The discover phase is the first phase of every project we start. This phase focuses mainly on research to better understand what we’re building and why. To do that, we perform various tasks such as researching, conducting surveys or interviews, talking to stakeholders, and assessing organizational risks. Why is the discover phase important? Building the next big thing is great! But reinventing the wheel can also be costly and, unfortunately, sometimes not very rewarding. The discover phase is important in every project, not just to understand who we’re working with and what we’re building, but it’s also essential to know if we’re solving a problem or making a new one. Keeping the user in mind is crucial and ensuring our clients understand what they are working with before investing their time.

Following the discover phase is the define phase. We make sense of and synthesize all of our findings during this phase, including notes, ideas, and observations. Using all of this information, we create a series of concepts that can further be iterated and synthesized until a clear product or service emerges.

Once we have a concept from the define phase, we focus on transforming that concept into a cohesive design during the refine phase. We perform more focused exploration and create low-fidelity mock-ups and wireframes to concentrate on the overall experience for the users. Not every design detail is covered in this phase, but enough is to compile a comprehensive design direction.

The build phase is usually the lengthiest phase next to implementation and focuses on details, communication, and validation. During this phase, we flush out all designs and create and maintain a series of documentation. The documentation serves as a way to communicate design decisions and validate the design with users and stakeholders. High-fidelity mock-ups are created, and a system is designed, ready for implementation.

During the implement phase, we begin crafting technical documents outlining various system requirements and planning out the production and implementation of the design. From there, it’s full speed ahead with development separated into sprints that we can use to measure our progress.

Not all projects make it to the iterate phase, and not all projects require it, but if they do, we love taking a growth-driven design approach. From this point onward, it is a constant cycle of repeating everything in our process with new information gathered from how other people use the product or service, further improving the quality and solving the user’s pain points as new needs arise.