Design thinking: A UX design framework

In the world of UX design, a framework is a conceptual tool that provides guidance on

the best practices and processes for solving problems and building solutions that solve the
problems of real users. Frameworks provide structure for the design process and foster
collaboration, which can spark innovations. Most UX designers follow a specific framework
or process when approaching their work, from the first idea all the way through to the final
launch of a product.

In this certificate program, you’ll follow the design thinking framework to sequence
the assignments that contribute to the designs that you’ll create throughout the program. The
design thinking framework is a user-centered approach to problem-solving that includes
activities like research, prototyping, and testing to help you understand who your user is,
what their problems are, and what your design should include.

The design thinking framework involves the following phases: empathize, define, ideate,
prototype, and test.

Though it may sound like a linear process, the design thinking framework should be iterative,
which means that you’ll repeat certain phases as you refine your designs. For example,
depending on the feedback you receive during testing, you might need to conduct additional
research, brainstorm new ideas, or develop new prototypes.

Let’s look at the five phases of the design thinking framework to learn more about which
activities you’ll perform during each one. Keep in mind that the design thinking framework
as presented here is an idealized model for UX designers to follow, so you might see some
variation in its implementation between different companies, teams, or projects.

Empathize
During the empathize phase, your primary goal is to learn more about the user and their
problems, wants, and needs, and the environment or context in which they’ll experience your
design. The most important part of the empathize phase is to step away from your
assumptions and guesses and let your research findings inform your decision-making in later
design phases.

Your user research might include user surveys, interviews, and observation sessions, and you
might also need to conduct some research on the competitors’ products to determine how
your user frames competitors’ products as part of their daily life and daily problem-solving.
Define
In the define phase, you’ll analyze your research findings from the empathize phase and
determine which user problems are the most important ones to solve, and why. This will
drive you toward a clear goal for the design of the product.

The most important outcome of this phase is a clear problem statement, which is a description
of the user’s need that your designs will address. You might also develop a value proposition,
which is a summary of why your user would or should use the product or service that you’re
designing.

Ideate
After you land on a user problem and establish why it’s an important one to solve, it’s time
for the ideate phase. The goal of ideation is to come up with as many design solutions as
possible—don’t settle for your first solution because the most obvious solution is not always
the right one.

Ideation involves collaborative brainstorming with other members of your team to generate as
many solutions as possible to a problem. This could include marketing, engineering, product
management, or any other stakeholders for the product or service. During brainstorming
sessions, you should explore all possible solutions. Don’t focus on whether something is a
“good” or “bad” idea, just collect as many ideas as you can. The important thing here is to
keep this process judgment-free.

After brainstorming, you’ll then analyze your potential solutions and start to make choices
about which ones are the best options to pursue as prototypes. You might return to user or
competitive research to help you narrow down your ideas, and you might also create user
flows to illustrate how the user will interact with your solution.

Prototype and Test

After you have an idea of how to solve the problem, you’re ready to enter the prototype
phase, where your goal is to produce an early model of a product that demonstrates its
functionality and can be used for testing. The test phase is critical to developing the right
solution to address your user’s problem, and an organized approach to testing can help you
create exceptional user experiences.

Prototyping and testing are interconnected, which means that you’ll test your designs at each
stage of prototype development rather than waiting to test until after the working prototype is
complete. If the design is too polished the first time you present it to users, you might not get
as much feedback. Think about ways to include testing throughout the design process, so that
you’re iterating your designs based on user feedback instead of other reasons.

For example, you might test the concepts behind your design by presenting users with a
simple sketch, wireframe, or a sitemap. Taking what you learned, you might iterate on that
design to a more detailed design on paper (known as a low-fidelity prototype) and conduct
another round of user testing. At some point, you’ll iterate the design again into a working,
interactive model using a software program (also known as a high-fidelity prototype) and test
that as well. You might also consider testing more than one prototype at the same time to get
feedback on multiple solutions, or testing the same prototype on multiple platforms, such as a
laptop, tablet, and smartphone.

The goal of testing prototypes is to continue to refine the prototype as you gain insight into
whether the design for your product or service is easy to use and solves the user’s problem.
At some point, you’ll finalize a prototype, and then you’ll provide it to developers, who will
then turn your design into a product.

