Digital Design Process

1) DISCOVERY

It all starts with a design brief that is used to outline the strategy of your project. The brief contains details such as project purpose, objectives, requirements, messaging, demographics, budget, timeline, inspiration, preferred colors and more that will guide and inform, while greatly improving the design process and quality of output. Think of a design brief as a springboard for great work, not a straightjacket!

Next, we'll INVESTIGATE and IDEATE the best possible experience(s) for you, your product, your brand, and your end-users through tech and product audits, benchmarking, user research, empathy mapping, journey mapping, personas, information architecture, and more. We will explore all of these things collaboratively and iteratively to help identify your WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHEN, and HOW.

2) DESIGN

Digital Products will typically start with sketches and wireframes which will serve as the blueprint for your end product. These initial designs allow you to visualize where content and interactive elements will be located and how your users will interact with your product through LOW-FI PROTOTYPES if needed, typically based upon the complexity of a project or product feature. After receiving feedback from stakeholders and early user testing ITERATIONS may be needed based upon stakeholder and early user testing feedback prior to moving on to full-fledged designs.

Next, designs will begin to take shape by infusing your needs with the findings gleaned from our round of DISCOVERY to help craft and enhance your website, app, product or brand to the fullest. A clean and approachable design will be crafted that distinguishes your brand and optimizes your digital presence. HI-FI PROTOTYPES are often developed and tested during this phase to help garner further user-feedback, stakeholder buy-in and potential pivot points prior to writing a line of code.
We will continue to ITERATE based upon this feedback until we get the green light to release your product to the development team.

3) DEVELOPMENT

Finally, your internal development team and I can work collaboratively to make sure all designs and intended interactions translate properly to code or we can see you through to fulfillment by utilizing my trusted network of developers to bring your product and brand to life responsively on the web, on mobile or tablet apps, OTT device channels/apps or all of the above. We’ll use any combination of HTML5, CSS3, PHP, Javascript, jQuery, React, Media Queries/Responsive Design, and other languages and APIs or will use the latest language for your apps such as Swift (iOS) and a mixture of Android Studio, Kotlin, Java, C, and C++ (Android) to build you a clean engaging, and performance-driven product.

4) VALIDATION

Once deployed, further research and tests can be conducted with end users to help validate the product, and original goals as well as help define any potential A/B tests that may help further improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction of your product, your end users, your stakeholders, and ultimately your bottom line. Products and technology are ever-evolving so please LET ME KNOW if you might be interested in a longer-term partnership.

Physical Design Process

1) DISCOVERY

Physical (print and environmental products) and other non-interactive digital products will once again start with a DISCOVERY phase.

As with digital design projects, we will start with a design brief that is used to outline the strategy of your project. Details such as project purpose, objectives, requirements, messaging, demographics, budget, timeline, inspiration, preferred colors will be provided by you and your stakeholders to help guide and inform, while greatly improving the design process and quality of output. Think of a creative brief as a springboard for great work, not a straightjacket!

Product, market, and competitor audits will be also be conducted as well as benchmarking, and user/consumer research. We will once again explore all of these things collaboratively and iteratively to help identify your WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHEN, and HOW.

2) DESIGN

Following our DISCOVERY session, a final contract/proposal will be created for you to sign. A 50% deposit will be required at this time as well. We will then start to INVESTIGATE and IDEATE the best possible options for your product designs collaboratively based upon your budget and needs as defined in your contract.

The design process starts with CONCEPTUAL BRAINSTORMING. Whether on pen and paper or an online whiteboard – it’s time to kick into creative mode. This is where we can dream up as many ideas as possible. Brainstorming can include sketches, inspiration, colors, emotions, mood boards, images, and everything else that might contribute to the design.

Once the brainstorming is done, and everyone is set on the general idea for the design, it’s time to polish all the details. This is the stage where I will start exploring actual design concepts and color combinations to start creating something that’s both beautiful and functional.

After initial designs are created we will have a review session to to glean structured and meaningful feedback on the design. Notes will be taken or comments can be left online if there are any suggestions for improvement at which point we will move to the ITERATION PHASE. If everything is peachy keen we will move to the APPROVAL PROCESS followed by file preparation for the DELIVERY of the final product.

Often times, designs require multiple review stages and input from different stakeholders until the design is ready for APPROVAL. We will continue to iterate and review until the design is to your liking based upon your contract agreement which typically includes 2 rounds of revisions.

3) APPROVAL & DELIVERY

Once all stakeholders are on board with a design, an official and final APPROVAL will be required in order to move on to DELIVERY. There are several methods that can be accepted for approval based upon the project type and software used.

Once a design or product is approved, the files will be prepared for final delivery or output depending on the file or product type.

Print projects will be converted to CMYK eps or pdf files and preflighted to gather the necessary images, fonts and colors with bleeds and trim marks added to make sure the designs print properly and as intended.

Trade show exhibit graphics will be converted from 10th scale to full scale in the proper dpi and color space based upon your requested output and will have bleeds and crop marks added for each panel of your exhibit to ensure the artwork flows from panel to panel.

Videos, illustrations, animations and 3D objects will be rendered and provided in the requested file format.

Presentation fonts will be gathered and the presentation can be exported in whichever format works best for your operating system or device type.