Published: 23.02.2022

The design process: What did we learn?

In the first session of Creative Confidence, we had a look at our design process to raise awareness and understanding of design research.

On this page

Key takeaways
Ideation
Business Model Canvas
Minimum Viable Product
Design Sprints

Key takeaways

Always challenge the challenge.
To solve a challenge, we must understand its base and origin.
Conduct audits often in the existing journey
A journey map creates a shared vision and helps you define the strategy and principles of the upcoming journey.
Dedicate time to ideation. Your first ideas are often the obvious ones, barely scratching the surface.
We might need a new word for the MVP. What is often referred to as an MVP within the organisation is not necessarily an MVP.

Questions and answers

When should I ideate, and for how long?

This depends on how much data you have gathered in the discovery stage, and how many pain points and opportunities you have identified.

The ideation stage aims to yield the best possible ideas within the available time. The context often defines how much time this might be. Timeboxing might be a good technique to help you set a deadline that works well with your overarching timeline.

With a flexible mindset, it is better to come up with a group of ideas and concepts to test and validate. That way, you may iterate again and be sure you kill your darlings when you need to.

What is an MVP really, and how do we define it?

What is and isn't an MVP can vary greatly, depending on the market, timing and many other factors. In other words, it's all about testing the uncertainty and viability of your solution - we should use it to move from uncertainty to clarity.

We should not think of an MVP as a solution, but rather as a basic tool. The MVP is not a deliverable per se but answers our questions early on - before we've spent a lot of time and money. Such questions are key to the definition. Are we wondering whether it can be built, whether anyone actually wants it or whether someone will pay for it?

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When should I use Business Model Canvas, and how?

This depends on how well you understand the business needs, the user needs and the contexts surrounding them.

The Business Model Canvas can be used for mapping both existing and new products or services. It gives us insight into the problem space, so that we avoid solving the wrong problem.

When we put effort into the discovery stage, we reduce risk at a low cost. As deeper insight might reveal unknown opportunities, we should spend enough time here. Ask for time boxes, not free accounting.

When should I use the Design Sprint?

Design Sprinting is a shortcut that lets you go from idea to learning without developing anything. Instead of waiting to launch a minimal product to understand whether an idea is any good, you’ll get clear data from a realistic prototype. The Design Sprint gives you a superpower: You can fast-forward into the future to see your finished product and customer reactions, before making any expensive commitments.

However, there are cases for which the Design Sprint shouldn't be your main tool:

Your product is already well-defined
You need significant research
The scope is too broad
The scope is too narrow
You mistake a design sprint for product development

Ideation

Ideation will help you

ask the right questions and innovate with a strong focus on your users, their needs and your insights about them
step beyond the obvious solutions and therefore increase the innovation potential of your solution.
bring together perspectives and strengths of your team members
uncover unexpected areas of innovation
create volume and variety in your innovation options
get obvious solutions out of your heads, and drive your team beyond them

“You ideate in order to transition from identifying problems to creating solutions for your users. Ideation is your chance to combine the understanding you have of the problem space and people you are designing for with your imagination to generate solution concepts. Particularly early in a design project, ideation is about pushing for a widest possible range of ideas from which you can select, not simply finding a single, best solution.”

– d.school, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE

Instead of running multiple ideation sessions, be willing to "kill your darlings" when they don't get the expected response.

Business Model Canvas

The Business Model Canvas is comprised of nine criteria that express the important traits for your business’ story. These range from who you know to how you make money and what you have. The canvas acts as an advertisement to attract business investors or other founders.

There are several benefits of using this framework:

Simplicity. This single, straightforward sheet means there’s no filler. Your canvas highlights the basics of your business, so you should already know the answers to most of these. The compiling of information might be overwhelming, but the business model canvas ensures a simple process.
Customer-focused. Your canvas shows how you think about and interact with your customer, and it can help expose any weaknesses.
It's for any company. Whether you’re a one-person start up or part of a multi-national company, the business model canvas works.

Business Model Design is a process, not a deliverable.

Minimum Viable Product

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the version of a new product or service that allows as much learning as possible at the lowest possible cost. To launch an MVP is to start testing the uncertainty and viability of your ideas - we should use it to shift ourselves from uncertainty towards clarity.

However, we might have started thinking about the MVP as a solution. That is, the fastest and cheapest way to a finished product.

Rather, we should see it as a basic tool that answers our questions early on - before we've spent a lot of time and money.

Therefore, it's possible we should keep the MVP as an internal concept, but at the same time be more specific about what we launch first - externally in the organisation, and out of the teams. Is it something that meets my biggest expectations first, or something that meets all of my expectations first?

A common pitfall with MVPs is that we launch a bad service instead of a limited service.

Design Sprints

A Design Sprint is a recipe for how to go from a problem to testing solutions with real users in just four days. The method is based on the theory behind Design Thinking and Lean Startup. The difference is that it is more feasible, allowing you to jump straight from idea to learning without any expensive commitments.

When NOT to Design Sprint

1. Your product is already very well-defined

Some efforts don’t require that much design thinking. There might already be a validated product design concept that’s agreed to and all the team needs to do is execute it. A design sprint to implement functionality without exploring improvements, reductions, or changes isn’t a design sprint.

2. You need significant research

Experience has taught us that a design sprint needs to have inputs, and most often that input is a form of design research data. Yes, we're talking about interviews with customers – you know, those people who use your product? You may want to consider a day or two of user research, ethnography, or interviews before starting a design sprint.

3. The scope is too broad

You don’t need to know everything before beginning a design sprint, but you’ll want to know the general problem area before you get started. “Don’t boil the ocean” is a phrase you may have heard in the halls of management consultancies and the same applies here. While we’ve seen design sprints work as a mechanism to help narrow your scope and focus, it may be a challenge if your task is to do something like ‘reinvent space travel’, for example. You’re unlikely to accomplish a task that big in one week!

4. “Add this button”

Conversely, if the scope is far too narrow, you may want to just go ahead and implement the idea. Some things you shouldn’t overthink, just get it into your product and test it live.

5. You mistake a design sprint for product development

A design sprint is not a method for getting a more sophisticated product development effort done for less money and time. However, we have seen that this belief can occur no matter how many expectations you set at the beginning of the project.

Pro tip:

A design sprint cannot accomplish everything, so scope appropriately.

It is not a substitute for complex product development, nor is it appropriate if there’s an unwillingness in your organisation for a change in direction.