Key takeaways
The design thinking framework is only one type of framework that UX designers use to
organize their approach to designs, often based on the product they’re designing and the
organization they’re working for. No matter which frameworks you use in your career, they
all have a few core principles in common:

 Focus on the user.

 Create solutions that address the user’s problems.
 Collaborate with teammates across departments.
 Validate your designs.
 Iterate as needed to design the right user experience.
Throughout the rest of the certificate program, you’ll learn more about each of the phases of
the design thinking framework and complete practice activities to gain more experience with
designing user experiences end-to-end.

Resources for more information

For more about the design thinking framework, check out the following resources:

 Design thinking 101 by Nielsen Norman Group

 The Design thinking Process - An Introduction (2021) by CareerFoundry
 UX Design Process: Everything You Need to Know by Adobe
 What is Design Thinking? by The Interaction Design Foundation
UX design business requirements
You’ve learned that design thinking is a user-centered and multi-stage approach to solving
problems. Its goal is to create products that effectively address real user needs. And it has five
phases: empathizing with users, defining their needs, ideating solutions, prototyping solutions,
and testing those solutions.

You’ve also learned that while this process looks neat and linear, the reality is often more
cyclical. The best UX designers iterate throughout the process, moving back and forth between
stages to do things like redefine user needs or develop alternative prototypes.

In fact, in many real-world situations, design thinking doesn’t even start with empathizing.
Instead, it starts when a designer gets an assignment for a new project. Good UX designers take
time to carefully understand these assignments before they move forward. Why? Because most
assignments include crucial business requirements that must be considered at every stage of the
design thinking process.

Business requirements
For any UX design project, business requirements come from whatever entity assigns the
project. That entity might be a for-profit business, a nonprofit organization, a governmental
organization, or something else. But no matter where they come from, business requirements
typically include two kinds of information: goals and parameters.

Business goals typically describe:

 The users they want the design to target

 The outcomes they want the design to achieve
 Their vision for the design’s final look and functionality

Business parameters typically describe:

 The project’s budget, timeline, and scope

 The specific tools and systems that designers must use or design for
 The requirements and standards the design must meet

Business requirements vary depending on the project and its key players, and they can often be
negotiated over the project’s lifecycle. And just as these requirements may evolve over the
course of the project, so too should they shape designers’ execution of the design thinking
process in powerful ways. In the empathize phase, for example, UX designers connect with
users and gather information about their needs. This task costs time and money, so it should be
conducted in ways that fit the project’s schedule and budget.
Here’s an example of a UX designer encountering business requirements for a new project. As
you learn about design thinking in upcoming readings, you’ll explore examples of how this UX
designer creates an effective product while meeting business requirements.

A bakery owner is contracting a freelance UX designer to design a new website. The bakery
serves customers exclusively through delivery and pick-up orders. Since its founding two years
ago, the bakery has advertised and taken orders over the phone and through its social media
accounts. This approach has helped the bakery connect directly with customers and build a loyal
base without partnering with third-party ordering services.

But as sales have increased, the owner and their team have struggled to individually process
orders as they come in through multiple channels. They need a website that will help them
maintain a direct connection with customers while enabling them to process orders in a more
automated and efficient way.

When they contract with their freelance UX designer, the bakery owner shares their goals and
parameters. With a modest budget and relatively short time-frame, they want a simple website
that supports online ordering without routing users to third-party ordering services. The site must
be easy to navigate, maintain, and update. It must also reflect the bakery’s existing brand and
appeal to its target customers. While the bakery’s customers come from a range of locations and
demographics, the majority are 35–70 years old and they live or work in the local area.

These business requirements provide an invaluable starting point for the designer, who reviews
them to learn more about their end users, understand their budget and timeframe, and start
planning the rest of their design thinking process.

Key takeaways
Though design thinking technically starts with empathizing, actual design projects typically start
with business requirements. Business requirements are goals and parameters set by whatever
business or other entity is assigning the design project. They state crucial details like the
business’s budget, timeframe, and vision for the design. Effective UX designers understand
these requirements and consider them at every stage of the Design Thinking process. You’ll
learn more about the first phase of design thinking—and how it’s shaped by business
requirements—in the next reading.

