Design operations guide

Now that you have your design ideas generated and your constraints mapped, think about what those design ideas might look like in the real world. This is your first step towards making expressions of your design concepts. Design expressions are the physical manifestations of your design concepts: the product, service, or system that embodies your concept and brings it into a form that participants can use. To take this first step, designers use collections of images, sounds, and materials called references. References are the bridge between the design concept and the design expression.

Exploring features and form through references

In the HCD Design Concepts Guide’s envisioning ideas section, we talk about references as a way to talk about the emotions and/or general direction the design seeks to evoke. In addition, references can also be used to help the team gain a greater understanding of other team members’ ideas and communicate those ideas to stakeholders. So emotional references can show, for example,  how a design concept revolves around giving people a sense of community, while we’ll now discuss how references can move the team towards a first design expression, also known as a low-fidelity prototype.

Because design teams evolve or create new products, services, or systems, there’s no photo or sketch or recording of it yet. So it’s essential to develop a collection of references that are like the product, service, or system you’re envisioning, to express all your thoughts on how a design might look, feel, and function. The purpose of using references, whether drawn, photographed, recorded, etc., is to meet four primary goals:

• To explore nuances in a proposal, system, or idea.
• To understand those nuances.
• To clarify those nuances, especially if they act within a complex system.
• To communicate the steps above to others who may or may not be present in design meetings.

References help design teams show each other and their stakeholders their ideas. By accompanying these collections of references with words, whether written or verbal, the team can more easily understand collectively what it is, or what a teammate is thinking. Keep a record of that thinking, to help you edit the idea.

When to use references

Design team members can use references to communicate with teammates at any point in the design process. However, since references inform the direction of an idea’s designed form, and not the details of that form itself, they are most frequently used early in the process of making a prototype design solution.

Reference deck framework

Each team member should use the reference deck framework below to build references for their design concepts that they would like to move into design expressions. Print out as many frameworks as you need to. Directions follow.

Build your reference deck

Take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days to build your reference decks. You can pull references from the internet, cut them from publications, take photos and print them, draw them, or otherwise record them. Accompany your references with text to describe what contribution the reference is making to the design concept. This is not a collage: it is a thoughtful compilation of real-world examples to show your teammates your ideas.

Decide what concept to forward

Reconvene as a group to discuss and decide on the design concept(s) the team will forward to physical expression. Facilitate the discussion and decision-making through the following steps:

1. Present your reference decks to each other, using the Question Time format from the divergent thinking section. Use the Notes framework to record the name and some details about each proposed design that the team generates.
2. Silently vote on the expression you would like to forward to a low fidelity prototype. If there is a tie and you have time and bandwidth to forward more than one expression, do so. The additional thinking will result in a better, more meaningful design solution for participants.
3. If you do not have time or bandwidth to forward more than one design expression, discuss the possibilities through the lens of your project constraints and decide as a team on the best expression to forward.