Our Design Process — A Best Practice

Start with an user’s problem

It is a delusion if we build a product/service that didn’t solve any kind of user problem. Even though, sometimes, user didn’t realize his/her needs, but we need to make sure those needs are really exist. The classic example: after Apple unveiled the Macintosh, Steve Jobs was asked by a Popular Science reporter about what type of market research he had done, he responded: “Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?" This is the invention domain.

If our product/service is not really new thing, just new “better” version of existing product/service, we need a comprehensive market research. The Focus of our market research is identifying the problem, not hurriedly provide a solution. Therefore, user is not directed to a specific solution that don’t solve any problems.

There are many methods to do market research. My favorites are observation and survey. In both, we need to get the real problem in the form of user story. Discover the users’ needs with empathy. Therefore, IDEO’s Design Thinking was placing empathy as the first and foremost principle.

For better KYC (Know Your Customer), user persona is held and user journey arranged. Furthermore, to gain insights, we can do the analysis or synthesis. The analysis is a step to get insights from the data by induction, namely to draw conclusions from a collection of parts. In contrast, the synthesis is a process of deduction.

With all the above processes, we become user experts. So our product or service fits with the user needs. Particularly with the most primary thing that Design Sprint by Google Venture call it Big Fight, which is the result of the Understanding process.

Offering solutions

Afterwards, we focus on designing solutions. For a problem, there are several possible solutions, Design Sprint conducted Diverse process. Later followed by Decide process to get the best solution. Solution for Big Fight is a draft of Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Stay focus at this stage, we should be able to sort out which features are must-to-have and which are nice-to-have. A nice-to-have features can be delivered later. A Solution that can quickly sought is in the form of a prototype. Prototype can represent the functionalities of our product or service.

Nevertheless, we should not stop at the MVP. A prototype must be a MWP (Minimum Wow Product), that brings the “Wow” effect to the user, an emotional part of product design. We can deliver the “Wow” effect by a simple part of UI design, like Path phenomenal navigation button. It is a button with a little animation, but successfully brings a sensation to the user. The MVP of the Path is presenting “private social network”. In presenting the prototype, designers do: sketching, wireframing and mockuping.

Validate your assumptions

Once the prototype has been successfully created, do not immediately proceed to the costly development process (allocate resources and time), but do user validation. At this stage, make sure the user feels his/her problem can be resolved with our solutions and get “Wow” effect. So, we can expect the user willing to pay or product or service. Only by this, business can run and design process is “useful”.

It is also important for us to be careful with feedback from the user. Because not all users can articulate their needs well. There are various techniques can be made to get the right response for user validation phase, for example by taking video. Later, the team analyzed it, including mime and body language (gesture) for a user while interacted with our prototype.

We also need to have sufficient proficiency in Discovery Design, a capability based on knowledge and experience to avoid misinterpreting user feedback and or know that there are some user feedback that can be ignored because they are not principal, too personal, arising out of ignorance, and not contextual.

Iterate your process

At all above processes, we can iterate them. Sometimes we need to reform our solutions or even pivot them. Next, design process follows the Scrum Agile Software Development process and Continuous Delivery process on production phase.

This is what we are doing while design process which reformulates Design Thinking and Design Sprint.