The design process, regardless of the discipline, works through iteration, divergent and convergent phases, focusing on user needs, and using visualization to bring things to life. The discover phase of a project is about doing the initial user research, exploring the problem space and being open to new possibilities and opportunities.
The define phase is our first big moment to make decisions. What’s in and what’s out? What is most important from our research and what stories to we want to start telling to begin shaping our understanding of the problem and possible solutions. This phase is convergent, meaning we choose a direction and land at key insights that will inform our next steps.
We’ve got key insights about the problem space, now we move into solutions. The type of ideas we produce depends on the nature of the problem. Sometimes we’re creating new digital services or software, sometimes it’s a business model innovation. Service design projects will produce service blueprints and service standards. The develop phase is about exploring lots of ideas to solve a problem—and ideally—co-creating ideas with end-users and relevant stakeholders.
We like to support ideas through implementation and the change that often comes with it. Our goal is often to create change that affects end customers or users, employees, processes and even business models. Implementation is the step beyond experimenting and testing, to production and rollout.
What problem are we trying to solve for whom? It's okay to only have a basic understanding of the problem or a general area to explore. We will learn more about the problem as we go and revisit our initial problem statement.Detail
Whose involved? Whose easy to reach? Whose hard? Mapping stakeholders and the people we want to engage with is a critical step to ensure an inclusive process and that we capture a diversity of perspectives.Detail
We do research to understand people, their motivations and their behaviour. Design research is an important part of practicing design well and ensuring we’re solving the right problem. Design research builds empathy and understanding. It enables assumptions to be challenged with fresh eyes.Detail
A fictional character, informed by research, that can be used to understand a significant stakeholder for your project.Detail
Journey & System Maps
Maps help us visualize relationships or experiences. Journey maps focus on the steps someone moves through in a particular experience. System maps often help us see relationships, flows of information and connections.Detail
A place where we've put everything we've learned up on a physical or digital wall to make connections, theme qualitative data and produce insights.Detail
User stories, jobs-to-be-done, key insights—these are the synthesis of the research and the most important ideas we should be trying to respond to in our design work.Detail
Customer experience, staff experience, the supports that facilitate an exchange or transaction—these blueprints allow us to deliberately design and innovate services.Detail
Business model canvases, strategic plans, foresight scenarios—there are lots of ways to explore ideas in a strategic form. Before building an operational plan around a new strategy, testing your models gives you valuable feedback.Detail
Alpha prototypes of apps and software give us a way to gather feedback and test ideas with users. Wireframes are inexpensive digital prototypes that simulate a working piece of software.Detail
A transformation roadmap outlines a problem, goal and solution. The roadmap identifies the systems, actors and factors involved in the transformation and provides a guide for achieving the goal.Detail
Organizations have a way of killing new ideas. We work with you to support the successful adoption and implementation of the new service, strategy, process or model.Detail
From beta to live, your software is refined, finalized, documented and transitioned to your organization.Detail
Final documentation, regardless of what has been created, is produced and handed over to your team.Detail
Monitoring & Evaluation
How well is the new thing working? How do we know? How do we want to iterate and take the next steps to continuous improvement? Good design means getting feedback and continuing to make adjustments based on engagement with end users.Detail