Sales people have a roadmap of the sales process, often called the Sales Funnel. The Sales Funnel is a metaphor for the typical process, from contact with many potential customers to the eventual payment of a single customer. It’s time we designers treat ourselves to our own funnel metaphor:
The Design Funnel.
The Design Funnel doesn’t introduce any new tools. It’s simply a roadmap of when a designer can use which tools to stimulate better work. As a matter of fact, many successful creatives use similar processes on a daily basis.
Here are the steps:
- Define values and goals
- Discover moods and metaphors through association
- Generate ideas and define a concept
- Create a visual language
- “Design” it
Between each step comes the same sub-step: Verify that you’re on the right track. Why is most design bad design? Because most designers “jump into the funnel” at step 4 or 5. These are the steps involving “using Photoshop” and other fun, tool-based stuff. The funnel, on the other hand, focuses on the hard mental work involved in designing.