How is Software Designed?

Research

“Research” is shorthand for “Let’s find out how our users behave to help us create a solution to their problems or address their unmet needs.” It’s also known as “design research” or “user research”. How much research you need depends on how new and different the thing you’re creating is from what users already…

The Brief

At the beginning of a project the design lead or product manager will write a brief, a document that summarizes what the team needs to start working. The format and name of this document varies wildly, but the two key goals are the same: establish a common understanding of the work and inspire the team.

Process

All human-centered software design can be boiled down to three essential activities:

1. Researching the people and situations relevant to the project
2. Designing the software
3. Testing the design of the software to find out what works and what…

Roles

I’m using the word roles rather than jobs because the division of work changes per project. On small projects all the design work might be done by one person playing multiple roles. On large projects the design work might be done by several people playing each role.

Why Design?

The most obvious benefit of design is to make the user interface look better. Designers use color and fonts carefully, align things on the screen a certain way, and generally make everything more beautiful.