Day 32 — Process series 1/7: “Why Design Process”
You’ve probably heard of some of these terms: Design Thinking, Lean UX, Double Diamond, or Google Design Sprint. Why do people talk about these design processes? What’s the benefit of using them? As we celebrate 50th birthday of Design Thinking this year, it’s a good opportunity for design leaders to strengthen our knowledge about how design processes evolves and being used in the modern day.
This is a series of quick introduction articles about:
- What are some of the common design processes;
- Why we use design process — the benefit;
- What are the potential pitfalls.
How it started
According to Wikipedia: “Developing creativity techniques in the 1950s and new design methods in the 1960s led to the idea of design thinking as a particular approach to creatively solving problems.” (That’s around the same time when “real-life Mad Men” George Lois started working in advertising industry). It was a time when creativity helped boost sales and revenue, and lots of resource were put into the creative industry.
Original Thoughts
The original idea of Design Thinking, according to John E. Arnold and L. Bruce Archer, was to create “Systematic Method for Designers” and “Creative Engineering”. This helps accelerate the innovation process in 4 aspects:
- solutions that satisfy a novel need, or satisfy an old need in an entirely new way;
- higher performance levels of a solution;
- lower production costs;
- increased salability.
If you’ve practiced some of the design processes mentioned before, you can probably understand and appreciate their values. But people might ask, in an Agile world when people talk about “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”, is design process still relevant? And what are the values it brings?
Modern Day Benefit
In the digital age, when everything moves much faster and companies are competing in seconds instead of days or weeks, how can design processes help companies gain competitive edge? Here are some known benefits:
1. Ensure Repeatable Success
Without a process, there’s no guarantee of repeatable success. Without a systematic way to solve problems, past success could be pure luck. Having a proven effective process in place increases the odds of repeatable success, and people don’t have to re-learn how to make things work.
2. Boost Efficiency
The old trial-and-error mindset is simply a waste of time and effort in the fast-pace, highly-competitive digital world. Having an established process allows team to focus on the important tasks and not to worry too much about “what to do next”. Also, new team members can learn in a systematic way, therefore they can get onboard much faster.
3. Reduce Error from Miscommunication
In a large project that involves many team members to work together (e.g. creating a design system), a clear communicated process with common language helps everyone work together seamlessly, and follow the same protocol without confusion or misunderstanding.
4. Defeat Complexity
When the problems we’re trying to solve get more and more complex, we need a systematic method so that we can focus on the problem and learn fast and learn often. Rather than spending time refining/ debating on the general game plan, quickly adopting a design process allows us to focus on the “wicked problem”, break down the intertwined factors, and defeat the complexity.
5. Create Scalable Solutions
When an organization grows and takes on more challenges, having an established process allows team to identify repeatable tasks and find ways to automate it or outsource for lower cost, rather than treating every tasks as a new task. Therefore it allow teams and companies to create scalable solutions.
6. Build Trust with Clients and Partners
Some people might argue this is the most important aspect of having a process in place. From time to time, designers could find it hard to explain value or ROI of individual design methods. For example, client might ask why do we need to “shadow 15 users in their context? How does that compensate the losing time for quick product delivery to the market?” Adopting a well established design process like Design Thinking, which has lots of successful case studies to back you up, alleviate the pain of getting buy-in from clients.
Image credit: https://www.facebook.com/uxmemes/photos/a.212367356170605/351410435599629
The Pitfalls
It wouldn’t be fair to describe only the upside of adopting various design processes. Like the cliche’ goes, design process could be “a double edge sword”. As we know, a tool is only as good as its user. Design processes can be powerful with all the benefit described above, but also can be harmful if we accidentally fall into some of the common traps:
1. Right Intention, Wrong Process
This is probably the most common mistake some project teams make. Depending on the complexity of the projects and more importantly, the UX maturity, and the culture of the organization, choosing the right design process can a “zero or hero” decision. For example, Design Thinking can only thrives in a collaborative culture, and organization silos could defeat a useful process.
2. Lack of Pre-Planning
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Blindly following a design process without carefully planing ahead is risking the delivery quality in many ways: 1) quality: imbalance between what’s promised and what’s delivered; 2) time: can’t get the resource/ logistics to promptly to implement it; 3) cost: discover large increase of required effort/investment later in the process due to lack of upfront analysis.
3. Forcing it on Others
Nobody want to be told to compromise without a good reason. Without clear communication of why we’re adopting certain design process and just force it onto various teams, it only creates gaps between teams, and harms the relationship and work efficiency.
4. Being Rigid about the Protocols
Sometimes it could be tricky when we are working in a highly dynamic environment where changes happen frequently and fast. When dealing with this type environment, project direction could pivot before the team is ready for it; hence the process needs to pivot, too. It’s important to keep in mind that design process is a tool to serve the project team, not the other way around. Being rigid about the process protocol is like putting cart before horse, and lose the purpose.
5. Missing Mission/Vision Statement
In a large project where many people are involved and the timeline could be long, it’s not as easy to keep people aligned the whole time. For example, throughout the journey, designers might hit creativity plateau and lose energy, partners like stakeholders and tech might lose confidence about design process if not seeing many evidences that the process works. It’s important for design leaders to clearly communicate the mission and vision statement, and secure quick wins in order to keep people aligned and committed.
Your Thoughts
What’s your favorite design process? How does it help you with your job? And what are the challenges you’re facing? I’d love to hear from you.
ABC. Always be clappin’.
