Purpose

a) Empathise: Who are you designing for?

Person Centred Design

Before doing anything, it’s important to understand who the individual is you are designing a solution for. And it’s important to view them as an individual rather than a faceless mass audience. You want to think about how they behave, what drives them, and what they care about:

Values: How do they see the world?

Vision: What would a better world look like to them?

Mission: How do they realise their vision?

b) Define: What is the problem they face?

Step 1: Start with a clear brief (Modified T-Plan by JWT Agency)

Work through each of these questions to get a bigger picture of what you’re trying to achieve.

  1. What is the opportunity or problem that must be addressed?

  2. What is the role of the design team?

  3. Who are we solving for?

  4. What is the key result we want?

  5. What information/attributes might help produce this result?

  6. What needs to be communicated or reinforced?

  7. Are there any restrictions or considerations? [budget, timeframe, etc.]

  8. This could be helpful...[any object, analogy, etc. to help illustrate the nature of the brief]

Step 2: Refine the brief (Dave Trott)

Now you have the big picture, it’s time to simplify it. A refined brief helps align everyone on what needs to be achieved.

  1. Market Growth or Market Share?: If you're market leader you want to grow the market, if you're not you want to disrupt or increase your share of the market.

  2. Current Audience or New People?: Are you targeting your current community or do you want to attract new people to your community?

  3. Brand or Product?: Are you increasing awareness of your purpose or are you highlighting a particular product/service?

Step 3: Define the problem then figure out why

"Define the problem perfectly before you look for a solution"

- Zoe Scaman

Once you can succinctly state the defined problem, the next step is getting up stream of it to find out why it exists in the first place.

Be that annoying child in the backseat of the car asking “Why?” over and over until the source of the problem presents itself.

Don’t just look for obstacles - look for opportunities and hidden advantages!

If you don’t get this defined at the start you’ll lose your way through the design process.

Handy tip!

Always avoid group-think.

When designing with others, before meetings, set a loose agenda that asks questions or sets individual challenges rather than lists topics for discussion. This ensures participants come to the meeting with ideas.

So instead of 'Item 1: Discuss why X doesn't work', write 'Why is X important? What are the points of friction stopping X from being great?'