Phase 1: Empathize with users

You’ve learned that good UX designers consider business requirements at every stage of the
design thinking process. These requirements are set by whatever business or entity assigns the
design project. They include crucial details like a business’s schedule, budget, and vision for the
product that’s being designed.

Process flow of design thinking framework: 1. Empathize, 2. Define, 3. Ideate, 4. Prototype, and
5. Test. Empathize is highlighted.
After understanding these requirements, designers are ready to start the first phase of the design
thinking process: empathize.

When you empathize with people, you try to deeply understand their feelings, thoughts, and
experiences on their own terms, without bias or preconceptions. Empathizing helps designers
connect with users, not just as consumers or customers, but as human beings with their own
unique histories and situations. This kind of deep connection helps designers create products
that solve real problems, address real needs, and engage users in the long term.

Building on business requirements

When empathizing, designers seek to understand how users experience the product they’re
designing. They want to know their users’ problems and needs, and they want a clear
understanding of the situations and environments where users interact with the product. The
more a designer understands these details, the better equipped they are to create products that
truly meet users’ needs in the long term.

Some of this user information will likely be included in the project’s business requirements, but it
may be limited or based on assumptions. That’s why good UX designers use the empathize
phase to validate, update, and expand on the user information in their project’s business
requirements. They do this by connecting directly with users and researching their experiences.

Here are some powerful methods for empathizing with users as a UX designer:

Interviews
Interviews take many forms, but UX designers most commonly use four:

1. Questionnaires/surveys
2. In-person interviews
 3. Phone interviews
4. Video interviews

Before starting interviews, designers consider the type and amount of information they need.
Next, good designers consider their business requirements: how much time, money, and other
resources do they have for planning and conducting interviews? Finally, designers can plan
interviews that achieve the best balance between their information needs and their project’s
parameters.

Empathy maps
Once designers have conducted their interviews, they can turn to empathy maps. These are a
great tool for processing the information a designer has collected. In a classic empathy map,
designers draw directly from interviews to answer five questions about their users:

1. Who exactly are the users and what are their situations?
2. What do users say about their experiences with the product or similar products?
3. What do users think about their experiences?
4. What do users do before, during, and after their experiences?
5. What do users feel about their experiences?

Ideally, the answers to these questions will build on any user information included in a project’s
business requirements.

For example, in the business requirements you explored in the previous reading, the bakery
owner claims their older customers prefer ordering over the phone because they aren’t
comfortable with online order forms. But the UX designer’s empathy research tells a different
story: Many older customers are comfortable with online ordering but prefer phone ordering
because they think it’s faster and feel an emotional connection with the bakery and its staff. In
this way, the designer’s empathy research has updated and expanded the user information in the
bakery’s business requirements.

User personas
Personas are fictional characters who represent groups of similar users. They help designers
distill large amounts of user information into more manageable chunks.

For example, the older bakery customers prefer ordering over the phone for a mix of reasons.
But rather than try to remember these details in the abstract, the designer creates a user persona
who brings this customer to life:

Berta is an older customer who has built connections with bakery staff over time and enjoys
connecting with them while ordering over the phone. Also, she has a visual impairment and finds
phone ordering faster and more convenient than ordering online.

Once designers have established personas, they can keep their users in mind throughout the
design thinking process without having to remember every detail they captured during their
interviews. These personas also help designers explain their design choices to clients and other
business stakeholders. Rather than try to describe their users in the abstract, they use user
personas to tell compelling stories that put their designs in context.

Key takeaways
In the empathize phase of design thinking, designers seek to understand their users through a
variety of research methods, including interviews, empathy maps, and user personas.

The goal of empathizing is to understand users' problems, wants, needs, and situations in order
to design a product that works for them and creates an enjoyable experience. Throughout this
phase, good UX designers try to understand users as deeply as they can while still working
within key business requirements, like timeline and budget.

Phase 2: Define users’ needs

You’ve learned that effective UX designers typically start the design thinking process only after
they’ve understood their project’s goals, parameters, and other business requirements. You’ve
also learned about the first phase of the design thinking process: empathize. Empathizing is all
about connecting with users, gathering information about them, and distilling that information into
detailed user personas.

