This section explains some design methods and how they are used by designers. We talk you through everything from brainstorming to physical prototyping.
Table of Contents
Assessment criteria
Scoring individual ideas against common criteria in order to select ideas.
Why
Agreed assessment criteria are useful for taking into account the concerns of multiple stakeholders and selecting ideas.
How
Brainstorm, refine and agree a set of assessment criteria. These need to be structured so that they encourage individual participants to consider the perspectives of other stakeholders when making their assessments.
Pointing at diagramFor example, if you were selecting a product design to take forward into production you might give each of the ideas a score of 1-5 on the criteria of: technical feasibility (the concern of stakeholders in engineering), cost (the concern of finance), passion for the idea (the concern of the project team), portability and size (which might be some of the concerns of the customers).
Score all your ideas against individual criteria before totalling the final score for each idea.
Being your users
A method to define the expectations of both the client and the design team at the start of a new project.
How
Identify your target user group, then carry out research to identify user scenarios and typical tasks users undertake.
Half male, half femalePut yourself in the user’s situation for a couple of hours, a day or even a week.
Carry out the tasks that they would do, in the environments where they would do them. This could mean, for example, working on a supermarket checkout or driving an unfamiliar car for a week.
Make detailed notes or keep a diary to record your thoughts.
You could…
…use empathy tools to simulate specific user characteristics. For example, wearing gloves and tinted glasses can simulate some of physical effects of old age, or a pregnancy suit with a weighted ‘bump’ can simulate what it would be like for a pregnant woman to use your product or service.
Blueprinting
A Service Blueprint is a detailed visual representation of the total service over time – showing the user’s journey, all the different touchpoints and channels, as well as the behind the scenes parts of a service that make it work.
A Service Blueprint helps everyone involved in delivering the service understand their role and ensure sure the user has a coherent experience.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is working together to help you generate ideas more quickly and effectively.
How
Start with a warm-up. Brainstorm a fun problem such as ‘How can we get every Monday morning off work?
View from above of people around a deskState the problem clearly and concisely.
Don’t lose anything. Write your ideas on flipcharts, or on the wall.
Number your ideas, and set a target, say to get to 100.
Keep the focus sharp. Edgy and precise statements are better than fuzzy ones.
Keep the ideas flowing, be responsive and keep trying to approach the problem from different viewpoints.
Brainstorming will be most effective if you keep to these ground rules:
- Defer judgment – build on ideas to make them better.
- Don’t criticise!
- One conversation at a time
- Go for quantity – the more ideas the better
- Have wild ideas – every idea is valid
- Stay focused on the problem in hand
- Be visual – draw ideas or represent them with whatever is to hand.
Resources
Flipcharts and pens
Refreshments and biscuits – it can be hard work and you need to keep energy levels up
Character profiles
Having character profiles visible and to hand during the design process will stimulate ideas and aid decision making. They can also help in justifying innovations to stakeholders in the project.
How
Based on actual research of your user groups, or a brainstorm, identify the key charactersthat you are going to design for.
Cards images of people onGive the characters names and visually represent how they look and dress, their aspirations, behaviour, lifestyle and any challenging peculiarities.
It is important to create profiles of extreme users as well as typical ones. It can also be useful to write ‘stories’ about a typical day in their life.
Display the profiles prominently. They will help you to stay on course and stop you designing for yourself. At decision points, ask yourself, ‘What would Mary or John think of this?’
You could…
…make composite profiles by merging the characteristics of real users you have met.
Resources
Photographs and images cut from magazines, a sheet of flipchart paper or foamboard
Choosing a sample
Choosing a sample is a design method that helps you create a strategy to find the most appropriate or effective group of users to recruit will make the most of limited time and budget.
Why
It’s not possible to research each and every one of your users. Creating a strategy to find the most appropriate or effective group of users to recruit will make the most of limited time and budget.
Creating a sample is the first step for many methods of understanding users, including one-to-one interviews and focus groups.
How
Start by brainstorming the user attributes that you think influence behaviours in relation to your project. Then choose the most important attributes to determine a useful range of people to study. For example, if you were designing a bike for female commuters you might want to study people who commuted by different means (train, car, bus), and in geographical areas with different weather, as well as people of different size and strength.
Two people sitting at a table having a conversationOther common attributes to consider might be age, life stage, ethnicity and socio-economic background, as well as emotional characteristics or attitudes.
Be wary of speaking to more people than you have time to analyse. There is a trade-off between the number of people you speak to and the number of insights you will get. Often a sample of six to nine people will be enough.
