VCD Design Process.
How do
designers work?
Takeaways
Good to go
Design process
The Design Process is a creative/ divergent and critical/ convergent thinking framework that helps us move from identifying a problem to delivering a well-developed solution. It is composed of four distinct phases, each requiring different approaches to thinking: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver.
- Discover is the first stage, where designers explore widely to understand the problem, the people involved, and the context.
This stage involves research, imagination, and open-minded thinking to find inspiration and uncover new possibilities. - Define is when designers sort through their research and clearly frame the design problem in a brief.
They focus their thinking to identify goals, constraints, and criteria that will guide their solutions. - Develop is the creative stage where designers generate, test, and refine ideas using sketches, models, and feedback.
It’s about experimenting with different possibilities and pushing ideas further through collaboration and iteration. - Deliver is the final stage where designers select the best ideas and resolve them into complete design solutions.
They evaluate how well the design meets the brief and prepare final presentations for the client or audience.
Design process
Introduction
The VCAA Design Process is a model that frames commonality in the ways designers work; from the realisation of a need, through stages of investigation, visualisation, prototyping, testing and the delivery of a finished design solution. Various academic studies, mostly in the 20th Century created models of the Design Process. Beginning with linear approaches, they developed into multi-dimensional, circular diagrams. These were distilled more recently as the 2018 VCD Design Process. However, trying to position designers’ work at rigid stages does not represent the many ways designers work in their various design disciplines and fields. Thus, the breakthrough is not in identifying what designers do, and when they do it, but in describing what guides their thinking during each different phase.
A comprehensive study of how designers work was made by the UK Design Council under the leadership of Richard Eisermann, in 2003.
The purpose of the study was to understand how design contributes to value adding in British industries. However, we must be mindful that the UK Design Council’s concept of design is not limited to those practising in the traditional applied arts (communication, industrial or environmental design) but includes those designing business, transport, health, administrative and infrastructure systems, products and services. Thus, the term design extends to include organised thinking and planning done with the intent to improve something. Design is by this definition, metacognitive. That is; design is best done away from the pressures of a problem.
Four Phases
The VCAA VCD Design Process has four phases. These are Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. Each of these is discussed below.
The process begins with a design problem or opportunity. From this point, information is sought and the perspectives of stakeholders and audiences or users are understood. Then this information is sorted, processed and clarified to re-frame the problem as a brief. Yes, the brief is in the middle of the design process. After this, initial ideas are generated and methods trialled. In the final stage critical thinking is used to select concepts for refinement and presentation to the client.
The broadening of each diamond (from left to right) indicates open-minded, divergent thinking. The narrowing of each (also left to right) refers to selecting better ideas and rejecting others using convergent thinking. The terms Divergent and Convergent Thinking are instrumental in understanding how the Double Diamond illustration functions. These terms are explored on the Target Learning page for Design Thinking.
How the design process is applied in VCE VCD
Unit 1 Outcome 1
Unit 1 Outcome 2
Unit 1 Outcome 3
Unit 2 Outcome 1
Unit 2 Outcome 2
Unit 2 Outcome 3
SAT Unit 3 Outcome 3
SAT Unit 4 Outcome 1
SAT Unit 4 Outcome 2
Jump to
Design Thinking
Divergent Thinking
Convergent Thinking
Jump to
Discover
A journey of discovery is a journey into the unknown. If you think about the early explorers in sailing ships, they were sent across the horizon to discover unknown lands. Taking virtually nothing, risking their very lives, they encountered all kinds of challenges, difficulties and danger. All in the name of learning.
In the VCD Discover phase, students begin with a problem opportunity guiding the desire to design. They must suspend their judgement and using their imaginations, search widely for information and insights that open new possibilities and see their problem from different perspectives.
Skills used in the Discover phase include:
- Enlarging, elaborating and gathering insights about the problem or opportunity
- Suspending judgment and keeping an open mind
- Identifying stakeholders and identifying and describing their needs, perspectives and experiences
- Using Human Centred Design and Ethical Research Methods to gather insights about potential audiences and users by conducting interviews, making field observations, convening focus groups and conducting secondary desk research
The Discover phase requires students to use Divergent Thinking.
