Design without process, or the form factor trap

In Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience, Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden state, “Design thinking takes a solution-focused approach to problem solving, working collaboratively to iterate an endless, shifting path toward perfection. It works towards product goals via specific ideation, prototyping, implementation, and learning st

People on the business end of the creative process need to define desired outcomes that describe audience and value. And as they are likely not developing solutions themselves, they need to be completely feet-off the solution pathway, unless specifically invited to step in.

that can and should be done in parallel. For example, I have long argued that requirements (functionality) and design (user experience design) are intertwined and should be done together. I don’t like the old waterfall model of a product manager doing “requirements” and handing that off to interaction designers that do “design.” Most teams understa

If you want feedback on flow and content, show the design without imagery and color. This is a perfect time to show a rough sketch or a black-and-white wireframe. People who have never seen a wireframe before might wonder what they are looking at. You can reassure them that they aren’t looking at a terrible final design by showing before-and-after

They give teams a strategy and a set of outcomes to achieve, along with a set of constraints, and then give them the freedom to use their firsthand knowledge of the situation to solve the problem.