Buckle up with the 30–60–90 framework for your next design project
what, how, and why this framework
What does empty canvas do to you — invite or oppose your brush stroke? As Vincent van Gogh, an influential painter of the 19th century quoted “Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don’t know anything.” This certainly conveys the inertia we often feel due to no direction before embarking on a project. And here framework comes to the rescue by giving us a clear roadmap and hence a kickstart.
What is the 30–60–90 framework?
30, 60, and 90 are three milestones, like levels, that streamline the design process in a stakeholder collaboration-centric manner. They can be mapped to the percentage of work completed—30%, 60%, or 90% complete. This helps when you already have a good basic understanding of the product and are designing a feature in it.
Why not 30–60–100 or 100% complete?
Because no product is ever complete (perfect). Before you ask, let me answer how no product is ever complete. There are many factors to it -
- Think life before coronavirus VS life after coronavirus 🦠😷. User needs and goals change with time or context.
- “Who thought this could be used this way 🤔?” — we get to hear this. Undiscovered or new use cases emerge.
- Ever had a buggy thing solved in a product? The design needs to look into this matter and solve such errors and bugs for one and all.
- Products have evolved from web 1.0 to web 2.0 to web 3.0 📈. Keep up with the times or in design terms with standards.
- And in the crux, the scope of improvement always lies in all. Stagnancy sinks the product hence the company.
Therefore 10% of work always remains.
How you approach the problem defines the validity and quality of the solution you’ll present.
What’s in these levels and how to use them?
30 level
This is the starting point for designing anything. By design, I mean problem identification to user testing, everything. At this level, the goal is to catch hold of the exact problem statement to work on with the help of stakeholder collaboration. To achieve this, the steps are to document — the problem statement, background knowledge from stakeholder collaboration, users, use cases, UX and business impact of the project, current metrics, existing materials/resources if any are available, stakeholders involved, timeline of 60–90. Once documentation and review are done, the time to take stakeholders’ feedback comes. Feedback at this level touches upon the direction, idea, and approach ahead. Analyze the feedback and include those appropriate culminating in the 30 level and step in the 60 level.
60 level
This is the stage where you get into a solution space aka divergence first then convergence. To diverge, perform and document research (primary and or secondary), benchmarking (primary and secondary), brainstorming, paper sketches, or lo-fi wireframing. Analyze and converge to make some hi-fi wireframes. The goal here is to lock in the solution idea and its wireframe. Take the stakeholder feedback on this level’s documentation with the same approach as in the 30 level. Feedback at this level touches upon the features, flow, usability, and interaction.
90 level
This is the stage to make and deliver a fully-finished product. Interaction design, visual design, UX writing, all this makes for a fine end-to-end stitched product. Again the documentation goes the same way for stakeholders’ feedback. This time stakeholders can give feedback about the look and feel and the finishing of the final product. Incorporate the feedback if any and you’re up to roll it out.
But why use the 30–60–90 framework?
How you approach the problem defines the validity and quality of the solution you’ll present. So without the 30–60–90 framework, one’s approach may look like jumping straight to the solution before knowing what the problem is or doing all in isolation and straightaway showing the final finished designs to the stakeholders.
Jumping straight to the solution is instinctive, in our innate nature. But to problem solvers aka designers, this is a red flag.
The 30–60–90 framework guides a designer to take the path wherein defining the problem is a must to move ahead to solutions. The 30 level is all about defining the problem space.
For those who want to break out of designing in isolation, the 30–60–90 framework is a reminder to include stakeholders now and then. By the way, there is a term that illustrates what can happen to you and your work on skipping stakeholder collaboration called the SEAGULLING EFFECT. In short, it paints a picture of a stakeholder flying at the end moment out of nowhere shitting over your hard effort, that is, providing feedback at the time you least needed it, and then you can imagine ahead!
In one line, the 30–60–90 framework not merely helps in giving you a direction to approach a project and design efficiently but avoids the seagulling effect.
Wanna see the 30–60–90 framework in action? Check out a project.
Feel free to ping me on LinkedIn :)
