Every project brings with it different requirements and challenges. There is, however, a proven basic approach that I follow that can be altered/changed according to one's specific needs:
On the basis of a first briefing (creative brief) and user experience research (context analysis, immersive research) design implications are inferred and initial requirements are defined. Design concepts, ideas and early prototypes are then generated, explored and tested. In this phase, the aim is to get the right design; in later stages it is imperative to get the (chosen best) design right[1].
«A reliable process [...] produces a predictable result time and again. This is business as algorithm: quantifiable, measurable, and provable. A valid process, on the other hand, flows from designers’ deep understanding of both user and context, and leads them to ideas they believe in but can’t prove. They work in a world of variables: the unpredictable, the visual, the experimental.» —Roger Martin
The design is continuously improved and refined through direct user feedback and testing (usability testing) so that the requirements become more precise each iteration. Those are the basis for a possible more in-depth interactive prototype, which is again subject to user tests. The process is repeated until the concept is validated.
At the end of the process stands a design specification that makes the grade. The implementation of the design (production) is monitored accordingly; further usability testing ensures an increase of user acceptance as well as a refinement of the product, application or service.
The designer is, in my opinion, first and foremost the end user's advocate in the design team. He/she researches, studies and explores usage contexts and the user's needs, experiences, aspirations and behaviours as well as technical and sociocultural factors. On the basis of these problem statements and constraints he/she develops concepts and designs. By so doing he/she follows the aforementioned process, but also simultaneously explores -- in the movement from analysis to synthesis and from the real to the abstract -- creative solutions. His/her work is therefore, to my mind, at the same time systematic and creative.
[1] See: Buxton, Bill. Sketching User Experiences. Morgan Kaufmann, 2007.
Back