This repository is a collection of documents intended to guide the design process at Axis Group. It contains guidelines that should not be followed exactly. Each design process should be tailored to the individual project or design engagement. This document intends to provide a walkthrough of each step in our design process and approaches to create artifacts in each phase.
- Pre-Engagement Phase
- Understand Phase
- Define Phase
- Diverge Phase
- Converge Phase
- Prototype Phase
- Validate Phase
- Design Implementation Support Phase
Axis design engagement brings UX design and data visualization principles to BI projects to produce design specs for highly usable, useful, and desirable data applications that support business decisions.
Most clients have a good understanding of their business objectives and their data systems. However, they don't know how to map their data to their business objectives with visual analytics that efficiently drive results. This results in low-value applications that are rejected by users.
Our goal is to clarify a vision for a data app and then translate that vision into a highly usable design that can be implemented, ensuring that clients get their app builds right the first time.
At the end of the design engagement, the team will understand the problem and will have validated whether we have a viable solution to begin building or whether we need to keep searching for a solution. Design engagement helps channel efforts towards building a solution that enhances usability and user experience of interacting with the solution, while achieving the business goal.
The Design process at Axis Group is divided into six phases, Understand, Define, Diverge, Decide, Prototype, and Validate.
Typically, this phase would require performing research on the client and their industry. The pre-engagement phase should be mainly utilized to formulate a common ground of the ‘job to be done.’ The problem could evolve over further discussions, but it should be agreed upon by the entire team. This should serve as a starting point for discussions with the client.
The Understand phase develops a common understanding of the context within which we are working and all the elements in that context: the personas, their goals and responsibilities, business processes, decisions and actions, etc. We want to expose risky knowledge gaps and assumptions so we can make plans to reduce those risks and move forward with confidence.
The Define phase focuses on formulating a ‘mission statement’ centered around established personas for the application or problem at hand. This problem definition should be agreed upon by all team members, including clients, and should serve as a reference point for further discussions.
The Diverge phase generates insights and concepts for solutions. Our goal is to explore as many possibilities as possible, with considerations of effort to build. Insights are born from this explosion of possibilities by considering the implications of radically different approaches to solving a problem. These insights can become valuable differentiating forces and the source of inspiration for unique solutions.
During the Converge phase we take all the concepts generated in the diverge phase, group them into logical and meaningful categories, evaluate and prioritize them both within the design team and with the client. By exploring and eliminating many options, we have reason to be more confident in our design decisions.
The Prototype phase develops a prototype that fills our riskiest knowledge gaps and assumptions. Pen and Paper sketches, Sketch + InVision, and QlikSense are all valid mediums. The medium should be determined by our time constraints and learning goals.
The Validate phase tests our prototype with existing or potential customers. By the end of this phase, we should have validated or invalidated our riskiest knowledge gaps and assumptions and have confidence in our next steps.
The Design Implementation Support phase encompasses all efforts towards supporting development once the design prototype is approved by the client. This might entail continued oversight on development and ensuring that the development is as per specifications. In addition to availability to support and answer any questions or concerns faced during development, any documentation required to turn over development responsibilities to internal teams shall be created in this phase.