Design Thinking: Develop
In the 'Develop' phase of Designing Thinking, the shortlisted possible solutions are developed and accepted/rejected /refined over the cycle of design-build-test, till we close in to the final solution.
Develop phase uses multiple processes and tools, in order to systematically design, build, and test the solutions, iteratively, to arrive at the final solution:
1. Theme, Epic, User Stories: A solution is broken down into Themes, then Epics, and and then into User stories, so as to plan the development easily.
2. T-Shirt sizing: Each User stories are estimated for the Effort required, at high level, through T-Shirt sizing. Adding the resource availability, this provides the indication on the timelines for the development of each Epics and Themes.
3. MVP/MLP: Minimum Viable/Lovable Product (Solution) is defined as the minimum functionality a product needs to have for launching in the market. They are either a combination of some Epics under a Theme, or a combination of Themes, depending on the product and its development timelines.
4. Product (Solution) Roadmap: Final solution is planned as series of releases starting from MVP/MLP. Functionalities required in each releases are scoped.
5. CX, UX, and UI: A solution is designed considering Customer Experience, User Experience and User Interface.
6. Design Principles: Design principles lay out guard-rails for designing the solution to ensure good UI and UX.
7. Rapid Prototyping: Rapid Prototyping is what makes Design Thinking an efficient approach of problem-solving and product management. Rapid Prototypes are visual representation of the solution. Different possible solutions are evaluated at high level, quickly (that's why the name "Rapid"), through sketching, wireframes and mock-ups. Rapid Prototypes helps get feedback on the Interface (UI) design of the product. In Physical Product scenario, the new technologies such as 3D printing is used for Rapid Prototyping. The feedback on Rapid prototypes helps accepting/rejecting/modifying the solutions, and take us a step closer to how our final solution should look like.
8. Prototypes: Based on the decision from Rapid Prototyping, the scope of development are refined in terms of required features. The functional prototypes are built as working solution, with lower level of details, precision and accuracy as compared to what would be on the final solution. It is planned to simulate the interaction (UX) between user and the solution in order to validate design decisions. These prototypes undergo different kinds of UX testing, which serves as input to the next version of the prototype, till it gets refined to the final design of the required solution. Prototype development happens over the cycle of Design-Build-Test. (Since Rapid Prototyping is a recently devised terminology, the term 'Prototype' usually refers to the functional prototypes only). The testing environment for the prototypes are prepared, and the success metrics are defined. For Service, Business or Operating models solutions, Prototypes are called Pilot models, which is a controlled simulation of the solution to validate its design.
9. Solution Build: Rapid Prototypes and Functional Prototypes help to refine the design of the solution. The solution is built based on the design inputs.
10. Development Testing: All the prototypes/solutions are tested for different functionalities and refined over the cycle of Design-Build-Test, based on internal observation by the development team, and the feedback from the cross-functional team (including the representative from the User group). The cross-functional team needs to ensure that the solution continues to be in line with the user's need over the course of development. New feature requirements based on the feedback, are constantly evaluated for the impact on development timelines. If required, Product/Solution Roadmap is revised.
11. UI and UX Testing: Over the course of the development, the solution is tested for User Interface and User Experience. The feedback from the tests are used to enhance the solution.
12. Acceptance Testing and Certification: After the completion of all the iterations of design-build-test-design, the final solution (product) is tested for User Acceptance in order to evaluate the degree of alignment to the agreed Scope and User's need. At this stage, it is expected that we have feedback only in terms of the feature enhancements e.g. UI enhancements, Bug fixes, textual changes etc., and not in terms of new functionalities. The final solution undergoes certification to meet legal and compliance requirement.
13. Technical Documentation: Development team also prepares the technical User guide of the solution.
14. Product Release: Product is released for the usage. It is different from the Product launch, which is about the commercial launch of the product to the Users/Customer and depends on many market factors as well (which we will discuss in next phase).
15. Pilot Launch: In the cases where the solution is entirely new, it is first launched with limited user base to get initial feedback and take corrective action accordingly.