/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/ Recent content in Design concepts guide on Digital.gov Hugo en-us Mon, 27 Jan 2025 19:42:55 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/communicating-ideas/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/communicating-ideas/ This section provides guidance on how to envision the design process, the process of ideation, why iteration is crucial, and the importance of feedback to the design phase. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/design-and-implementation/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/design-and-implementation/ Learn about the issues with “hand-offs” and “waterfall” /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/design-phase-principles/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/design-phase-principles/ The following section should help you contextualize key design phase principles /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/designed-things/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/designed-things/ This section provides an overview of products, services, and systems /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/envisioning-ideas/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/envisioning-ideas/ The design phase is all about creation. To aid idea expression and development, designers use non-verbal and non-text-based communication to show their ideas and thoughts, in addition to talking and/or writing about them. We use these because it can be difficult to express the fullness of ideas verbally or in text, especially collaboratively, when the idea is still emerging, vague, or unfinished. Alternatives to verbal and text-based communication channels, like drawing, collaging, or model-making, aren’t necessarily better than verbal- and text-based communications; they’re all different from one another and can be used in unison. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/feedback/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/feedback/ Feedback is an integral part of the design process and should be sought out when designing anything, be it a product, service, or system. Your work will only get better In design, feedback is a multi-step phase during which the design gradually reaches farther and farther outward from the core team to gather feedback from an increasingly large pool of feedback providers. It’s preferable to gather feedback on several of the team’s design iterations. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/iteration/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/iteration/ Everyone iterates at different points Iteration refers to making a series of design versions. This is a classic design practice; its purpose is to push designers past the first expression of ideas to build them out, identify their advantages and drawbacks, and revise ideas before prototyping begins. An illustration of the iterative process. Every iteration is related to each other and either directly builds on the previous round or contradicts or changes previous iteration(s), acting as a comparison or contrast to other iterations. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/simple-is-hard/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/simple-is-hard/ “How long will this take?” has to be one of the most terrifying questions any designer will be asked when embarking on the design phase. The simple answer: one can’t know — but rational time constraints can be useful. What we do know, from years of experience and many design case studies, is that getting to a simple, easy-to-understand, and useful solution to any design problem is the result of many rounds of iteration, problem-solving, and testing. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/teamwork/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/teamwork/ The myth of a solitary genius solving a huge problem no one else could solve is just that — a myth. Although CEOs, sports team leaders, and award-winners tend to get public credit, none of those people achieve their goals without the consistent, robust support of a variety of other people. Making decisions The same holds true in design. Although design clusters around a few big names, like Frank Gehry, an architect, Jonathon Ive, an industrial designer at Apple, and Miuccia Prada, a fashion designer, all of these people have teams with whom they work, and none of them designs in a vacuum. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/design-for-humans/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/design-for-humans/ The design process strives to include all possible participants and stakeholders in the discovery phase. The thinking is that, if teams talk to all the people who work with a product, service, or system (participants), as well as all those who administer, approve, or oversee it (stakeholders), and design with them, then the end result of the work serves the needs of all those people. Consider changes in workflow As they move through the design phase, teams need to evaluate how the proposed solution might change the workflow, or unduly increase the workload for participants or stakeholders. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/design-at-scale/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/design-at-scale/ Design in the public sector can seem a slower, more complicated affair than its private sector counterpart. However, each sector has its own unique values and pressures, terms to fulfill, and spaces to explore. While the private sector is pressured by a constant need for increasing profit and the short-term thinking that such a challenge requires, the public sector must respond to and support the public through long life spans, which means nurturing ideas that support planning ahead for decades of growth and change. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/design-for-change/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/design-for-change/ The design phase requires energy and effort to reach the goal of usable products, services, and systems. While teams may think they must make all the right decisions or get everything perfect before launch, it’s important to remember that no design is permanent; everything will need to change and flex, and will ultimately be succeeded by something that is hopefully more useful and more delightful than the thing originally designed. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/products/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/products/ Products are defined by economists as made, or manufactured, objects, typically created in a factory setting. They tend to be single-instance interactions between buyer and seller. If you go to a coffee shop and buy a coffee every day, each purchase of that coffee is a new event; the coffee is the product, and the product is new every time you buy it. Economists as a group broadly define products quite literally as something you “can drop on your foot. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/services/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/services/ According to economists, services are items that are not manufactured, and typically delivered on-demand. They tend to be ongoing, or things you return to again and again, unlike the single-instance events that characterize products. Going back to our coffee shop example, the touchpoints of the transaction, such as the culture and community of a coffee shop, are components of the shop’s service, which is ongoing and intangible. While the coffee you drink is a new product every day, the coffee shop provides the ongoing service of stocking, making, and selling coffee. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/systems/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/systems/ Economists divide economies into two categories of activity: manufacturing products, and executing services. This parsing is not quite precise enough for the challenges of design, however. In the design process, we have a third possible category of designed thing: systems. The public sector is primarily a service provider, and those services are upheld, augmented, and accessed through products. But, especially internally, the public sector also launches and maintains systems that, while not exactly services themselves, are also not exactly products. /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/up-next/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0500 /preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/hcd/design-concepts/up-next/ Deliver phase You’ve drawn on your discovery phase work and created prototypes from it. You’ve tested those prototypes with participants. You’ve kept your leadership informed. You’ve worked with the implementation team to make sure the work will see lift-off. The team is set up for success. Next, work with the implementation team to move into the deliver phase and see your work enter the world at scale! This four-phase diagram shows the Human-Centered Design process.