Welcome to the Design Phase!

Your Discovery Phase is complete or is wrapping up, and you and your team are ready to move into the Design phase. In this phase, the team will build on the research completed in the Discovery phase in order to create action in the form of a designed or evolved product, service, or system from what you learned. You and the team will design sustainable products and services that answer the needs of the people on whom you centered your Discovery phase.

To get started, make sure you've read the Design Phase Concept Guide before starting this Operations Guide. The Concept Guide provides a necessary grounding for work you'll record in this Operations Guide; without reading the Concept Guide, you won't set yourself up for success in the Design Phase.

This Operations Guide, like the Discovery Phase Operations Guide, acts as a compilation of your work. By using the frameworks provided, you will be able to move through and record your design work in a way that both creates an archive and an asset from which to pull project reports.

A note on the frameworks:

The frameworks are provided for your convenience, but you don't need a printer to use them. Each of the frameworks, as you'll see, are designed on standard, letter-sized sheets divided into simple, mostly rectangualar entry spaces for your work. They also have basic directions. If you don't have access to a printer, make your own framework by copying the layout from your screen onto a standard, letter-sized piece of paper. Recording your work is important, but you don't need to use the finished frameworks to do so.