The Design Process: Step-By-Step

Step One: Get a basic understanding of what the problem is.

• What are the clients looking to achieve with the solution that they’ve thought of?

• If they approach Design with an idea or a concept, where, how, and why does the concept fit into the overall plan?

• Example: The client wants a website.

  • Why do they want a website?

  • What are the goals and outcomes that you need to achieve; the goals and outcomes you’re looking to achieve with it?

  • Does it inform what we put front-and-centre, and how we structure our call-to-action?

Step Two: Background and Briefs

1. Background

2. Brief

• What needs to be done?

• What are the deadlines?

• What is the content around this?

The content tends to hold our process back, so it should be on the table as soon as possible.

Step Three: For external projects, develop a Y-frame and/or mock-up. This will give the client an idea of what they want, and convey what we plan to develop.

• Simplify this as much as possible. Show them:

  • The structure of the project and tool

  • How we intend to deliver

• Develop outlines that will merge with other data.

Sometimes this step is circumvented entirely; particularly for design-heavy projects, which are typically built up from our initial mock-ups.

Step Four: Document the design and structure process

Step Five: Obtain user feedback.

If it's not a long term project, take what's been learned going forward. Long term projects require streams of user feedback to self-improve.

The Design Process: Small Projects VS Large Projects

Though the timeline for larger projects is naturally longer, the overall process for both small and large projects generally follow the same structure.