The Design & Discovery phase of a project usually aims to clarify the scope and what the client wants to build. It is ideal for startups or established businesses who have an idea of what they need to create but not a full specification of the details.
The process of Design & Discovery takes clients from the idea stage to defined blueprints that they can use to showcase to investors, get feedback from other stakeholders or put up for software development vendors to bid on to implement the idea.
Design & Discovery Phase Deliverables
At the end of the process, typical deliverables include:
- Application idea mind map: Contains user roles, definitions & interactions. The image below shows an example below.
- User roles definitions, responsibilities, actions and interactions. See image here:
- High-level application workflows
- Application Wireframes: These are almost like an actual web / mobile visuals that show you how everything is laid out on the user interface. It’s not the final designs (that is the mockup) but its roughly drawn to represent how everything looks like visually.
- Product Requirements documentation: This document aggregates all of the above findings into a single document that breaks down all the project requirements and gives a full idea of what we are about to build.
- Technical Architecture documentation: This document defines the technology stack, modules, components and 3rd party systems that will be used to create & develop the web/mobile application. This is like a recipe used to create our project.
- Final design mockups: This will be a finalized version of the wireframes that visually shows exactly how the application would look like once it is developed.
TEAM ROLES
The team involved in the ‘Design & Discovery’ phase is typically composed of:
Business Analyst
Project Manager
Graphic Designer
Developer / Technical Architect
Account Manager
PROCESS
The ‘Design & Discovery’ phase is an iterative process where the client & the teamwork iteratively until the product to be developed is fully defined without conflicts or missing components.
The process starts with a ‘Creative Brief’ Kick-off call where we take the client through a questionnaire to understand their business and the project goals.
From there, the team goes back and starts to develop the deliverables in an iterative step-by-step approach. Then we would come back with the client, showcase the created items and get further feedback on it.
The process keeps iterating in this workflow till all deliverables are completed and we have a consensus within the team that it’s fully defined.