Process flow that represents the Design Thinking framework: 1. Empathize, 2. Define, 3. Ideate,
4. Prototype, and 5. Test. Define is highlighted.
After empathizing, designers move to the next phase of design thinking: define. In the define
phase, designers analyze their empathy work to answer this key question: Which of my users’
needs or problems are the most important ones for my design to address? Typically, designers
use a combination of tools to answer this question.

User stories
While a user persona distills a large group of similar users into a single character, user stories
help designers focus their understanding of those users even more. A user story is a one-
sentence narrative told from a persona’s perspective. It should encapsulate who the user is,
what they want to do, and why they want to do it. The following is a simple template for writing
a user story:

As [type of user], I want to [action] so that [benefit].

When done well, a user story gives the designer information they can use to create a checklist
they can return to as they define their users’ needs and ideate effective solutions. For example,
recall Berta, one of the user personas in the bakery example you’ve been exploring. For Berta,
the UX designer might develop a user story like this:

As a long-time customer with a visual impairment and a close connection to the bakery staff, I
want to place my orders over the phone so I can order with ease and continue to connect with
staff members.
User journeys
Once a designer has distilled their user groups into realistic personas and stories, it’s time to
start mapping out each persona’s user journey. A user journey is a series of experiences that the
user has as they try to achieve their goal. It might be an experience they have with the product
that’s being designed, an experience they have with a similar product, or an experience they
have in the absence of those products.

In developing the new bakery website, for example, the UX designer creates two user journeys
for each persona, including Berta. One of Berta’s user journeys reflects how users like her
typically interact with the bakery and its current ordering systems (a mixture of phone ordering
and direct messages on social media accounts). The other user journey reflects how users like
Berta will typically interact with website-based ordering systems, which is the type of product the
designer is creating.

Problem statements
With complete user journeys for each persona, a designer can better identify the problems their
design must solve or the needs their design must address. Then, they can distill these problems
or needs into problem statements.

A problem statement summarizes who the user is, what they need from a design, and why.
The following is a simple template for writing a problem statement:

[Name of user persona] is a [type of user] who needs [type of user experience]
because [benefits of user experience].

This template is similar to a user story, but problem statements are typically more detailed, and
they are written from the designer’s perspective. For example, here’s a problem statement for
Berta:

Berta is an older person with a visual impairment. She is a long-time bakery customer who
prefers ordering over the phone. She needs a website and online ordering system that are easy
to use, adapt to her vision needs, and mimic the feel and flow of a friendly phone conversation.
She wants to place her orders with ease and feel like she’s making a personal connection with
the bakery.

Effective UX designers create problem statements for each of their user personas. This helps
designers create products that address the needs of multiple user types rather than catering
solely to one type of user.

Key takeaways
In the define phase of design thinking, designers build on their business requirements and
empathy work to state a series of specific problems they want their design to address. These
problems should emerge from a thorough understanding of who users are and how they
experience the product, including the specific tasks they encounter and the feelings they bring to
those tasks, such as placing orders at a bakery.
Phase 3: Ideate solutions
In the second phase of design thinking, designers build on their empathy research to define
and select the user problems they need to address. In the third phase, they ideate possible
solutions to those problems.

Process flow that represents the design thinking framework: 1. Empathize, 2. Define, 3. Ideate, 4.
Prototype, and 5. Test. Ideate is highlighted.
The ideate phase is all about getting creative and brainstorming lots of potential solutions.
Designers often collaborate with team members, business stakeholders, and potential users.
Their ideas may be unexpected or out of the box, and that’s great!

Early in the ideate phase, good designers try to suspend their assumptions, preconceptions, and
judgements: The goal is to propose, consider, and challenge as many alternatives as possible
without evaluating or selecting any one. Evaluation and selection come in later in the ideate
phase: Once plenty of ideas are on the table, designers have a better chance to compare
alternatives and select the best.

As you’ll learn in a later course, there are many, many different techniques for brainstorming, and
the best UX designers choose, adapt, and create new techniques as needed. For now, here are
some of the most common:

“How might we?”

