The Design Process From Idea to Product

When I started my design career, I didn’t fully understand what a design process was and how to build it. Of course, I read several articles about this topic, but this didn’t give me a complete understanding of the whole picture of the stages being built during the product development process.

With experience and with each of my new projects(becoming more experienced\accomplished), I began to understand better and realized the value of the stages that are the foundation for the final part of creating the site in the program.

A lot of articles, lectures, webinars and many other things have been written about design, but beginners always face the same issue: “So what exactly should I do?”. Remind yourself as a beginner, or analyze now, the same problem has comprehended all of us — the lack of an adjusted work process and lack of understanding of how we are to make the product. We attached considerable importance to the visual component, and didn’t notice the real business problems that we needed to solve.

In this article I will describe what actions need to be taken to create a design project aimed at solving business problems. Furthermore, I will talk about the phased design of the product development process, which is built during the work, starting from the moment of receiving the task to the layout ready for layout.

The Design process

1. Acquaintance with tasks and analysis: understanding of the goals and objectives of the business;
2. Market and user analysis. Analysis of the information provided, competitors and available sources. Identify the users who will use the product, their needs and concern;
3. Elaboration of scenarios. Determining the appropriate scenario based on the goals and objectives of users;
4. Generating ideas and creating a structure. Search for ideas based on the research;
5. Definition and creation of visual style. Colors, element styles, typography, photos and icons;
6. Design layouts. Based on the information collected, the design development and design of different states of elements.

The design process isn’t a strict guide with a specific sequence of actions. You can return several times to the previous stages or some stages and can mix them all with each other.

This article is only an compilation with a recommendation on structuring your work process based on the experience and general similarity of all design process designers' methods when developing simple projects, and not an axiom.

Acquaintance with tasks and analysis

The first step in this paragraph is to conduct analysis and research, and figure out how the client earns money from his business?

Pizzerias with food delivery by creating a website increase not only their popularity and provide the user with the opportunity to immediately get acquainted with the entire range of dishes, but, according to that they earn money from selling and delivering food online. Therefore, the business doesn't stand idle and have constant load and profit.

I immediately got the idea to place on the first screen of the site promotional offers, which will follow the most popular dishes. Due to this action, the site won’t be only an information portal, but also a full service.

What if a person is used to ordering food by contacting the operator directly? How can this affect the further design of the site? On the navigation system?

Take notes and keep exploring the service.

In the process of analyzing the customer's business, don’t forget to record all the ideas that will come to mind. They must come in handy in the next steps, which will be related to the design of the structure.

It is worth paying attention that the best way to understand business processes is direct communication with the customer. No one better than the owner or stakeholder can't tell you about his brainchild. According to communication, you should ask a lot of questions, the answers to which should consist of suggestions, and not yes\no questions, and pull out the maximum amount of information about the product.

The main problem of the client, why he turns in the studio for a solution, is that he doesn’t know or believes that the basic part is ready and he needs some additional chips on the site, advantages, ideas how to stand out and so on.

In addition to saving you a lot of time and showing the client that you are interested in his business and solving the problem, you can involve him in the work process, which will ensure the best achievement of the result with the help of the collaboration.

Total stage

You must clearly understand how the business of the customer earns money and to which key action you must lead the visitor to the site, analyzing all the information and smoothing out all the sharp corners that are incomprehensible to the user.