How to Methods

Methods

A design method is a repeatable way of doing things that can be further broken down into processes. All design methods include some version of research, ideation, prototyping, iteration, and presentation but may approach each of these categories differently depending on the medium, the audience, and the purpose of the communication.

Research is often difficult to define, because it reaches into every phase of a project. In high school curricula, research is often narrowly defined as reading, quoting, and citing books. However, designers use dozens of research methods, up to and including making prototypes. Anything that involves learning and then communicating or sharing what has been learned is research, and in design, that learning can happen by reading, looking, talking, listening, or making. In short, research is learning made visible and tangible.

A commercial website project, for example, may start with a visual or written analysis of available technology and a survey of the people who will use the website, while a redesign of a brand identity may begin by collecting and sharing images and expressions of competing and associated brands. A book or a website will often start to become real through an analysis of content and the use of a grid, while a book cover or art-directed image may start with reading an excerpt of the writing and distilling it into keywords. All of these approaches are early research methods.

Another important part and purpose of the research phase is problem definition. Even if the designer is working for a client who believes he or she already understands the problem at hand, it’s important to first check the underlying assumptions and then map out an agreed definition of the problem before proceeding. Sometimes all or part of this phase will also be called discovery, which is a term borrowed from law to denote a period of review to unearth evidence for a case.

Ideation can also take many different forms, depending on the medium and social context of the work. A larger design team may use formal design thinking methods to come up with ideas, where designers and non-designers use collaborative tools and feedback forums to maximize participation and engagement in coming up with ideas, and then determining which ideas will be carried forward. An individual working with a larger group may sketch out ideas alone and bring back one or a handful to discuss with an individual or a group. In the context of design, an idea is any kind of mental construct that is not yet tangible. It’s something you wish to see but haven’t seen yet. Ideally, an idea or collection of ideas will form into a design concept, which is an articulation of how that idea or ideas will work over time and within a specific context. For an identity system, for example, an articulated design concept would set out the direction for projects within that identity system that do not yet exist.

A prototype is something you make to learn about or test the thing you ultimately want to make. A prototype can be a lower-resolution or smaller-scale version of that whole thing, or it can be a part of it. For exhibition signage, for example, a designer could build a scale model of the space and place scaled versions of the designs within it, or print out a single title and text panel at full scale and place it on the wall for which it is planned. Both of these are forms of prototyping that allow the designer to evaluate and discuss the design before final production. For a book cover, a designer may make several digital or hand sketches to communicate an idea.

A digital designer working on how someone will sign up for a mobile app may use commercially available prototyping software to show the flow, language, look, and sequence of that action, or build just that one part in HTML and CSS to demonstrate how it would look and work. If it is built in code, it could also be released to a portion of users or beta testers to get real-time feedback on the design and content.

Iteration is how a design is developed. Once research uncovers the key questions or problems to address, ideation maps and communicates possible solutions, and prototyping tests some of those ideas, then the task of the designer or design team is making, reflection, and making again until either further improvement is no longer possible or necessary or the time or money to further iterate have run out. Iteration can also be an important part of the ideation process, as making many versions of something without a specific visual goal in mind is the only way to come up with an idea that you did not previously imagine. In iteration, each version can be either an improvement on the last or a completely separate application of parameters. For example, if the design project is to place a retail logo on a shopping bag, a designer could try many different color and scale variations until arriving at one that best expresses the brand at that time.

Presentation is how a designer communicates the design. The most familiar form of presentation is a slide show, also called a deck, in front of a group of stakeholders who will approve or reject a project. Presentation, however, encompasses so much more than this: it includes having an initial conversation before a project begins, making an elevator pitch (an extremely short explanation of what your project or idea is and what it offers, often imagined as something you could complete during an elevator ride with an important person), sharing prototypes while the project is under way, rolling out a brand system to the public, and documenting a project in a portfolio. While you may hope that a project will speak for itself, it will not do so to every person who encounters it, at least not without help. Finding concise and clear ways to communicate the context of the project along with precisely tuned visual representations of the design is necessary if your clients, your users, and your future clients are to believe in the integrity of your design.

Designers use different presentation methods in different contexts, even for the same project. Sometimes the presentation is in real time and live, and sometimes it is static or archived. Sometimes the viewer has just a few seconds or minutes to understand it, and sometimes that viewer has an hour.

A designer learns all of these methods—research, ideation, prototyping, iteration, and presentation—through study and practice. There are also no set periods of time for each phase of a design project. One project may require a lengthy and formal research process while another may not; you may use one method for iteration when working alone and a different one when working with a team. Over time, designers develop a methodology, which is knowing how to select and sequence appropriate methods for specific design problems or situations.