In this brainstorming exercise, designers take a problem statement from the define phase and
turn it into a list of questions that start with “How might we,” or HMW. HMW questions help
designers reframe user problems as exciting opportunities for solutions. For example, recall the
problem statement you explored in the previous reading defining user needs:

Berta is an older person with a visual impairment. She is a long-time bakery customer who
prefers ordering over the phone. She needs a website and online ordering system that are easy
to use, adapt to her vision needs, and mimic the feel and flow of a friendly phone conversation.
She wants to place her orders with ease and feel like she’s making a personal connection with
the bakery as she places her orders.

If the bakery’s UX designer reframed this problem statement as a series of HMW questions, they
might include:

 How might we make the online ordering process easy to use?

 How might we make the online ordering system mimic a friendly conversation?
  How might we ensure the online ordering system adapts to Berta’s vision needs?

After creating these HMW questions, good UX designers spend time answering them with as
many possible solutions as they can think of—and they don’t hold back!

Rapid Sketching
While “How might we?” focuses on written questions and solutions, Rapid Sketching is a visual
approach to ideation. (It’s commonly called “Crazy Eights” in the UX design industry.) Rapid
Sketching is especially useful when designers need to brainstorm the visual elements of a new
design. First, designers clarify the problem they’re trying to solve or the idea they’re trying to
iterate. They might use one of the questions or solutions they developed in a HMW exercise.
Then, they:

1. Divide a large sheet of paper into eight squares.

2. Grab something to draw with.
3. Start an eight-minute timer.
4. Take one minute to sketch an idea or solution in each square.

When the eight-minute timer goes off, there should be a different sketch in each of the paper’s
eight squares. Designers can adapt this approach as needed. For example, if a designer has
less time or smaller sheets of paper, they might start with four squares and four minutes for
sketching.

Competitive audits
When designers want new ideas about how to solve a problem, they can also audit their
competitors by asking questions, like:

 What products do they offer?

 What are those products’ strengths and areas for improvement?

By answering questions like these, designers can get inspiration for their own designs, identify
gaps in the market, and find evidence for what designs have already worked and not worked.
With audits, designers can save time, money, and effort by learning from competitors who have
already designed similar products or tried to solve similar problems.

SCAMPER
SCAMPER is a technique designers used to brainstorm changes and alternatives to ideas and
designs. Each letter of the acronym stands for a different action that designers can apply to their
designs, such as substituting (S) elements for other elements, combining (C) elements into one,
or adapting (A) elements with alternatives. In full, the acronym stands for: Substitute, Combine,
Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Rearrange.

Collaboration
Ideation typically works best when it’s collaborative. Effective design teams often ideate together
in collaborative working sessions. And whether they’re working alone or in a team, designers
often bring other players into the ideation process, including their users and their business
stakeholders.
Before launching a collaborative partnership or working session, effective designers or design
teams typically ensure they’ve answered crucial questions such as:

 Who will be involved? What will their roles be?

 Where will the collaboration happen? Will it be in person or virtual?
 Why is the collaboration happening? What is the end goal?
 How will the collaboration happen? What tools and processes will we use?

Business requirements
Ideation techniques help designers brainstorm lots of ideas, but will those ideas meet their
project’s business requirements? As designers review their ideas, they must refer to their
business requirements and ask questions like these:

 Which of these ideas will be feasible within the project’s budget and schedule?
 Which of these ideas will best meet the standards for the design?

While ideation starts with exploring boundless possibilities, there will always be firm parameters
for a project. Good UX designers often try to frame these parameters positively: They are
obstacles that inspire creative problem solving, guardrails that keep the design process on track,
and filters for sifting through all those boundless possibilities.

Key takeaways
In the ideate phase of design thinking, UX designers brainstorm lots of possible solutions to the
user problems they’ve identified. They use brainstorming and research techniques like “How
might we?” (HMW), Rapid Sketching, competitive audits, and SCAMPER. It should be a fun,
creative, and judgment-free process: The more ideas, the better! But once the ideas are out
there, good UX designers take time to check possible solutions against their project’s business
requirements. Ultimately, their goal is to choose the solution that will satisfy requirements while
also working best for users.

Phase 4: Prototype solutions

When a designer has empathized with their users, defined their users’ needs, and ideated
solutions, it’s time to start the fourth phase of design thinking: prototyping solutions.