Remember, your sample doesn’t have to be representative. In fact, talking to non-representative or extreme users will often yield the most insight and inspiration for your project. For example, if you were designing a bike for commuters you might want to include a cycle courier in your sample.And don’t make the mistake of only talking to people who use your products or services – speak to those who don’t use them too. Don’t only talk to people who love commuting by bike, but include those who have tried it and hated it, as well as those who love commuting by car. Always be mindful of who you haven’t met.
The sample you choose will depend on what you are trying to get from your users. If you are researching to identify opportunities, a diverse sample including extreme users can often yield the best results. If you are researching to validate a resolved design (for example in a focus group ), on the other hand, then a more representative and less diverse sample may be more appropriate.
Cluster and vote
Cluster and vote is a method to identify patterns in a problem area or in a series of ideas. This in turn will help you select solutions.
Why
Agreed assessment criteria are useful for taking into account the concerns of multiple stakeholders and selecting ideas.
How
Brainstorm, refine and agree a set of assessment criteria. These need to be structured so that they encourage individual participants to consider the perspectives of other stakeholders when making their assessments.
Presenting ideas to an audienceFor example, if you were selecting a product design to take forward into production you might give each of the ideas a score of 1-5 on the criteria of: technical feasibility (the concern of stakeholders in engineering), cost (the concern of finance), passion for the idea (the concern of the project team), portability and size (which might be some of the concerns of the customers).
Score all your ideas against individual criteria before totalling the final score for each idea.
Comparing notes
Comparing notes gets messy things in order and is a useful aid to decision making.
Why
When presented with many pieces of information it’s not always obvious where to start. Getting messy things in order is a useful aid to decision making.
How
Write all your ideas on individual sticky notes
Reduce the number of notes by rejecting low priority items and combining notes that deal with similar things
Compare pairs of notes in turn and put the most important one higher up the list
Use the same criteria in each comparison to find the most important notes in each pair
When no more swaps can be made the list will be in order of importance
For example, if you wanted to determine the most important factors in choosing a pushchair you could take all the potential considerations from your research (or brainstorm them) and then Compare Notes to determine the most important considerations.
This method also works for ranking things other than by importance, for instance in order of speed, cost, quality or desirability.
You could…
…also use this method with users to get them to put their considerations in order of importance, for example, ‘What are the most important considerations connected with buying a new home?
Customer journey mapping
What is it?
A User Journey Map is a visual representation of a user’s journey through a service, showing all the different interactions they have.
This allows us to see what parts of the service work for the user (magic moments) and what parts might need improving (pain points).
A User Journey Map takes the users point of view and explains their actual experience of the service.
Aims
- Identify the key elements of a service.
- Understand the links between all the different elements over time.
- Identify problems areas in a service or areas where new things can be added.
- Create empathy with different types of users.
Drivers and hurdles
Drivers and hurdles helps you identify where to concentrate energies for most effect in the next stages of your project.
Why
Use this method to understand people’s perceptions, manage their expectations and identify where to concentrate energies for most effect.
How
Two people holding up boards with writing onGather together a diverse group of stakeholders in your project. Brainstorm what the workshop participants perceive to be the barriers (hurdles) and motivators (drivers) to a project’s success. Collect the ideas on two separate sheets of paper.
Establish what the project can and can’t address, and agree which drivers it would be best to focus on in order to overcome the hurdles.
Resources
Flipcharts, marker pens, sticky notes
Fast visualisation
Visualising ideas will make them easier to understand and modify, and will in turn stimulate new ideas.
How
Drawing a line on wall with white chalkGet people who can draw to sketch ideas during a group brainstorm.
The drawings don’t need to be perfect: they only need to have just enough detail to communicate the idea.
Visuals are then shown to the group and used to stimulate discussion and more ideas. The visualisers themselves are most effective when they are part of a team which also has a facilitator.
Resources
Someone who can draw, paper, marker pens
Focus groups
Focus groups is a design method that helps you get a broad overview of users’ reactions to, and ideas about, a topic.
How
Focus groups usually involve six to ten respondents in a group discussion lasting two to three hours, moderated by a skilled facilitator.
Standing in the middle of red and white circleThe facilitator will lead the group through a series of exercises designed to uncover their thoughts on the given topic. Good preparation of these exercises is vital, as is creating a democratic, supportive and informal atmosphere. The aim of focus groups is to get people talking freely and informally, so it’s important that the people feel comfortable with the others in the room, otherwise they might go quiet.
The sample of people you choose to come to the session will usually represent part of your user group.
You could…
…ask someone to visualise responses to users’ comments and bring them into the group for further discussion.
