So let us simplify everything. We’re going to break every thig down into six segments. You’ll have noticed that we used the word segment, this is because the first thing to understand about the design development process is that it is not linear.
The development process is a journey of discovery and the learning along the route will shape the outcome. These learnings will also mean it is inevitable to take wrong turns and reach dead ends. Instead of looking at these as negatives, think of them as a growth of knowledge, better equipping you moving forward.
Understanding the problem
Before we start the journey, we need to know what problem we are trying to solve.
A great place to start is by speaking to your product / service users. Essentially, how can you make their lives better?
Top Tip: Expand your thinking outside of your customers, think about potential customers or your own internal processes, after all anyone who currently or potentially touches your product / service is a user.
Find out everything.
Go and find out everything about your product / service / idea. Thoroughly investigate everything about your product/service/idea. Analyse competitors, necessary technology, and any limitations.
Top Tip: Expand your thinking – look at products and services outside of your sphere. Pay attention to everyday life, inspiration can pop up when you least expect it!
Idea generation.
Start recording ideas. Whether this be doodles on the back of a receipt or fully formatted spread sheet the format is irrelevant, just record as many ideas as you can.
Top Tip: No Idea is a stupid idea; no sketch is too terrible to be useful. Sketching out your ideas is a useful tool for exploring ideas. It doesn’t matter how bad the drawing is, as long as you can understand it you can rationalise it. If you can rationalise it you can start to iterate your ideas.
Building your idea
Building working models of your ideas allows you to get hand on with your ideas. Making prototypes can take part any point of the process from, simple paper and tape or layout schemes through to full functioning sales models.
Top Tip: Don’t get bogged down with detail as you start prototyping, start simple and build up!
Test, test, test.
How do you know if it’s a good idea if you don’t show anyone? Although it’s a scary prospect of letting your idea loose on other people it is a necessity.
Top Tip: Use it as a learning experience, try not to take critics to hard. It’s all useful so make the most of it.
It’s time to let it loose on your customers.
Remember this is not a linear process, you may find a solution already exists when doing research, so you’ll need to rephrase your definition. You’ll probably find a better way of building your idea when you build your prototype. Theres no set way of following the process so go explore.
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