Process flow that represents the Design Thinking framework: 1. Empathize, 2. Define, 3. Ideate,
4. Prototype, and 5. Test. Prototype is highlighted.
In the prototyping phase, the goal is not to build a final product. Rather, designers produce early
models, or prototypes, of the solution so they can see how it will look and function for users.
Prototypes also show stakeholders and potential users what the design can do. So, how do
designers prototype? There are many practices they can use.

Information architecture and sitemaps

To meet users’ needs, products like web apps must present information in ways that users can
understand and navigate with ease and enjoyment. When designers organize the information in
a product, they create something called “information architecture,” or IA. Information architecture
is essentially a high-level diagram or flowchart that shows how users can move through a
product, like a website or an app.

In planning a product’s information architecture, designers often create something called a

sitemap, like this one for a website:

Shop with seven subcategories below; Lookbooks with four subcategories; Search filters
includes price, color, size, material, online-only, popularity and sale; Log In/Sign up includes
forgot password and create account; Cart with five subcategories; and Footer/Other which
includes general information about the business and help.
Like all good information architecture, this sitemap organizes the product by outlining its
hierarchy and sequence:

 Hierarchy refers to how topics are prioritized and subordinated. Hierarchies emphasize
topics that are broader or more important, which in turn contain smaller or less important
topics. In the sitemap above, for example, “Shop” is a major topic that contains smaller
topics, like “Denim/Pants.”
 Sequence refers to the order in which users can navigate through the product’s
hierarchy, like navigating from the “Homepage” to “Shop” to “Denim/Pants” and so on.

Information architecture and sitemaps are crucial for meeting users’ needs. For example, recall
the designer who is developing a website and online ordering system for a bakery. One of the
designer’s user personas is an older customer who prefers phone ordering because they enjoy
talking with bakery staff.

So, the designer aims to create a website and ordering system that replicate the experience of
ordering over the phone. The design’s success will depend in large part on its information
architecture. In creating the website’s sitemap, for instance, the designer uses hierarchy and
then sequences information so that users enter the homepage and immediately see an option to
“Place an Order,” just as they might be invited to place an order after being greeted by bakery
staff over the phone.

Wireframing
Wireframes are rough sketches of the product that bring the sitemap to life. Designers use them
to figure out how the product’s pages are laid out, how each page’s elements are arranged, and
how users will progress from page to page. They are relatively bare bones, consisting primarily of
shapes, lines, and minimal text. There are two methods designers can employ:

Paper wireframes
Paper wireframes are sketches on paper. They use horizontal lines to represent text, rectangles
or boxes to represent icons or images, and other shapes to represent buttons and additional
elements. It’s easy and inexpensive to iterate many versions with paper.
Digital wireframes
Digital wireframes are developed in a UX design tool such as Figma or Adobe XD. Digital
wireframes are 2D designs that show, at a high level, what the product will look like. Designers
use grayscale, shapes, and placeholder text to demonstrate what the design will look and feel
like when content is added. (On a fun side-note: Lorem ipsum is a form of placeholder text
that is so common that many designers like to play around with it for fun, to inspire creativity.
Check out Meet the Ipsums to explore.)
Low fidelity (lo-fi) prototypes
In UX, “fidelity” means how closely a design matches the look and feel of the final product. A low
fidelity prototype is a simple interactive model that provides a basic idea of what the product will
look like and how its components will flow for users. Designers often create lo-fi prototypes by
assembling their wireframes and adding interactivity, or the ability to navigate from one screen to
another. Designers use lo-fi prototypes to test and improve their designs before spending time
and effort developing more detailed high-fidelity prototypes.

High fidelity (hi-fi) prototypes

A high fidelity prototype takes the lo-fi prototype and brings it as close to the final product as
possible. Hi-fi prototypes incorporate all of the product’s components, interactivity, and content,
though some content may be represented by realistic placeholders. It is not the final product, but
it enables people to more fully experience how the product will look, feel, and work. For example,
consider the richly detailed hi-fi prototype for Tee’s Shirts below. More than just an assembly of
navigable wireframes, this hi-fi prototype will enable testers and stakeholders to simulate a
realistic experience with the final product, which means richer and more detailed feedback for
designers on every facet of the final product.

