Design practice
Design methods guide
63 methods for every phase of a product design project, from understanding users to validating what you shipped. Each one says when to use it, how to run it, what you get and the mistake to avoid, how AI can help and a note from practice. Not sure where to start? Let's plan your project first.
Let's plan your project
Pick where you are, the time you have and who can take part. You get a short list of methods to run, in order.
Your starting plan: 6 methods, in order
The methods most worth running first for a whole project with this time and team. It's a starting point, not the whole toolkit: swap in others from the 63 methods below when your project needs them.
- Understand
Analytics review
At the start of a project, to learn what is already known and to aim research well.
2–5 daysOn your own
- Understand
Journey mapping
You need to see the whole experience, not one screen, and where expectation and reality part.
2–5 daysWith a few teammates
- Define
Problem statement
Before ideation, so everyone solves the same problem.
1–2 hoursWith a few teammates
- Ideate
Impact and effort matrix
Choosing what to do first from a list of ideas.
30–60 minutesWith a few teammates
- Execute
User flows and edge cases
Before detailed design, and before handoff.
1–3 days per flowWith a few teammates
- Validate
Heuristic evaluation
Quickly finding obvious problems before testing with users, or when users are hard to reach.
1–3 daysWith a few teammates
Browse all 63 methods
Choose a phase, search or filter by time and who takes part. Open a method for the steps, what you get and how AI can help.
63 methods in five phases
Understand
Learn who the users are, what they are trying to do and what gets in their way, and how the business makes money and measures success. Mix numbers (what happens) with conversations (why it happens).
Quantitative research
A fixed set of questions sent to many people, to measure how common an attitude, behaviour or problem is.
1–3 weeksOn your own
Measuring how many people complete each step of a key flow (sign-up, checkout, booking) and where they drop off.
1–3 daysOn your own
Reading existing product, web and marketing data (traffic, behaviour, search terms, support tickets) before new research.
2–5 daysOn your own
Qualitative research
One-to-one conversations about people's goals, behaviour and problems in their own words.
1–3 weeksOn your own
Watching and asking people while they do their real work in their real setting.
1–3 weeksOn your own
A moderated discussion with 6–8 people about a topic, product or idea.
1–2 weeksWith a few teammates
Participants record their experiences over days or weeks, as they happen.
2–6 weeksOn your own
A one-page summary of a user group in four quadrants: says, thinks, does, feels.
1–2 hoursGroup workshop
Participants group topics (on cards) in a way that makes sense to them, and name the groups.
1–2 weeksOn your own
A short comic of a user's situation, need and how a product helps, frame by frame.
1–3 hoursOn your own
A collage of images, type, colour and references that sets a visual direction.
1–2 daysOn your own
Holistic view
A timeline of a user's steps, thoughts, feelings and pain points while reaching a goal, across every channel.
2–5 daysWith a few teammates
A diagram of all the people, organisations, systems and channels around a product, and how value and information flow between them.
1–2 daysWith a few teammates
Business
Conversations with the people who fund, run, sell or support the product.
1–2 weeksOn your own
A map of a service from the customer's view (front stage) and everything behind it (back stage, systems, policies) that makes it work.
3–5 daysWith a few teammates
Describing the progress a person is trying to make in a situation ("When…, I want to…, so I can…"), independent of any product.
1–2 weeksOn your own
Define
Turn what you learned into a clear problem, agreed with the team: who has it, why it matters to them and to the business, and how you will know it's solved.
Vision and strategy
A canvas matching a customer profile (jobs, pains, gains) with what the product offers (products, pain relievers, gain creators).
2–4 hoursGroup workshop
A 2×2 of internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats.
1–2 hoursGroup workshop
A structured session at the start of a project to agree goals, scope, roles and risks.
2–4 hoursGroup workshop
User needs
Grouping research notes by theme to find patterns.
2–4 hours per round of researchGroup workshop
Short, research-based profiles of the main user groups: goals, behaviour, context and frustrations.
2–5 days after researchOn your own
Breaking a user's task into its steps, decisions and dependencies.
1–3 daysOn your own
Describing how users think something works, and comparing it with how the product works.
1–2 weeksOn your own
Business opportunity
A structured review of competitors and alternatives: what they offer, how they work, where they are weak.
3–5 daysOn your own
Choosing measurable goals for the user experience in five areas: Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention and Task success, each broken into goals, signals and metrics.
2–4 hoursWith a few teammates
Objectives (a qualitative goal) with 2–4 Key results (measurable outcomes) for a period, usually a quarter.
1–2 hours a quarterWith a few teammates
Problem analysis
Asking "why" repeatedly (about five times) to get from a symptom to a root cause.
30–60 minutesGroup workshop
Framing a problem with seven questions: what, why, where, when, who, how and how much.
30–60 minutesWith a few teammates
Listing what must be true for an idea to work, then ranking assumptions by importance and evidence.
1–2 hoursGroup workshop
Problem statement
One or two sentences that say who has the problem, what it is, why it matters (to them and the business) and how you'll know it's solved. Includes the current and ideal state.
1–2 hoursWith a few teammates
Turning problems and insights into open questions that start ideation ("How might we help first-time buyers compare plans?").
30–60 minutesGroup workshop
A tree from a desired outcome to the opportunities (user needs) that could move it, the solutions for each, and the experiments for each solution.
