No matter what you're designing, designers have a special code we all follow. It's called The Process.

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Music and links from this episode

Gorgon by Jesse Spillane

No sudden movements by rui

Interstate 70 Rain Chants by Fields Ohio

Line-by-line notes

Buildings

Bridges

Roads

Websites

Restaurant menus

They’ll all made by following a set process

This process, whilst usually similar for every designer

Allows designers all over the world to make very special things

This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess

MUSIC

A problem

Every design process

Whether you’re designing a city or designing a business card

Begins with a problem

Design only really has one purpose: to solve problems

And if there’s no problem to solve, there’s no point designing anything

These problems range from simple stuff like a problem of a business not looking professional enough

To complicated problems like too many traffic jams on a particular road

You can’t find a solution, until you’ve identified the problem

And the design process is the only one that can solve such a problem

After that, designers start to collect information to understand the problem

This step is a mix of research and finding inspiration

By seeing what others have done before, you can analyse what went wrong

And of course, what went right and what you may want to emulate

I’ve been pretty vocal in some past episodes about the inspiration gathering step

And being very careful not to cross the line of inspiration to downright copying other’s work

Now comes the fun part, ideas generation

This is my favourite part of any design project

Being alone with a sketchbook and working on ideas

Younger designers too often skip this step, or go about it in the wrong way

The point of the ideas step is to indiscriminately create ideas

That is, to create ideas without thinking they’re good, bad, or anything else

At this step, it doesn’t matter if your idea is bad

Or if you think you’ve found a solution to the design problem

That is not the point here, it’s just to let your brain be free

And make ideas

And then take those ideas, and turn them into solutions

This is a really difficult step, because now you’ve got so many ideas

You need to analyse them, and work out which ones are good

Or appropriate solutions

Lots of designers like to leave this step to their clients

They’ll create quite a few ideas, and ask their clients to pick which is their favourite

I prefer to be much more critical at this stage

And I normally only present one solution to a client

If we give the client the choice, we’ll either end up with a frankestein’s monster of a design with lots of solutions turned into one

Or we’ll end up with the solution we like the least

It isn’t the client’s place to do our job for use at this stage

And we need to be ruthless and pick the best solution for the job

This slots neatly into feedback

This is the stage which can cause the most problems in the design process if not handled properly

A client isn’t usually experienced in the design process

And we ask them which one they like the most

This is not the correct question to ask them

We should be asking them which is most appropriate

The one that is the best solution to the design problem is the best

And we need to make sure we tell our clients that too

The final step

Is improve

In lots of design projects, we may go back and forth between feedback and improve

Before we get the best solution

And that’s OK

So long as we’re working towards the same goal

To make the best solution for the design problem we’ve set

It’s amazing when you think about it

That no matter what you’re designing

This process is largely similar across any medium

It’s really special

And also quite humbling

MUSIC

This was AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess

The music featured in this episode was

Gorgon by Jesse Spillane

No sudden movements by rui

Interstate 70 Rain Chants by