Design process: What stands behind any good deliverables

Difficult goals are achievable when you have a clear plan to reach them. The same applies to the work of the design team on a new project.

Today we want to talk more about the Design process. It helps to structure a large scope of tasks, notice all important details and achieve great results.

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Why is it so important to fill the brief?

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All incredible projects start with a well-filled brief. It allows an agency team to better understand the client's wishes and goals, direct creativity in the right direction, and reduce the number of comments in the future. A brief should introduce the company's mission and values, general brand vibe, and its unique features. This will allow the creative team to achieve good results faster.

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Yes, it takes some time to complete the brief, but it's worth it. Here are some tips on how to fill the brief:

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• Feel free to write a lot. The more input we receive, the better the result of the project. Every detail is important because it helps to create the overall vision of the product. It will also reduce the amount of communication between the agency team and the client. Answers to most questions can be quickly found in the brief.

• Give examples and explain your ideas. It is always easier to show something than to describe it in words. So providing design examples is another step in helping designers to find solutions to respond to clients' needs. Also, in the case of creative work, it is always important to understand the general idea of ​​the product. So the client can get the final deliverables that will even exceed expectations with fresh decisions.
  
  Providing examples will help to avoid misunderstandings in the communication between the client and the designer. Both of them may have a completely different vision of the same things. Examples usually solve this problem. You can attach some links to any websites/apps with the visual design you like, moodboards, or random pictures from Pinterest.

• Purpose, expectations, clear objectives. To achieve the goal, it must first be well formulated. Therefore, it is always necessary to start with a clear definition of goals and expectations. Brief acts as a roadmap, which outlines all the steps from the beginning of the project to its completion.

Design process step by step

After the client fills out the brief and introduces us to their product, the design process begins. It consists of many important steps helping to achieve the best results.

UX research

Usually, the first step in creating a new successful product is good UX research. A deep understanding of your target audience's lifestyle will allow you to create the best possible user experience in the future. There are various methodologies that can provide the necessary knowledge.

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• User interviews. User interviews are a tool that can help you to get an in-depth knowledge of users' goals, experiences, and pains. This will help create a quality product that thousands of people will want to use.
  
  A better understanding of your potential users can help you not only add all the necessary features to the app, but also find accurate interface solutions. After conducting the interview, we analyze its results and find out important customer insights.

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• Customer portrait. Customer portrait helps to make design decisions and develop features for your product. It contains demographics, life goals, pains, mindsets, etc.
  
  After creating the customer portrait, we can meet the user’s needs and expectations in the interface solutions more accurately.
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• Competitive research. Competitive research helps to collect information about rivals. By finding the strengths and weaknesses of the products that provide features similar to your project, you can create a unique proposition on the market and use the best decisions in the niche.

All about design

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• User journey map. A user flow diagram is a step-by-step visual map, outlining the interaction between the product and the user. It shows user steps to complete certain goals in the app. For example, what he is doing to make a purchase after log in. User Flow Map helps to improve user experience as a tool for underlining all decision points, unlogical processes, or barriers to accomplishing the task in the app. 
  
  At this stage, we need from the Client's side a list of functions and content that should be in the product. 
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• Wireframes. One of the earliest stages in a design process is wireframing. This tool helps to design a website service at the structural level. It contains all interface elements, but in a sketch-like style. You can review the structure of the key pages and leave comments. After approval, the designer confidently moves forward.
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• First clickable prototype. You can click on wireframes to move through the user flow. It helps to check one more time the basic logic and structure of the app.
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• Moodboards. Moodboard is a digital collage that contains pictures, palettes, and different design elements in one style. It is useful not only as an inspiration for a designer, but also as a tool to understand the Client's vision of the product. 
  
  The Client sends us a few examples of apps, sites, or anything else that he likes. Based on them, we create the moodboard, reflecting the style of the future product. This helps to ensure that the design team and the Client are all on the same page while working on the project. 
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• Typography & Colors. All details are very important. Therefore, one of the first stages of work with a new project is to choose the font and color palette for it. They should convey the overall mood of the product and deliver specific messages about the brand.
  
  Designing typography for the project is an art. Skilled and experienced designers can set a consistent tone of the interface while finding the perfect style of typography.
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• Design. At this stage, we prepare three visual style options for the future product in Figma. Usually, our design team creates a signup screen, a home screen, and a user profile screen. These pages contain like 90% of all UI elements (labels, buttons, icons, etc.) you are going to see in the whole project. The Client can choose a certain style and leave comments to improve it. 
  
  After approval, we move to the next steps. Our team creates the design for all screens of the product and sends it for the Client's final review. 
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• UI Kit components. User interface kits are a set of files that contains critical UI components. The main advantage of this tool is that in the future you will be able to easily modify and update your design, saving time and money. 

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Check your new app now!

This is how a well-defined design process helps to transform the ambitious idea into a real user-friendly application. Also, we want to notice, that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for all startups. Our team is very flexible and works on each project taking into account its uniqueness.

Key takeaways

• A well-filled brief is the first step to a successful project.
• All goals and expectations must be well formulated from the beginning of the cooperation.
• A better understanding of your potential users = better interface solutions. That is why we always start with UX research.
• There are a lot of stages in a design process.
• We are open to new challenges! 

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