The design process is the process of planning a project.
The design process can really be called a planning process. According to the Web Design Depot, the most important part of the process of design is the preliminaries--a series of rough sketches, notes and mind mapping exercises. These are akin to the outline and rough draft in a piece of writing. They get the ideas down on paper and show you which possibilities work and which do not. If you are trying to teach your students how the design process works, it's best to walk them through each step so they know how each one fits into the whole.
Instructions
1. Define the parameters of the project, including the s deadline. For example, if you have given your students an assignment to design a brochure for a local company, ask them to determine the features that make this company different from others. Tell them to write down their findings.
2. Hit the books and the Internet or pick up the phone to conduct research. In the case of the mock assignment, the students might look at the brochures produced by other companies. They should also look at past brochures and talk to people from the client company. They need to make any visual connections they can between past brochures and determine what makes their company's visual materials unique to them. In real world settings, the students would meet with the client at this stage.
3. Look through design books and other visual materials for inspiration. This will change the pace and might result in improvements in your thinking.
4. Figure out based on the research what the design concept is going to be. This includes determining what form the final product will take. Certain materials have what Donald A. Norman in the "Design of Everyday Things" calls affordances. These are the things that these materials allow you to do or don't do. For example, designing a brochure from canvas board will provide different possibilities than one designed on paper.
5. Begin the preliminary sketches of the concept. The students should use all of the information they have collected thus far to create these.
6. Create some digital mock ups based on these sketches.
7. Get feedback from the client. The client will tell the students which preliminary designs they like or they may take elements from several. It is not unusual for the final design to be a mix of different elements featured in the various drawings. The client will likely talk about photos, illustrations or lettering choices at this time and make some final decisions about each of these elements.
8. Ask the students to create several final samples for the client. Usually, you want three to five designs for the client to consider.
