While we believe in rigorous processes in all our experience we have never seen one single process work for every project. For each challenge or intervention we craft whatever process is needed but we ALWAYS instill these principles in the way we work.
Understand Deeply
This means we interrogate the context to not only understand the desired outcome but everything surrounding the intervention. This includes human behavior, business strategy, current service or product experiences or portfolios, brand direction, participating actors and any other contextual factors to make sure we are approaching the right problems holistically and avoiding dangerous blind spots. This is always part of first steps in our processes.
Focus
The word “prioritize” is sacred to us because we know we can't solve every problem we run into in the time and budget we have, nor do we want to. We understand that some problems, if solved have greater impact than others and that if we can identify and focus on those it will have a ripple effect in the planned sequence of intervention.
Make it visual
Solving complex problems and designing holistic products and experiences requires sophisticated communication between many actors across time. We believe that maps, prototypes and other visual representations are crucial to that communication and serve as objects to align group understanding at all steps and levels of the process.
Test assumptions
Assumptions aren’t bad unless we don’t check the evidence and origins of them. In any project we all bring our own perceptions of reality to the table. Rather than ignore those often very valuable perspectives we choose to challenge and test them, for it is often through the challenging of our own perceptions we discover or validate critical insight.
Collaborate
Not everyone is a designer, but everyone can participate in the design process at the right time and place. While we strongly believe that design is an expert discipline that takes practiced skill and experience, it is ultimately a co-creative endeavor that requires the collaboration and orchestration of many disciplines. We guide this primarily through facilitation moments and workshops to help those who are less familiar with the methodology to appropriately add their value to the process.
Iterate
Hole in ones are extremely rare and never was the design process ever meant to nail it on the first try. Iteration is an extremely important principle that often gets left out. We know that iterating at the right fidelity and time in the process helps to protect investment and reduce overall risk.