My design process draws heavily from the PRInCiPleS design framework created by Eli Blevis. This approach treats design as a plan that explains why a given solution should be adopted. Inspired by the scientific method, PRInCiPleS describes the categories and hierarchy of design activity that are found in the analysis and synthesis of a problem space.
| PRInCiPleS | Predispositions | Research | Insights | Concepts | Prototypes | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design Explanation | Predispositions are things we believe to be true at the outset of a design process or explanation. | Research comes in three forms, namely observations (primary research), literature review (secondary research), and collections—or examples of knowledge about cultural forms. | Insights constitute the design knowledge that arise out of research. | Concepts and systems of concepts are the things, services, communications, or strategies that we envision in response to insights. | Prototypes come in three forms, namely exploratory (low-fidelity prototypes), appearance (look-and-feel), and usability (proof-of-concept or high-fidelity). | Strategies come in three forms of planning, namely social value (desirability), technology (feasibility), and enterprise (viability). |
| Scientific Method | Initial Hypothesis | Literature Review | Research Hypothesis | Experimental Design | Experiment | Results |
For me, the framework is an aspiration. A full PRInCiPleS design explanation is always the goal, but in practice projects rarely afford the time needed to do everything I want to do. Design is a cycle of actions and reflection that is constrained by the resources invested in the effort. While design is never done, it must finish.
Within any resource constraint, my design process will always first seek to define and explore the problem space, and to gain insights that will inform the design rationale and ground the proposed solution in a real-world need. When that work is done, it is crucial to reflect on the experience and look for ways to improve.
- Define the Problem
- Explore the Space
- Explanation
- Reflection
A problem must be understood in the context of real-world need.
Define the Problem
Design begins with curiosity.
Recognizing that I will always have some context of understanding that I bring to any problem, I’ll start my investigation by listing my own assumptions about impacted groups, allowing these initial statements the possibility of being incomplete or wrong (e.g., “Rural guys drive pick-up trucks.”). I’ll do this until all potential stakeholders in this design are included, especially those in conflict. In this way, predispositions mark the boundaries of the problem space.
Research that studies these stakeholders can be acquired directly, indirectly, or through aggregation. Literature reviews surface what has already been done (secondary research). Direct inquiry reveals what is being done now (primary research) and can take many forms, including shadowing, disposable camera studies, photography and videography, interface testing, interviewing, surveys, and focus groups.
Uncovering the relevant truths of a stakeholder group can be a big investment. True ethnography isn’t practical for most design projects, given the time it takes to fully immerse yourself in a different culture long enough to gain both trust and insight. However, forms of pseudo-ethnography—such as participatory design, contextual inquiry, and photo journaling—are effective ways to gain some targeted understanding about people.
When the logistics of face-to-face interaction are prohibitive, virtual spaces and digital footprints offer additional ways to observe and understand behavior. More and more, data analytics and information visualization are becoming a crucial part of a designer’s skillset.
Cultural artifacts important to each group can be assembled into an collection that can reveal patterns and provide inspiration. These things—photos, tools, terminology, signs, and icons—represent a gestalt of one aspect of a given domain and can help illustrate other forms of research. Collections can show both what is similar across these artifacts and the range of what is different.
Insights arise from interpretation of this research and may identify a important interests or gaps within the larger problem space, or a vision of something better. Insights also affirm or refute earlier predispositions, offering reinforcement or corrections that will reshape the problem. They are a summary of the discovery work and building blocks to focus design exploration.
When the problem is effectively defined, I know where to focus my design exploration.
The best solution is rarely the first one. It is often an amalgam of several ideas.
Explore the Space
Arising from analysis of the problem, design components can be combined in different ways to create small, focused areas of concern—design spaces. The definition of such spaces is crucial to the creative process because it establishes constraints. Since it is informed by research, the design space will ground generated ideas in real needs.
The final design is rarely the first idea. Concept generation should aim for at least ten quick ideas to allow you to choose to pursue the best one, rather than accept the default.
One technique to prompt rapid ideation is a Pukinskis Set. Named for a fellow student from graduate school, this exercise selects a predisposition, an item of research, and a derived insight to form a micro space for design, with the goal being to generate two quick concepts that arise from how these components are related. Concepts with any merit will invite deeper refinement and evolve into prototypes.