Jump to
Define
After explorers returned home with troves of plants, minerals, gems, artefacts and pictures of the people and strange animals they found in far-off, exotic lands, the priceless spoils were used to build the collections of the great museums of the world including, for example, the British Museum, the Louvre and the Metropolitan. There, the treasures of their explorations were sorted, named, catalogued and displayed. So too, must students make sense of the insights, data and information they have collected during the Discover phase.
Skills used in the Define phase include:
- sort, analyse, aggregate, summarise, and order the examples, information and data gained through research
- synthesise (select bits and join together bits) to build new information
- clarify and reframe a problem, need or opportunity in the light of information and data yielded through the Discover phase into a brief
- formulate a Brief that identifies and describes a client and their communication need/s, the purpose, target audience or user characteristics, and context for the design and a list of constraints that will be used to guide the development and selection of concepts and serve as evaluation criteria
- write design Evaluation Criteria to support informed evaluations of design ideas, concepts and solutions
- Iteration in the Define phase includes conducting further research to support the clarification and reframing of a design problem
The Define phase requires students to use Convergent Thinking.
Jump to
Develop
If we continue the metaphor of the explorers, discovery and museums, then the Development phase is the time the people used the spoils of their travels, the rocks, gems, plants, artefacts and stuffed exotic animals as inspiration on which to visualise new and innovative ideas. For example, the great French artist Pablo Picasso is famous for painting strange-looking faces. He was applauded for his originality and creativity. In fact, he was a keen collector of wooden African tribal masks, found during French colonial expeditions abroad. Picasso was not interested in their function in African culture, he admired their form and used them as a structure for a completely new way to see, and consequently depict the human face. Picasso used African masks to help him invent Cubism.
Skills used in the Develop phase include:
- use any form of brainstorming and mind-mapping methods using both words and images to develop and synthesise concepts found in the inspiration
- use rapid visualisation drawing and making methods to create, recreate, elaborate and extend visual ideas relevant to the communication need
- select and use appropriate creative thinking routines to enable them to overcome assumptions and synthesise ideas in new and unexpected ways
- select and apply design elements and principles in deliberate studies and evaluate their effects
- select and apply manual and digital methods, media and materials in deliberate studies and evaluate their effects
- annotate ideas, evaluate ideas, describe the design decisions, and make links between ideas and research material using appropriate design language
- work collaboratively including using presenting ideas in design critiques and focus groups that elicit fresh perspectives and possibilities of new ideas and approaches to satisfying a communication need
- iteration is an essential component of the Develop phase. Students necessarily work in circles as they visit research information, generate ideas, test and evaluate them and return again to rejuvenate and refocus innovation
The Develop phase requires students to use Divergent Thinking.
Jump to
Deliver
Whilst ‘to deliver’ is simply to dispatch a finished product to a client, the Deliver phase of the VCD Double Diamond design process is much more than that. During this phase, designers take the raw materials, the visualisations made in response to inspiration and investigation, and turn them into deliverable solutions. Thus, the artist Picasso referred to in the story above, would in the Deliver stage, work from his numerous sketches and oil paint studies, evaluating, recomposing and enlarging, until the design and media truly reflect his every intention and a masterpiece can be revealed.
In the Deliver phase, students use critical thinking strategies to evaluate the success of their design ideas in response to feedback and in relation to the design criteria they set in the brief. They learn and use conventions of the design disciplines within which they are working, hone materials, methods and media and refine and resolve the use of design elements and principles in design concepts. They pitch, test and evaluate mock-ups and prototypes of design concepts in real contexts and receive real-time feedback data to drive the resolution of design ideas so that they communicate the client’s intention. Students choose appropriate presentation formats and use conventions of those formats to present ideas and concepts for their clients.
Skills used in the Deliver phase include:
- use critical thinking strategies to reveal data about design ideas and evaluate the success of ideas against design criteria, and select preferred concepts for refinement and resolution
- select and use conventions including design elements and principles appropriate for methods chosen to resolve the communication of ideas, aesthetic qualities and information
- select and use media and materials to resolve the communication of ideas, aesthetic qualities
- prepare and deliver design ideas as mock-ups or prototypes for critiques or a pitch (for the SAT), receive and analyse and act on feedback
- select and use presentation formats to deliver design solutions to the client as outlined in the brief
- use relevant components of visual language, including conventions of design disciplines, to deliver effective visual communications that address the requirements and constraints in the brief
The Develop phase requires students to use Convergent Thinking.