.
DEFINE
We begin by defining our users and their needs, what goals we plan to accomplish and how we will position ourselves within the competition. We establish our aspirations and our outcomes.
IDEATION
Once we have clearly defined the product, we move to ideation. This is where we draw, sketch, wireframe and develop the visual flow of the product. Creating customer journeys and building in marketing messages and content outlines into this phase.
Here lo-fi concepts are sketched up to present function and flow, ready to move to prototype.
PROTOTYPE
Here we turn those sketches into hi-fi wireframes to be used in validating our assumptions of how an end user will interact with the product. This stage is crucial to help us get answers quickly by eliminating what is wrong and allowing us to move on.
Front end prototypes allow in-depth responses from the team and test users and allowing us to make it better, and ship sooner. When we push out prototypes into user testing, we better understand user behaviour, and we can see how end users interact with our product in the real world.
The feedback from this phase allows us to decide whether we need to iterate on the design and fix problem areas or move to a final version in build.
BUILD
The build phase is where we take all the information and feedback gathered from prototyping, and we begin to build the product with design layouts, establishing our design systems and patterns.
Here we create the end product that will ship for the population to consume.
ANALYZE
Once the product has been made available for the world audience, we move to the analysis phase of the design process. In this phase, we will gain insight into our new product through product research and user feedback.
The more feedback you can get from your audience the more informed your designs will be. Feedback should become part of the iterative cycle feeding back into each phase as required.