…use a video link or two-way mirror to allow the development team to observe. The session could also be videotaped for future reference.
Resources
Facilitator
Optional: Someone who can draw, if you are going to be using sketching
Video camera or room equipped with a two-way mirror
Hopes and fears
Hopes and fears helps you be aware of expectations and will make them easier to manage.
How
Ask everyone, designers and non-designers alike, to express verbally their Standing on top of tablehopes and fears for the project or workshop in hand.
Write hopes and fears on separate sheets of paper and pin them up as a reminder to be revisited throughout the workshop.
Discuss the outcomes of the exercise and establish from the outset which hopes and which fears the project can and can’t address.
Resources
Flipcharts, marker pens
Observation
Observation is a design method to identify the problems that can arise when people interact with products, services and environments.
How
Man with tripodDepending on your project, you might want to make general observations of something that already exists – for example, how people move around a shopping centre, or how people in the street use their mobile phones. Or you might need to create specific situations to test a design. This could mean observing how people complete a specified task on a computer in a simulated environment, or observing how people use a prototype of a new product.
You could…
…record your observation through photos or video. This lets you analyse the material after the event (and even catch important details you might have missed, like the expressions on people’s faces). Photographs or videos can also provide evidence to show to other partners or stakeholders in your project.
Resources
Optional: camera, video camera
Physical prototyping
Physical prototyping is a design method to help you to iron out any unanticipated problems with your creative ideas.
Why
Prototypes give you insights into how a product or service will be used, before you create a finished version.
How
First decide which aspect of the user experience you want to test, and choose an appropriate representation to test it. This will vary according to the stage of development your project is at.
Prototype television made out of cardboard boxAt an early stage a ‘quick and dirty’ prototype that people are not afraid to criticise is best for testing principles.
At a later stage a you may want to create ‘works-like’ prototypes to detail aspects of build and functionality and a (possibly separate) ‘looks like’ prototype to test response to form.
For example, you might first test the principles of a new office workstation by building it in foamboard using hot glue. In later stages you may test a detail of the mechanism by building ‘works-like’ mechanical prototypes and the form of the furniture by building separate ‘looks-like’ models at scale and with no moveable parts.
Build your prototype using available material and test it with end users, or role play how you might use the design yourself.
Use what you learn to improve the prototype design further.
Physical prototypes are also particularly effective in communicating design ideas to diverse groups of stakeholders.
Resources
Paper, card, foam board, hot glue… you might need a whole DIY store, depending on the level of realism required
Project space
Creating a project space can help you make sense of large amounts of information, keep it organised, give your project visibility and communicate the story of your project to others.
How
Find – or make – a dedicated project zone. You could use the area around your desk, a corner of your studio or, if you have the space, a separate room. Use the walls to organise your research spatially.
Sitting on beanbagHold all your meetings and creative sessions in this space so you are surrounded by stimuli.
Use the space to construct a story about your project so that you can share it with others and invite them to contribute.
Try not to be too precious or perfectionist about the way you present your work as people are more likely to make constructive comments on work in progress than something that looks polished.
As the project progresses, you can reorganise the space to tell the relevant story for the stage of the project.
Make the space comfortable to work in with appropriate lighting, sofas and tables as appropriate – and make it fun.
You could…
…use large sheets of foamboard to form the walls of your space. Then you can pin up images very easily, and move the space itself should you need to.
Prototyping: experience
What is it?
Experience Prototyping is a way of testing new service ideas or designs for specific touchpoints.
Experience Prototypes are about communicating what the experience will be like and allow the design team to test and refine their solutions with potential users. They also help build buy-in from partners and other stakeholders.
Making prototypes ‘early, ugly & often’ is important in the design process. Experience Prototypes don’t need to be refined or take a long time to make, it is more important to create something quickly, test it, and then iterate the design. They can vary from paper sketches, to a physical model, to a fully acted out service.
Quantitative surveys
Quantitative surveys is a design method to understand the ‘big picture’ and provide you with statistics that can help to inform the direction of your project.
How
There are two types of quantitative survey:
- Omnibus surveys are regular monthly surveys, allowing you to place a number of questions on a shared questionnaire. This is the cheaper option but limited in scope.
- Ad hoc surveys are bespoke pieces of work and allow you to ask as many questions as you need.
Pointing at chart on flipchartBoth of these will involve commissioning a specialist market research agency. It’s best to look for one familiar with the territory so that they will produce a usable report that directly responds to the needs of the project.
Don’t forget – the information you need may already be available at reference libraries. See Secondary Research.
Role playing
Role playing means physically acting out what happens where users interact with products or services.