1–2 hours to start, updated weeklyWith a few teammates
Ideate
Generate many ideas with the team, then choose the ones that help users and the business and can be built. Decide how you will measure them.
Brainstorming
A session to generate many ideas quickly, judging later.
45–90 minutesGroup workshop
Each person folds a sheet into eight panels and sketches eight ideas in eight minutes.
15–30 minutesGroup workshop
Everyone gets a few dot stickers (or digital dots) to vote on the options they think are strongest.
10–20 minutesGroup workshop
Quick hand or digital drawings to explore layouts and ideas before detailed design.
30 minutes to a few hoursOn your own
A five-day process to answer a critical question through design, prototyping and testing with users: Map, Sketch, Decide, Prototype, Test.
5 daysGroup workshop
Prioritisation
A 2×2 placing ideas by user or business impact and the effort to build them.
30–60 minutesWith a few teammates
Sorting features by how they affect satisfaction: must-be (expected; missing ones cause frustration), performance (more is better), attractive (delight when present, no complaint when absent), indifferent and reverse.
1–2 weeksOn your own
Scoring each idea by Reach × Impact × Confidence ÷ Effort.
1–2 hoursWith a few teammates
Sorting requirements into Must have, Should have, Could have and Won't have (this time).
1–2 hoursGroup workshop
A 2×2 of products by market growth and market share: stars, cash cows, question marks and dogs.
1–2 hoursWith a few teammates
Comparing the expected benefit of a design change (revenue, savings, fewer support calls) with its cost.
1–2 daysWith a few teammates
Execute
Design and communicate the solution: structure, flows, screens and content, built on shared principles and a design system, and handed to engineering with every case covered.
Framework
Organising and labelling content and features so people can find them: structure, navigation and naming.
1–4 weeksOn your own
Diagrams of the steps through a task, including the happy path, errors, empty states, permissions and limits.
1–3 days per flowWith a few teammates
Low-detail layouts that show structure, content and behaviour without visual styling.
Days per featureOn your own
Interactive versions of a design, from clickable wireframes to near-real builds, used to test and explain.
Hours to daysOn your own
Guidelines
Shared foundations (tokens), components, patterns and guidelines that teams use to build consistent products.
Months, then ongoingWith a few teammates
Checking designs and builds against WCAG 2.2: contrast, keyboard use, screen reader output, focus, target size, content and more.
1–5 days per product areaOn your own
Content
Writing the words in the interface (labels, buttons, errors, help, empty states) so they are clear, short and consistent.
OngoingOn your own
Handoff
Giving engineering everything needed to build: specs, states, flows, tokens, assets, accessibility notes and acceptance criteria, and walking through it together.
Hours to days per featureWith a few teammates
A structured review of work in progress against the goals, with specific, kind feedback.
30–60 minutes a weekWith a few teammates
Principles to design by
Not methods to run, but principles to check every design against.
- Usability heuristics
- Jakob Nielsen's 10 heuristics (1994, wording updated 2020), such as visibility of system status and error prevention. The basis of a heuristic evaluation.
- Don't make me think
- Steve Krug (2000): pages should be self-evident; people scan and muddle through rather than read.
- Consistency and standards
- Follow the platform's conventions and your own design system, so people reuse what they already know.
- Gestalt principles
- Proximity, similarity, continuity, closure and common region: how people group what they see.
- Accessibility first
- WCAG 2.2 at level AA as the baseline, from the first sketch, not as a final check. Open the WCAG 2.2 report tool (opens in a new tab)
- Platform standards
- Native patterns for iOS, Android and the web (navigation, controls, gestures) before custom ones.
Validate
Check the solution with real people and real data. Look for what you expected and what you didn't, then decide what to improve, what to test next and what new opportunities appear.
Quantitative
Showing two (or more) versions to random groups of users and comparing a metric.
1–4 weeksWith a few teammates
Tracking the agreed success metrics after release, with a baseline and a review rhythm.
OngoingWith a few teammates
Releasing to a small group (a region, a percentage, a customer) before everyone.
1–4 weeksWith a few teammates
The System Usability Scale: 10 statements rated 1–5, giving a score from 0 to 100.
Minutes per participantOn your own
Qualitative
Watching people try to complete real tasks with a design or product while thinking aloud.
1–2 weeks per roundOn your own
Experts review an interface against usability heuristics (usually Nielsen's 10).
1–3 daysWith a few teammates
The team steps through a task as a new user, asking at each step whether the user would know what to do and understand the result.
1–3 hours per taskWith a few teammates
Participants find items in a text-only version of your navigation tree.
1–2 weeksOn your own
Two quick online tests. First-click: where people click first to complete a task, a strong predictor of success. Five-second: what people remember after seeing a page for five seconds.
1–3 daysOn your own
Measuring where people look on a screen with specialist hardware or software.
2–4 weeksOn your own
Collecting and grouping feedback from support tickets, reviews, surveys and in-product feedback, to find recurring problems.
OngoingOn your own
Need a hand?
Make the process your team's own.
A list of methods doesn't make a process. I help teams choose the few methods that fit their product and pace, run them together the first time, and set up the rituals, templates and handoffs that keep them going.
Design process and DesignOps
- A review of how your team works today, from research to release
- A design process fitted to your product, team and timelines
- The first round run with your team: research, workshop or test
- Templates, critiques and handoff rituals that make it stick
4 → 12designers at Educative, with design operations that cut review cycles by 40%