During prototyping, whether lo-fi or hi-fi, designers often revisit information and decisions from
earlier stages of the design thinking process. When evaluating prototypes, for example, they
should ask if the layout, flow, look, and feel address the problem statement developed during the
define phase. Would Berta, the bakery customer persona you met earlier, be able to easily use
the site to order? Does the site give her the personal experience she’s used to and looking for?
These are all things for the bakery’s UX designer to consider when taking a critical look at
prototypes.

Prototyping and testing

You’ve read about designers creating prototypes so people can experience what the product will
look and feel like. If you think that sounds like testing, the next phase of the design thinking
process, then you’re right: prototyping and testing are deeply interconnected. In the next reading,
you’ll see how these phases work in tandem. Keep exploring to find out what happens next!
Key takeaways
Design thinking has five phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. It is a cyclical
and iterative process that requires UX designers to revisit the different phases as needed. In the
prototype phase, UX designers will create a model of the product. To do this, they’ll use various
practices such as:

 Information architecture
 Sitemaps
 Wireframing (paper and digital)
 Lo-fi prototypes
 Hi-fi prototypes

The goal of prototyping is to have a model to test and gain feedback on. The prototyping and
testing phases of design thinking work in tandem.

Phase 5: Test solutions

Once designers have built a prototype, it’s time to test it. Testing is the fifth phase of the design
thinking process. And, as you’ve already learned, testing often happens in cycles with
prototyping.

Process flow that represents the design thinking framework: 1. Empathize, 2. Define, 3. Ideate, 4.
Prototype, and 5. Test. Test is highlighted.
Think back to the bakery example from previous readings. The UX designer organized the
content and visuals of the website with information architecture and a sitemap. Then, they went
through iterations of wireframing, eventually creating a low-fidelity prototype and then a high-
fidelity prototype.

At some point in the prototyping phase, designers typically start testing their prototypes and
making improvements. Effective testing aims to reveal what users think, feel, and experience as
they use a product, such as a website or an app. To get rich and unbiased results, good testing
starts with a plan. Let’s briefly explore the key elements of UX testing by considering the who,
what, when, where, why, and how of a testing plan:

Who will participate in the tests? Early on, designers might ask friends, colleagues,
design partners, or other informal participants to test a product and offer feedback. Later on,
ideal participants include real-life users who align with the project’s user personas.
What types of tests will be conducted? In upcoming courses, you’ll learn more about
different types of UX research and UX tests, including the kinds of information they help
designers collect.

When and where will the tests be conducted? Tests can be conducted in person or
virtually, in a range of different environments or communication channels. It all depends: Good
UX designers plan tests that achieve the best balance between their needs and their project’s
business requirements.

Why are the tests conducted? UX tests are conducted for a range of reasons, but the
core goal is always to understand users and improve their experiences. During the test phase of
design thinking, some of the most common reasons for testing are to:

 Validate ideas, information, or decisions from other parts of the design

thinking process, such as user information generated during the empathize phase or
design decisions made during ideation.
 Uncover usability issues to address with further iteration and prototyping. Users
experience these issues as pain points that prevent them from using the product and
achieving their goals with ease and enjoyment.

How will participants engage with the prototype? Here, a key consideration is
whether the testing process itself is inclusive and accessible for all participants. As you’ll learn,
effective testing incorporates assistive technologies and other inclusive elements to ensure all
participants can engage fully.

How will information be collected? Designers use a range of methods to collect

information from users, including observation and interviews. They may also be able to gather
information from the prototype itself or the systems that participants use to interact with the
prototype.

For the bakery, the UX designer tested a low-fidelity prototype and then a high-fidelity prototype
with a range of users who aligned with the project’s key user personas, including Berta. Through
user feedback, the designer discovered key ways to improve the website and better meet users’
needs. With some time and further iteration, the designer eventually created a successful design
that met his client’s business requirements while also creating an easy and enjoyable experience
for users. Now it’s time for some pastries!

Key takeaways
In the test phase, the goal is to refine the prototype as designers gain insight into whether or not
it solves the defined problem. Once the testing is done, the prototype will be finalized, and the
prototype will move on to the developers, who will turn the design into the actual product.