Why
Taking the role of the user and acting out their interactions with a design can prompt more intuitive responses and help you to refine your design. Role playing is particularly useful for prototyping interactions between people, for example in a service context.
How
Staring at box with prototype in itDefine a character or characters who will use or deliver the end product or service you are designing. Isolate key moments where these users interact with your product or service, and then act them out – with or without props.
Use your intuitive responses prompted by the enactment of the scenario to refine your design.
You could…
…Use role play as a method to test physical prototypes.
Resources
Props if required, such as clothing, walking sticks, glasses, pushchairs, furniture
Scenarios
Scenarios is a design method that helps you develop ideas that involve interactions with multiple users over a period of time.
How
Define a set of characters who will use the product or service you are designing. Consider the details of their lives – their job, their regular activities and their attitudes.
Polaroid portraitIdentify key moments where these users interact with your product or service, then realise them as scenes in a short text or a storyboard.
Test the scenario on users or yourself. Use what you learn to improve the design further.
To investigate the full scope of user interactions, you may need to construct three or four scenarios around the needs of a different character and improve them with each iteration.
You could…
…act out your scenario by role playing
Resources
Someone who can draw, sheets of paper, markers, a video camera or computer depending the realisation method you have chosen
Scribble-Say-Slap brainstorming
Scribble-Say-Slap brainstorming is a design method to generate a large number of ideas from a large group of people in a short period of time.
How
Assemble a group of not more than 20 people who see your problem from different perspectives.
Post_It notes with ideas written on themAppoint a facilitator and several helpers. It’s the facilitator’s job to set the rules and keep the ideas flowing.
The facilitator starts with an explanation of the brainstorming rules before writing up the problem statement and encouraging people to generate ideas in response.
Participants write down their ideas (Scribble) on sticky notes before shouting them out (Say) and sticking them up (Slap).
The helpers are there to take completed sticky notes from participants and stick them on a wall.
After brainstorming a smaller group can cluster the ideas for voting (see Cluster and Vote).
Resources
A facilitator and helpers, marker pens, sticky notes (lots of them), flipcharts, a whiteboard or a large sheet of paper.
Refreshments and chocolate biscuits (optional)
Secondary research
Secondary research is a design method for finding a range of published information about your customers, your competitors and political, social and economic trends.
How
Search online or at your local reference library (where you can ask for help). Some online systems allow you to automatically repeat your search daily or subscribe to RSS feeds, enabling you to keep up with developments in your area.
Particularly good sources of information are:
- National press and trade periodicals
- Specialist blogs
- Conference reports
- Market research, market reports and official statistics
- Business reports from commercial publishers (such as KeyNote, Euromonitor, Mintel, Datamonitor, and The Economist Intelligence Unit)
- Public sector periodicals, reports and papers
- Trade associations and organisations
- Colleges and universities
- Think tanks
Resources
Some libraries will require a reader pass, some websites will require a subscription. Most current market research reports will have to be paid for, however last year’s reports can often be accessed free at local reference libraries.
User diaries
User diaries is a design method to gain insight into people’s lives, particularly patterns of behaviour.
How
Supply users with a diary and ask them to keep a written record of their impressions, circumstances and activities related to the relevant aspects of their lives. The diary can be kept over a week or sometimes longer. Be careful not to ask leading questions that will distort the results you get: keep your questions open-ended and your language simple.
You could…
…give your users single-use cameras. These are an effective way to get users to Polaroidsrecord incidents, or environments. Photo diaries, which can be used in conjunction with a written diary or as a stand-alone piece of evidence, can be as simple as pictures of users’ houses, or the contents of their fridge, but still provide valuable insights to users’ habits.
…provide a pre-printed notebook or diary with prompts or questions. Make sure the visual design makes it easy to complete.
…talk through the diary in a follow-up interview. Alternatively, you could simply supply a stamped addressed envelope for the user to return the pack by post.
Resources
Optional: Diary or notebook and pen
Single-use cameras
Workshop toolkit
A workshop toolkit is what you need when it’s difficult to predict all the eventualities of a workshop – so it’s best to be prepared for a wide range of activities.
How
Make yourself a box with the following resources in it… (and don’t forget to have refreshments on hand to keep everyone going.)
Resources
- Thick and thin marker pens of different colours; pencils
- Sticky notes – different colours, sizes and shapes
- Notepads and paper of different sizes
- Flip charts – sticky ones are best
- Pins and masking tape
- Digital camera, Polaroid camera and film
- Foamboard, cardboard, cutting mat, knives and glue for prototyping
