How I see design

We start with two continuums…

On the left, we have Analysis - where we take a whole and pick apart its component pieces. On the right we have Synthesis - where we bring things together to create a new whole.

Down the bottom we have Tangible - the world of the “what”, where we see effects, even if we don’t yet know the causes. Up the top is the Abstract - where the “why” serves to explain the reasons for the what.

I prefer to think about design using these continuums, and I avoid the indication of Time on either axis. This diagram is intentionally cyclical, and while it might be clean in presentation mode, it is messy in practice.

Step 1: Observation

Most business triggers exist in the Tangible x Analysis quadrant. We have more customer complaints. Our competitor has launched that product. We have seen market share do something. Typically, we see a thing happen, and we are analysing why that has happened.

Step 2: Avoid the solution shortcut

The solution is right there! It’s tempting, but that’s not the way this circle goes. We might come back to our initial solutions, but let’s start instead by going abstract…

Step 3: Insight

Down the rabbit hole we go. Understanding might require different tools depending on the circumstance, industry, product, or any other number of factors. But essentially this is a process in finding out what is going on, and why it is going on. We might deep dive into analytics, we might speak to customers. We might observe people as they go about their days, like I said, the tools vary. The objective is always the same though: We are looking for things that are not immediately obvious. We are looking for insights.

I define an insight as:

An unexpected, core truth.

An insight should be a kind of genie that can’t be put back in the bottle. The kind of thing that, once uttered aloud causes one to stop and ponder ‘how did I not see this sooner?’. Something along the lines of “customers don’t like waiting in queues” is not insightful. Something along the lines of “we’re not selling haircuts, we’re selling confidence” is.

Step 4: opportunities

Part of the reason we search so hard to find unique insights is because they become our IP; they become our competitive advantage. We conduct work that no one else did, to come to conclusions that no one else has come to, to allow us to solve the problem in a way that no one else is thinking of. We don’t want to do 5% better than a competitor, we want to change the rules of the game, and slant the table in our favour.

This step is where we reframe the question. When we approach the solution from this angle, we do so a lot more powerfully. We also tend to have broader opportunities to address the problem, since we’re not playing a reactive game, but we are instead being driven by where we feel we can apply the insights.

Step 5: solution

Armed with insight, focussed on delivering value, we now need to execute. And quickly. We’ve done our homework at this point, the only thing that is left is to bring this to market as quickly and efficiently as possible. This is where lean and agile and rapid prototyping and iterations serve better than the fully polished and final “ta-da!” approach (watch the Marshmallow Challenge TED Talk if you don’t know why).

Step 6: New observations

Nothing exists in a vacuum. You’ve launched a new product or feature or service of some sort into the wild - and it will generate new data. Customers will interact with it, competitors will react to it, and you will have a whole new host of Observations to continue around the cycle looking for improvements and refinements, or for whatever comes next.

Congratulations on your shiny new release, and good luck on your next lap around the process.