Prototypes can take a form across a range of design fidelity:
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a sketch is the outline. Quick drawings on paper or whiteboards allow for spatial relationships to provide meaning. Sketching puts ideas and task flows into an external form that can aid in communication and later iteration. They are intended to be simple visions of a solution, but can also be sufficient for rapid testing.
The fidelity of prototypes is evident in how refined the concept is, its visual appearance, and the degree to which it works. Low-fidelity versions of a concept include most basic wireframes and paper prototypes. Their value relies on their unfinished nature and disposability when drastic changes are needed. High-fidelity prototypes, such as interactive Axure mockups, place more premium on accurately simulating the intended user experience.
Video prototyping is useful as a way to help potential stakeholders (including the designer) understand the context of a proposed intervention. The quality of the set, props, acting, and costumes is largely irrelevant and often interferes with the core goal of a video prototype: to understand the use of a design and its potential impact on the world.
Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) simulate interactions between programmed agents and a virtual environment to predict long-term behavior. Relying on simple interaction rules and local strategies for each agent, CAS is an abstraction that attempts to reveal emergent properties of a system before it is built.
It is helpful to establish a design message to act as a mantra for this work. For mPath, for example, our design message—”Walk with them, not for them.”—proved an important touchstone to keep us on track. Whenever we were wandering off our mission, we could turn our message into a question to evaluate our decisions.
A design is an explanation justifying a thing’s existence. It is not the thing itself.
Explanation
The most critical aspect of a design is the ability to communicate it clearly and with impact. Frequently, project communication is informal, done quickly with a few people, leaving little space for detail. Whether formal or not, a design rationale should be easy to understand and clear to see the path forward.
Blevis’ guiding design framework is not just a categorization or hierarchy of design activities. It is also a structure for the rationale explaining why a specific design choice should be adopted. These components—predispositions, research, insights, concepts, prototypes and strategies—may accumulate in any order, but the presentation of this information follows a logic that aids in the adoption of the proposed design.
Any effective design explanation includes the outcomes of analysis of the design problem and how those insights were synthesized into a preferred solution.
Analysis
Insights help to construct a convincing design rationale by distinguishing between interpretation and evidence.
A particular explanation will not list every analytical component but instead select the most important insights to describe a particular design space, and then justify them with the predispositions and research that informed them.
The goal here is to communicate a specific problem that invites an intervention.
Synthesis
The design solution is that intervention. It, too, is informed by both the concepts that inspired iteration and the ones discarded for particular reasons.
A walk-through of the design may include task flow diagrams, prototypes, or static mockups that illustrate what the human experience with the proposed system would be like.
A design rationale also incorporates the strategic value of the solution across three areas: Technical feasibility, Social value, and Economic viability.
An example design rationale for pixSmix can be viewed in the project portfolio.
Each iteration is an opportunity to revisit the successes and failures of the process.
Reflection
Good design is redesign. It a process that pauses, but never ends. It is important to make the pauses as useful as the rest of the design process
I’m fortunate to have spent over a decade working within a sophisticated Agile system, one that has evolved from an intentional ritual of weekly sprints and just-in-time design to a maturing one that allows designers to also work outside of those sprints to prepare solutions for future implementation. We use Atlassian products for planning and tracking progress, as well as more evergreen documentation.
As IDEO’s Tom Kelley liked to say: Fail often to succeed sooner. Sharing our failures helps us learn with each other. Regular and ongoing discussion with mentors, peers and stakeholders allows mistakes to remain small and valuable, positively impacting the journey of a design.
Through Agile ceremonies, my feature teams regularly look back at the previous cycle of work to understand what is working well, what we would like to change, and what still puzzles us, offering gratitude along the way for positive interactions with co-workers. Innovation is a risk, so to have an environment in which such conversations can occur is a valuable asset to a designer.
Journaling is another effective way to process challenges that surface during design. It helps capture thoughts and reactions, creating tangible steps towards progress. Once recorded, these ideas become a record of improvement, rather than vagaries lost in the shuffle. My design journals are filled with annotated sketches of presentations, readings, and design concepts that allow me to revisit a page years later and understand some of the thoughts and insights captured in that moment.
Technology changes rapidly. While my design process is highly adaptable to new tools and best practices, it is important to look for knowledge outside of the cadence of work to keep current with the profession. This can be done by attending conferences, watching videos, listening to podcasts, or keeping a list of practitioners willing to freely share what they know.