Designing the Design Process for Slalom

As a leader in our design practice and San Francisco office, I was trying to implement a new business model for the design team. Traditionally Slalom has been great at finding high quality individual contributors for our client needs. Design being a complex process and varying from project to project I wanted to create a tool that can help our account teams, sales team and our design team. This tool served as an education tool, scoping tool and a process tool. I researched several popular design process models; Design thinking from IDEO, Double Diamond from British Design Council, Goal Oriented Design from Cooper, The Elements of User Experience from Jesse James Garrett, Agile methodology, scrum process and a barrage of other process diagrams on design. Identifying what we do and how we do it without having a structure was increasingly becoming a pain point for our design business. We needed a flexible and logical system since we were not a one size (process) fits all design service organization. Addressing synergy with business stakeholders, product and developers was key. Having a range of designers with all levels of experience and specializations the diagram was also intended to web all their strengths in one diagram. This diagram became a single conversation point rather than multiple pages of power point explaining what we do and how we do it to prospect clients. 

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Benefits

  • Scope the requirements
  • Get checklist items
  • Explain different stages of design to the client and other non-design folks. What to expect and artifacts coming out of it
  • Most importantly work in teams blended with researchers, interaction designers and visual designers for our projects as opposed to 1 designer does all approach.