I’ve used several different frameworks, methodologies, and variations of them throughout my career. Various teams and projects have different needs to deliver an end product. While I can easily adapt to an existing workflow, I will generally follow this iterative process in my design methodology.
This approach helps deliver great products on time and within budget. It allows for adaptability to new insight and information throughout the process. It’s intended to be an ongoing process throughout the life of the product to ensure value is added to the users and the company.
Purpose: Identify the scope and goals of the project. Define the problem to solve. How will success be measured? What are the resources available? Establish a timeline. Outline expectations.
Purpose: Understand the problem from the users' and business perspective. There are several methods for gathering this information: surveys, focus groups, card sorting, sales and web analytics, and competitor analysis. User personas and journey maps can be developed from research findings to aid further steps.
Purpose: Generate ideas for solving the problem. Incorporate best practices and research to explore solutions. Identify possible solutions which have a high level of confidence for success. As a part of this process generating rough sketches and wireframes can used to rough out various ideas.
Purpose: Put together a solution that can be developed and tested. The level of fidelity will depend on recourses, and where you are in the process.
Purpose: Create something that can be tested. Depending on the situation this might be a PDF to perform early user testing. If you finalizing designs, they may be incorporated into the UAT server for final testing before moving to production.
Purpose: Test the solution. Whatever methods are used, the testing should provide both qualitative and quantitative data. The data should be sufficient that it will help you act on the results.
Purpose: Identify what has been learned and decide what to do next. Gather the data from the test and evaluate the results. The next step will depend on the results of your test. You may need to do more research or maybe you're close on the design but need to do more A/B testing to validate a few details. If you have a high level of confidence with a solution maybe you can move forward with development and perform a more rigorous quantitative testing. A post-mortem is also helpful in the review to evaluate what went well, what didn't, and what changes you should make next time. This is all about improving the process.