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The Design Process
The 4 stages of the Design Process

The 4 stages of the Design Process

A rundown of the process we follow for most projects

Last updated on August 4, 2021

The design process helps turn ideas into impactful solutions. This four-stage framework guides you through getting the right mindset, understanding the problem, exploring solutions, and testing ideas.

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By following this process and using the tools provided in this Toolkit, you can create better digital services for your users, as well as upskill yourself and your team.

Expand each section to read about the key activities, outcomes and links to the resources.

Mindset

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Start thinking about Mindset at the beginning of your project - it will make things much easier down the line.

Getting your team on board with digital before you start a project can help things run more smoothly.

Key activities

  • Digital Principles: guide your team’s use of digital and discover what good looks like when designing a digital service.
  • Set up project best practice: guidance on types of meetings and how to run them.
  • Stakeholder mapping: figure out who you need to keep informed and involved, and how.

Outcome

You and your team will be set up with the right digital ways of working to run smooth digital projects and transformation.

Discover

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The Discover stage helps you understand the problem and needs of your users. This is your chance to learn, observe, and gather insights.

The Discover stage is crucial for building a strong foundation for your digital project. It’s all about getting a deeper understanding of your users’ needs and behaviours, as well as the challenges they might be facing.

Key activities:

  • Knowledge Board: bring together colleagues and stakeholders to collate everything you know, you think you know, and what you don’t know about a challenge.
  • User Interviews: Speak directly to those affected by the problem to gain real insights.
  • Problem statement: Summarise the problem in a single, clear sentence.

Outcome

A clear understanding of user needs and insights into the problem.

Define

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This stage is all about getting creative and starting to think about ideas and solutions.

Once you’ve got a good understanding of your users’ behaviours and the challenges they’re facing, it’s time to move on to Define.

Key activities

  • Generate ideas: generating and testing new ideas to help solve your users’ problems.
  • Consequence Scanning: think about potential consequences of a product or service to prioritise your ideas.
  • Test your ideas: create some quick tests - or prototypes - to see how well your ideas meet your users’ needs.

Outcome

Generate a set of tested ideas that will help in some way solve your solution.

Develop

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This stage is all about beginning to build practical solutions to test with your users

Key activities

  • Choosing a digital partner: figure out whether you need a digital partner and how to find a good one - and keep them
  • Choosing software or a tool: before building something from scratch, you might be able to reuse something that already exists
  • Create a service blueprint: create a service map to figure out how your product will be used by users and staff

Outcome

Develop a small digital solution or prototype. Figure out what your project team needs to look like. Continue testing and improving.