6 Important Phases of Design Strategy

Like we do planning in our day-to-day lives for better living, we need to opt for a proper design strategy to create a great product or an application. In this blog, we will learn the various stages to build an appropriate strategy for design. At first, we should recognize what a strategy for design is.

What is a design strategy?

It’s a process of understanding the brand’s business requirements and achieving that with design. It’s necessary to have the design plan first before commencing the actual implementation process.

Why do we need a perfect design strategy first?

Normally, a client approaches a designer or an agency for branding and design requirements. But often, the client comes up with some tangible thought. The designer straight away jumps into the process of converting that thought into visual design. Sometimes it may click but mostly, the result ends up not achieving the desired goal. In turn, the process gets lengthier with lots of iterations. This creates frustration and leaves a negative impression on the client. Now, to achieve every good thing we need to plan a strategy. Likewise, we must have a proper design strategy before we proceed with the design implementation part. Be it UX design or product design, there are a few stages to create a perfect strategy that we cover next.

6 important phases of design strategy:

1. Initial brainstorming session:

Here the client will be asked a few questions as part of requirement gathering:

• What business the does client deal with?
• What’s the environment in which the client runs the business is it fun, flexible, etc.
• Who else would be interacting with the client? In this context, the ‘who’ are users who would be interested in doing business with the brand and also the people who visit the client's website a lot.
• What can they expect from the brand?
• Besides, in this discovery session, it’s also essential to consider the benefits that the brand can offer to the target 

2. Creating user stories:

• Based on the earlier analysis (brainstorming), now the next step in this design thinking process is to develop the user stories. Here it’s important to understand the users’ psychographs. Psychograph includes their interests, hobbies, the way the users behave, their attitude, and personal and social lives.
• Also, the users’ demography should be taken into consideration. For the design thinking strategy their age, sex information, income, etc. are indispensable to be analysed. Creating a ‘User Persona’ can be the ideal solution for this.
• Besides, it’s also necessary to examine the user journey here by finding out their pain points, the services they are looking for, etc. Finally bringing the solution by means followed by the brand to help the users and the benefits they can provide to them.
• Need to understand the reason why the users want to interact with the brand. The thinker must evaluate why the users recommend the brand.

3. Competitive analysis:

While strategising the design process, it’s necessary to analyse the competitors. Subsequently, understand how they are doing their businesses. Furthermore, we should study their approaches, and visit their websites to explore what’s working and what is not doing good for the business. This way industry standards for the business can be figured out.

4. Prioritise goals:

It’s necessary to realise the clients’ revenue generation process. The prioritisation process must cover the areas that demand enhancement to increase revenue. In the process, the design thinker should also understand the channels that the clients have adapted. Social media marketing, content marketing, emails, and websites are the mediums a client can adapt. Again, as a design or user experience strategist, one needs to prioritise the mediums to focus on. Lastly, the designer should figure out how quickly and efficiently the client's expectations can be met.

5. Point down the requirement:

Based on the previous processes, the design analyst should make a requirement list. This list in the course would help to achieve the user requisite.

6. Creating information architecture:

Finally, the strategist needs to come up with the architecture or the wireframe. The next steps are creating prototypes, and screen designs, taking feedback, and if needed repeating the process.

For better strategic thinking in design, you can opt for any online design strategy course available. You can opt for a design degree as well from a reputed institute if you can afford time and money.

Conclusion:

Without a proper strategy, no design can improve the experience of a user by utilizing good usability and accessibility.