2. Create

Ideate & Implement - Prototyping a product or service helps us think realistically about how people would interact with it.

2.1 Ideate

Ideation is the stage when you come up with ideas on how you might solve the design challenge. It's the phase that comes after discovery and is all about exploring multiple possible design solutions rather than getting locked into the first idea that comes up. Although some stakeholders may want to rush through ideation into solutions, it is important to allow ample time for this stage as the first solution is not always the optimal one. The goal is to create many ideas or concepts based on what you've learned during your research. You will rank and refine the ideas later.

Start exploring ideas using a design thinking process, which means your team, in collaboration with product’s users, will conduct exercises to brainstorm solutions to the defined design challenge. Create rapid prototypes that can be tested. Then evaluate the solution and refine the prototypes based on findings.

2.2 Implement

Now you know what direction you will take, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and start implementing. You need to prepare your product roadmap, make decisions around feature priorities, dependencies and plan releases. In agile software development, a release is a deployable software package culminating in several iterations and can be made before the end of an iteration.

As we use agile processes the plan is NOT sacred, meaning priorities may shift and you should be ready to pivot as you go and as you learn more.

Prepare design documents and use these to create wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes to conduct UI and UX testing with selected participants (users). Building prototypes and conducting tests with users, like usability testing, gives you the chance to improve and correct issues earlier in the process, avoiding spending unnecessary engineering time. During this phase you’ll create (or continue creating) or design system management (DSM). A design system is the single source of truth of UI/UX and design principles aspects of the product, it groups all elements that will allow a team to design and develop a product and its functionalities.

As we use Agile methodologies – instead of a waterfall (linear) product management approach – you’ll break your work into smaller iterations and frequent releases. This means that during the development of the product, you'll be cyclically moving from the ‘Implement’ stage to ‘Release’ stage and back again.