Why Is a User-Centric Design Process Also Efficient?

The title question is truly a million-dollar question. It incorporates two key terms critical to many businesses—efficiency and user-centricity. Efficiency is an obvious business benefit, while the advantages of user-centricity are more indirect but have the potential for far greater financial impact than efficiency alone. Efficiency determines how quickly and cost-effectively a solution is achieved, whereas user-centricity determines how successfully the solution meets real-world needs, as well as its growth potential, customer loyalty, and added value.

There are nearly as many design processes as there are companies, projects, and services. Many processes I’ve encountered include elements that aim for efficiency, but what exactly is a user-centric design process?

What Types of Processes Exist?

In the software industry, processes can generally be categorized into three main groups: linear, iterative, and hybrid.

Iterative models revisit certain steps after validation, making progress less linear and less straightforward to visualize—at least on paper. In practice, however, iterative processes involve continuous refinement through cycles, leading to a product that becomes better, more defined, and feature-rich over time. These models allow for knowledge to be gained through experimentation, meaning not everything needs to be perfectly defined at the outset. For designing today’s complex software ecosystems, which require seamless collaboration among multiple teams, iterative models enrich shared understanding. For example, IBM’s Design Thinking Model is a well-known iterative process that keeps the user at the center of its outcomes.

Hybrid models combine approaches as needed, incorporating iterative segments followed by linear phases with no backward steps. These are often tailored on a case-by-case basis to suit the specific needs of a project.

Why Define Processes?

One of the biggest advantages of defining a design process is the clarity it provides about what is happening now, what comes next, and what has already been achieved. Process definitions allow design stages to be broken down into manageable parts, enabling specific tasks to be outsourced if needed, with a clear understanding of goals, outcomes, resources required, and timeframes. This applies to all processes, whether iterative or linear.

A process acts as the sheet music for team collaboration—allowing an orchestra of teams to play the same tune, keep the tempo, and ensure that even an expensive solo artist brought in externally can perform at the right moment.

User-Centricity in the Process – How Does It Show?

I’ve sometimes openly asked: Can a product be user-centric if the process used to design it isn’t? User involvement, research, and testing are essential for effective product development, and they must be integrated into the process. A common pitfall when defining processes is an overemphasis on the process itself.

Sometimes it becomes unclear why the process is being defined in the first place. In such cases, the process can become more important than the product, software, or service being designed—not to mention the value it delivers. Often, process-centric definitions result in overly simplistic processes, such as adopting a waterfall model for designing complex software. On paper, the process might seem clear and systematic, but it won’t withstand real-world challenges. Conversely, overly process-centric thinking can lead to processes that are overly complex, attempting to predict every future eventuality.

Everything should, at least to some extent, originate from the end user—even the design process itself. One of the best ways to integrate the end user into the design process is to define specific stages for collecting data through research, engagement, or testing. Processes must also include mechanisms to detect errors early and provide the means to address them.

What If It Needs to Be Ready by Next Week?

Sometimes you need to move faster than a perfect product development framework allows. For example, concept development and validation for new markets are areas where it’s important to ensure you’re doing the right things before making significant investments.

One well-known “shortcut to success” is Google Ventures’ Google Design Sprint. This method condenses the entire product development process into five days. It works by skipping resource-heavy stages like development and launch, involving the right people and end users, and working within time constraints that combine independent work with teamwork.

The phases of a design sprint, broken down by day, are:

1. Understand: Gather existing knowledge about the topic to create a shared foundation for design.
   • Outcome: Problem definition, users, needs, context, competitors, and a draft strategy.
2. Sketch: Generate multiple competing solutions to address the needs identified in the previous phase.
   • Outcome: Alternative solutions.
3. Decide: Select one solution from the previous phase to develop for testing during the sprint.
   • Outcome: The best solution outlined, e.g., as a storyboard.
4. Prototype: Build a testable prototype of the selected concept, focusing on functionality and usability over aesthetics.
   • Outcome: A rough prototype with core features for testing.
5. Test: Test the concept with users and potentially evaluate its feasibility.
   • Outcome: Insights into what works and what doesn’t. A validated rough concept.

A design sprint doesn’t deliver a market-ready product—it serves a different purpose. It enriches existing knowledge by creating competing solutions and testing them with potential users. This avoids wasting resources on lengthy development and launch phases, effectively skipping the most resource-intensive parts of the design process. By iterating directly between ideas and testing, the sprint ensures the business potential, value creation, and viability of the product while avoiding issues that would be impossible to predict before execution.

This makes it both a user-centric and efficient design process. So why isn’t it the perfect framework for product development that I mentioned earlier?

Perhaps because it still lacks the execution needed to create a fully functioning product. Both are necessary—rapid iteration and validation to avoid wasted development efforts, and thorough development work to ensure that the insights and knowledge gained from rapid cycles don’t go to waste.