Design Cycle: A method you can always use

— You know what’s always applicable? Design strategy!—

You have to go back to basics from time to time to refresh your memory and improve your design foundations. That’s what we’ll do today by delving deeper into the design cycle.

The design cycle is a process as well as a handy tool that can always be depended on to assist you with your design project. Regardless of the project’s scope, size, or complexity, design cycle has your back!

The design cycle approach is commonly referred to as the MYP design cycle. MYP is an abbreviation for Middle Year Programme. Yes, teenagers are aware of it. They learn about it since it is so important! And all too often, we overlook the essentials, or even believe they are beneath us. That is not at all the case. I mean, you learn to read as a child, and it’s still very useful, right?

With that said, let’s go back to our design roots and rediscover the design cycle!

What is a design cycle?

The design cycle is a series of phases that takes you from a design concept to a finished product. Although every designer approaches an issue differently, there are some general stages that we all follow. These design steps comprise a design cycle, which serves as the foundation for the design process.

A MYP design cycle model looks like this:

As you can see, the design cycle has 4 main steps:

• Plan
• Develop
• Create
• Evaluate

Each step can be divided further into substeps. These procedures, however, do not have to be followed in any particular order. In some circumstances, you will have to restart, while in others, you will have to skip forward. You rotate through the cycle as needed. The design cycle is fluid and should not be followed mindlessly.

Because design is an iterative cyclical process, the cycle automatically repeats itself. After evaluating your product, you’ll be able to discover what improvements you can make and return to the Planning stage (or one of the preceding phases) to work out how to put them into action.

It’s your tool to play with and work with, so tailor it to your needs.

Let’s break down the cycle’s phases and substeps now.

Design cycle breakdown

Plan and research

— You should start any new project by identifying your design goals. —

To begin, you must explain and justify why your design is required. Defining and justifying your goals will assist you in identifying and prioritizing the research that is required.

Perhaps you’re unsure whether your target users truly require your solution. Go talk to them and determine if the problem you’re attempting to fix is terrible enough to justify the effort.

Or perhaps you’re unsure whether it’s viable to develop your innovative product on a shoestring budget. Ask your engineers or R&D department what they think about it.

Analyzing your competition and similar products is another stage that will assist you in defining your aims. Investigate what works for them and see if you can use your new knowledge.

There’s a reason why early research takes up 25% of the design cycle. You should discover everything you can about your users and the market you’re targeting. If you don’t already have the essential data, this should be the first step you take because all following actions are dependent on it.

Create the design brief that will guide the Development step of the cycle if you’re certain that you can adequately explain and defend your notion.

A design brief should include most of the following:

✅ Clearly defined objectives and design problems of your project.

✅ How you are planning to solve the main challenge.

✅An overview of your business and its objectives, especially if they’re relevant to the project.

✅A description and important insights of your target users and target market.

Your team needs to understand who they are designing for and what your users need.

✅ Information about your competitors and similar solutions.

✅ Project timeline and budget.

✅ Project scope, as everyone on the team needs to understand the big picture.

If the project is big and complex, it should be broken down into simpler, smaller pieces that can be designed independently and later combined to form the complete product.

✅ Desired specifications or overall style of the product.

This part can be very specific or very vague depending on how fleshed out your idea is and how flexible you are when it comes to changing it.

If you list specific features, you should clearly mark which ones are critical and which ones are ‘only’ desirable.

✅ Definite “Don’ts” that tell the team what they need to avoid.

✅ Contact information of the project leader.

The more detailed the brief, the more helpful it will be at each subsequent step of the design cycle.

Develop ideas and find ‘the one’

Once you’ve got the brief, there are two possible steps that follow:

1. You can work on design specifications first and then develop various design ideas that fit these requirements. This is usually the way to go when designing a more technical solution.
2. You can develop design ideas first and temporarily forget about most specifications if you don’t want any constraints. This works when you want to explore various and diverse solutions for your user’s problem.

There are various ways of coming up with fresh design ideas — you can brainstorm, draw inspiration from your competition, make storyboards, think of provocative designs, and more. Consider using design sprint ideation approaches like lightning demos or four-step sketches. It all depends on you, your project, and its limits.

Even if you ideate alone, you should evaluate as a group before deciding on a design concept to pursue. That is why it is critical to present a few selected concepts to your design team. Not only are they being evaluated by you while you prepare the presentation, but your team may also detect any flaws that you have overlooked.

Once you’ve decided on an idea, it’s important to think about it further and describe it using storyboards, labeled diagrams, blueprints, or anything else that will help you visualize it.

The next step is to begin the creation process.

Create a plan and a prototype

The first thing that you need to create is a design plan. A solid plan will keep your creation process on the rails. Answer questions such as:

• What steps do you need to take to create a prototype?
• Who is responsible for what task?
• What is the timeline for the project?
• What are the metrics that you are going to measure?
• What testing methods are you going to use and when?

Some designers are overly eager to get into the creative design phase of their work. The design cycle demonstrates how much preparation is required to maximize your chances of generating a successful design. Take your time.

While creating, keep track of any changes to the plan as well as any essential or interesting topics that arise. You can even take screenshots and document the entire process if you think it would be relevant during the testing and iteration phases.

You must construct a functional prototype of the solution in order to evaluate your design in the next step. The average first prototype will be altered and changed numerous times before the design cycle is completed. As a result, your first prototype should be functional but not visually polished. Its major goal is to serve as a jumping off point for examination and testing.

For example, if you’re creating a UX-based solution, start with the core elements and prioritize clarity and functionality before appearance. If you’re making a physical prototype, make a mockup out of easily modifiable materials like cardboard or soft wood.

After you’ve completed your prototype, it’s time to test, evaluate, and iterate.

Evaluate and prepare to improve your design

You considered which testing methods you would use to evaluate your prototype when developing your design strategy. It’s now time to put them to good use.

You’ll most likely do usability testing and develop several scenarios to see how your users interact with your prototype.

When evaluating your design’s success based on your tests, you should always ask the following questions:

• Does the product allow users to achieve their goals? Do users understand how the product works?
• Can users find what they are looking for? How much energy did it take for the users to get there?
• What are the users’ attitudes towards the product? Do the features look and feel right?

More objective measures, such as the time required to accomplish the work, can also be measured. There is plenty to be said about effective product testing, but we won’t go into it here. Please read my product testing guide if you want to understand more about it.

The purpose of testing and evaluation is to observe how users interact with a product, get feedback, discuss it with your team, and improve your design.

Documentation is an important (though often disregarded) component of this. Many designers regard documentation as an irritation rather than an essential component of the design process. However, you should document all of your results, even if they seem insignificant at the moment.

Documentation added as an afterthought is frequently incomplete or subpar, because most vital information is lost by the time the writing occurs. In the worst-case situation, it might be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful product.

Once you’ve determined how to improve your design (and written it all down), it’s time to repeat some of the design cycle processes and improve the design.

The fascinating aspect of design is that the completed result may be quite different from what was anticipated at the start of the design cycle. The design process may lead you down an unexpected road or into uncharted terrain.

Final Thought

But that’s a regular part of the design process; don’t be discouraged if something fails on the first or second try. Many adjustments may be required before your product reaches its aims. That doesn’t imply you’re not a talented designer. On the contrary, it indicates that you worked hard, gathered adequate input, and were not happy with “it’s probably good enough.”

The design cycle, as you can see, gives us several fundamental concepts that are virtually always applicable. Keep it in mind and put it to good use!

Thanks for reading! 📖

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