If you’ve studied or read anything about design, you’re probably familiar with at least one design process framework. Something that describes what the process of designing something should be.

Usually you start with understanding the problem. You follow that with the exploration of ideas that could solve said problem. And ultimately this leads to discovering a solution.

Once you have a solution, you put it out there and you monitor it, so you can learn and feed another cycle of understanding > exploring > materializing.

There are a lot of different shapes that illustrate this process… circles, loops, diamonds, double diamonds, spirals, you name it. But at the end of the day, they all stand for the same idea, that this is a never-ending loop of learning and iterating.

This is a description of an ideal process, but as with anything, once you transpose it to real life it doesn’t always pan out that smoothly. Real life is messy, and there’s no better example of that than the year we now have behind us, 2020.

So… what problems can we find in the wild?

Too little

Probably more often than you’d like, you’ll find yourself in situations where you don’t have enough time. Despite that, people will still expect you to move forward and get something out the door. The result? People take shortcuts, which likely means skipping crucial parts of the ideal process.

It’s not just about time, it’s also about resources.

If you’re a so-called “generalist” and you’re expected to do EVERYTHING that is related to design or UX, is that humanly possible? Sure it is… but usually people who go very wide won’t go super deep, or they will take a lot of time to do so.

Too late

If you’re new to a company or a team, you might also find yourself landing on a moving train. Which means that it’s going to be pretty hard to stop it and even harder to turn it around.

I’ve seen new joiners, time and time again, going through a first phase of rejection, where they question what was done up to that point, and try to advocate to shift the direction the train is going. But more often than not this is followed by a second phase of acceptance and commitment to deliver, because the momentum of the train is just too much and you end up having to decide to either run with it or to let it run over you.