the design

process
kelly ludwig, assistant professor
kcai graphic design department

(excerpted from Visualising Information for Advocacy by tacticaltech.org & informationactivism.org)

design process
1. Examine
2. Understand
3. Ideate
4. Experiment
5. Distill

01 examine:
identify challenges

what is your aim?

What is the existing situation?

What specific problem are you wanting to solve or

change are you trying to make?

Why?

What changes could improve the situation?

Examine

Dig into the problem(s)

Look at the history, the context, the objects, and the

people involved

Identify the audience(s)

Begin to research thoroughly

identify goals

Change of conversation?

Shift in understanding?

Identifying a need?

Define the problem

02 understand

02 Understand

Conduct audience research

Understand your research

Go deeper and find patterns.

Establish open questions to build on

This is the analytical phase

02 Understand

Research

Create strategy

Gather information

Interpret information

Get feedback

03 ideate

03 Ideate
Brainstorm the big picture

Have lots of ideas, good and bad.

Create numerous thumbnails daily

Dont stop at the obvious or impossible

It flows naturally from the understanding phase

Goals and needs to work from

04 experiment

04 Experiment
Rapid prototyping & continuous beta

Try something out

Make some things

Fail cheap and fast

Exhaust those ideas and prototype like crazy

Get feedback from audience and test

04 Experiment

Construct

Digital development

Mock up

Analysis

Testing

05 distill

05 Distill
Refine and finalize

Strip down your solution to the essentials and tell the

story to others

What have you done and what will you do next?

Making sure your work has memorable impact

Get feedback from audience

05 Distill

Implementing

Final design execution & images

Production

finalize files for production

make final prints

gather digital assets for output

the creative brief

Project background, aims and the

issue

The main message

The desired outcomes

Target audience(s)

Mood board

Process documentation

Media/format you will be using

Distribution

Budget

Timeline

Towards the end of this project, you will create a creative brief as part of your presentation. These are the items that will need to be included.

Visualising Information for Advocacy, tacticaltech.org

Designing for Social Change, Andrew Shea

informationactivism.org

design process kills creativity, design process creates

creativity by Daniel Stillman