Designing in general is a very creative activity. It involves coming up with a model that serves a certain purpose. The best designs in general are the ones that have both great functionality and aesthetics. You want your designs to be both very user friendly and also looking appealing to the user. To be able to achieve that you must first as a designer do your homework. This can be divided into three phases, the pre-designing phase, the designing phase and the enhancements phase.
Lets start with the pre-designing phase. You need to create something useful to others. To do that you need to know what others really want. Otherwise, you’d be only creating for yourself. Which is not bad if you’re the sole user. But if you want your design to be implemented on a larger scale, you need to also include others needs in your work.
So, to begin the journey of figuring out what others need, you’d simply start by asking them: “ What do you need? Or what would be most useful to you? Or what do you think is lacking in a certain service or area?” That info might be already available in articles or on online forums and discussions. But it could also not be available and hence you will need to initiate the conversation about it. Once you roughly know what others need, you are off to a good start. You are now one step more knowledgeable than before. Ok, now you need to proceed to step two.
Step two is all about being more specific in your quest for knowing what people really need. You roughly know what they want, now you want to get more into the details. The more details you know, the more useful designs you will be able to come up with! Start approaching people, ask them about the details, give them the time and convenience to answer. Be a good listener. Be open minded. Empathize with their needs. Document every thing. Develop user stories. Make a list of their demands and proceed to the third step in the pre-designing phase, which is doing your market research.
You need to know that eventually the design you’ll be working on will inevitably be launched into a market. Do you know a lot about that market? Do you know if others have also developed designs serving that very need you’re currently studying? What about the details of such competing designs? How efficient are they? What about the market itself? How big is the user pool? What about the costs and the rewards of developing such a design? Again you need to develop charts and come up with a summary about the market details you’re getting yourself into.
Now you have good details about the needs and the purpose of your designs developed in clear terms that are much needed when you’re communicating with your team, with all stakeholders as well as when collaborating with others. Ok, all pre-design info is now available. You can comfortably proceed to the next step of the designing phase, which is coming up with an actual initial design model.
This is the most creative phase of them all. You now have enough knowledge about the subject to be able to develop solutions. Let’s get creative then. You want to develop something new to be able to stand out. You want to be an addition to the market. Not a repetition to it. You want to add value. Hence, you will need to come up with new ideas and to think outside the box somehow.
Start by brainstorming. Alone and in groups. Don’t reject ideas. Be a good listener and be open-minded. You never know! Give yourself and others the chance to explore and think. Again document everything. You will find yourself eventually with a whole bunch of ideas to choose from for the current project and maybe also for upcoming ones.
Proceed with choosing from the ideas documented. You can’t really choose if you have no options. This is why you brainstorm. To provide options for yourself and others to choose from. Otherwise you’ll have nothing and that is not good for creativity. You really choose by narrowing down your options to the ones closest to your purpose. Which ideas are more fitting to the project’s needs and aims? Then you need to start developing them.
Come up with an initial model. See how it will look like and test it. Test it’s functionality and feasibility with your team, the development team and most importantly with potential users. You need a good design model that is actually reproducible and is user friendly and appealing to the market. So, it’s all about coming up with an initial rough design and testing it.
Now you have a solid frame that you can add details into. Details are generally added progressively. You need to add functionality based on priorities. The most important needs come first and the least come last. Then you can add aesthetics accordingly. After you have developed this high fidelity prototype, now you can again test it.
Always consider testing everything before launching. It saves you a lot of time, money and effort. You do not want to launch anything not thoroughly tested. From the marketing aspect, users will be reluctant to retry your product if they come across any flaw in their initial trial. You definitely do not want that. You want to retain and grow your user pool. This can only happen if users revisit your product and also recommend it to others.
This is why the third designing step is most crucial before launching. It’s all about designing, testing, documenting results, making improvements accordingly and repeating those steps over and over till you get satisfactory results aligning with your project’s aims and purpose.
Only then can you launch your product into the market while keeping an eye on the product and marketing analytics. Continuous product and market analysis are much needed for growth. You need to study and analyze how your product is performing in the market. You need to always have your product standing out and adding value and being updated accordingly. Hence continuous analysis, development and testing are much needed for such a satisfying purpose.
When I look into designing in general, I really consider it an interesting and diverse set of activities. You need to be a good collaborator, communicator, listener, creative, talented, detail oriented and of course knowledgeable in diverse areas such as design, development, writing, business and marketing. This is why you need to be a life long learner. Always reading, learning, training, testing and iterating. But the skill that I see most essential to achieve all that is to be indefinitely curious.
Since I find designing an engaging activity, I intend to continuously be posting articles about it, to get others interested in the subject too and to help interested people learn a bit more about it. Naturally my articles will progress as I write more, learn more, read more and design more. I am also most interested in getting feedback. Always let me know what you think, thank you for reading my article!
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