Explore

Our Design Process

What is this?

Our design process that helps us conduct good design practice through a series of flexible, guiding steps. Follow this process step-by-step, deciding what activities are best suited to solve the problem at hand.

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How it works

Each project at Lantum starts with an opportunity. This is something that we believe will provide value to our customers, drive some form of growth for the company, and meet our strategic goals. These opportunities can range from small and narrowly-defined to abstract and loose.

Our job as designers it to try help chart a path towards capitalising on that opportunity through a considerate, simple solution.

Stages

Stages

Design stage

Goal

Collect 🔦

Develop a sharp understanding of the opportunity at hand by investigating and aligned on the problem. Ensure you’ve asked enough questions and challenged assumptions.

Create 🎨

Explore a broad range possibilities via prototyping and testing to uncover the most impactful, route forward

Clarify 📝

Align on the solution that your team believes is the smallest, shippable solution that allows us to learn and iterate going forward

Commit 💪

Document the necessary details (e.g components, flows) that meet the requirements, seeing it through to implementation and release

There are no rows in this table

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Each stage has different activities you should and could do. This depends on how much we want to innovate, how urgent a project is, and how much we’re willing to invest. Based on these factors, you’ll decide which things you’ll do.

A good rule-of-thumb is to spend around 6 weeks on an opportunity, however this will vary depending on timelines, complexity, and other factors

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🔦 Collect

Goal: Develop a sharp understanding of the opportunity at hand by investigating and aligned on the problem. Ensure you’ve asked enough questions and challenged assumptions.

Activities you should do

Discuss the opportunity and problem(s) to be solved with your product manager

Challenge our understanding of the problem (e.g Why do this? How do we know these problems exist?)

Highlight assumptions and gaps in our knowledge

Agree on a measure of success with your product manager

Map out flow or tasks required to solve problem

Write down your open questions and how’ll you go about answering them (e.g HMW improve the flow...)

Look at past research

Activities you could do

Collaborate with Research to run qualitative user studies

Sketch ideas or wireframes to understand potential direction

Interview stakeholders/SME on the opportunity (e.g CS, Sales, NE, KJ)

Run a team workshop to collect stakeholder input and map out user journey

Discuss with HoD or Product Lead for wider strategic knowledge

Review quantitive (Amplitude/Looker) data

Output

Write up your high-level approach in a document and share with team. Document in Asana/Figma.

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🎨 Create

Goal: Explore a broad range possibilities via prototyping and testing to uncover the most impactful, route forward

Activities you should do

Create a range of low-fidelity solutions using a range of techniques, ideating from feedback:

- Draw up user journey, mapping out pain points

- Sketch ideas on paper

- Wireframe flow to get understand of A → B

- Interactive click-through prototype

Research existing patterns that solve similar problems

Gather feedback on your concepts from HoD and design team (e.g Design Crit)

Sense check with engineers to understand the feasibility of your concepts

Test concepts with relevant user archetypes to evaluate potential impact

Gather feedback on concepts from your team via Slack/Figma/Loom

Activities you could do

Run ‘Design Jam’ with your team to draw up concepts and ideas

Work with engineers to spike solutions using high-functional prototypes

Review existing flow and highlight areas of improvement based on

heuristics⁠

Output

Set of concepts that have been evaluated and refined. Document process and decisions in Asana/Figma.

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📝 Clarify

Goal: Align on the solution that your team believes is the smallest, shippable solution that allows us to learn and iterate going forward

Activities you should do

Run through evaluated concept, explaining rationale and findings with team

Analyse what assumptions were true/not true from testing

Prioritise what is equally useful, viable, and feasible with inputs from the team

Align on smallest, shippable solution agreeing on the first set of requirements

Activities you could do

Work with PM to write up requirements in PRD

Challenge priority if you feel the data doesn’t match our decisions

Start identifying requirements for future releases

Share findings from additional research to help inform priority decisions

Output

Agree and align on prioritised requirements to focus on. Document in PRD with PM.

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💪 Commit

Goal: Document the necessary details (e.g components, flows) that meet the requirements, seeing it through to implementation and release

Activities you should do

Illustrate flows in high-fidelity prototypes

Document interactions and components in Figma

Design and document error states, dead ends, and edge cases

Use real content and scenarios (e.g Long names, scrollable lists)

Review UI details with design team in critiques

Polish the visuals—make it look beautiful and feel enjoyable

Tidy up art-boards and move to ‘Latest’ page of file

Add relevant section link to Figma designs/prototypes on PRD

Activities you could do

Conduct usability testing on prototype(s)

Consider adding visual identity elements such as illustrations or photography

Design micro-interactions with engineers

Review copy with Marketing

Share in EPD demos or All-Hands

QA the built UI early on, filing bugs where you need to

Add new components to Design System and document

Discuss interaction ideas with engineers for feedback and suggestions

Output

High-fidelity prototypes, designs, and documentation added to PRD

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