Connecting process to performance: effective design in motion

Despite years of progress, there’s still a persistent myth that designers are either “creatives” or Jira-ticket order takers making pretty pictures. That they’re handed a problem and, through some miraculous works of wizardry, produce polished screens out of nowhere.

Reality check: design is a discipline. It has rigor, expectations, and structure. When done right, design weaves user needs, technology, and business goals together into something meaningful.

I’ve set up a lot of design processes over the years, and I’m not claiming to have invented the wheel here, but the general principles below are the ones that seems to stick and that will scale as we head into the age of AI where design is poised to become a more strategic function. This process also maps neatly into growth frameworks and performance expectations.

Below is how I set the bar for design process and connect it to designer performance:

Design process diagram and behaviors for success

Understand the problem space

Design doesn’t start in Figma or high-fidelity mock-ups or vibe coding. It starts with understanding and research. And not just about the user. We’ve all encountered those designers who get so caught up in advocating for the user, they lose site of the rest. A strong designer digs into:

• Users — who they are, what they need, and where the pain points are

• Customers — the buyer is not always the user or decision maker, how do they differ, why does it matter

• Technology — what’s feasible, what’s emerging, what’s brittle, what tech stack are you working with

• Business — strategy, goals, constraints, and tradeoffs

• Product — the current offering itself: its value proposition, positioning, and roadmap, and how your work fits into and advances it

• Ecosystem — the interconnected products, services, partners, and external forces your solution touches; how they reinforce or conflict with each other

• Industry — how others are solving (or failing to solve) similar problems

• Market — the trends, competitive landscape, and what “good” looks like at a macro level

By gaining this understanding, designers become indispensable subject matter experts. Without this grounding, design is decoration. With it, design is strategy.

Understand the context

Equally important to understanding the problem space is understanding the environment you’re designing within. Understanding context will help you make trade offs and good decisions later. This is where I’ve also seen designers struggle - they want to stick to a rigid process, or dig in to the wrong area when they should be learning to compromise with stakeholders.

• Organizational context — How does your company make decisions? Who actually has influence? Where are the landmines? Designers who ignore this spend months polishing work that never sees daylight.

• Systems thinking — Products don’t live in isolation. Every design decision sits within a framework: a platform ecosystem, a design system, a product family, underlying data structures. And every design decision has downstream impact: on the platform, on other teams, on workflows, on customers. Designers need to create scalable solutions, not one-offs, and designers who map the system prevent today’s solution from becoming tomorrow’s problem.

This is the layer that separates good design from impactful design. A brilliant idea that ignores the organizational or system realities will never ship.

Align the team

This step is slightly orthogonal to the design process as it’s really part of the project as a whole, but no one should be moving forward without it, so I’m including it here. This is largely collaborative with the entire project team and some parts may be driven by someone other than design. At this point, the following activities should occur:

• Brainstorm a north star - sometimes the path starts with blue sky visioning - no constraints, just imagining what could exist if anything were possible. From there, you can narrow into the art of the possible - the inspiring but plausible vision that can anchor strategy. Paired with a design sprint or similar exercise, this becomes the north star and workback plan that can be broken down into a viable roadmap.

• Scope the project - agree on priorities, timing, in-/out-of-scope

• Create a requirements brief - problem statement, vision, research findings, requirements and use cases

• Define success metrics - define what success looks like before you start. Agree on the signals you’ll measure and how you’ll track them, and if you’ll use a framework like HEART. Metrics turn design from subjective taste into objective impact, and they give the team a goal to rally around.

Projects that skip alignment usually pay for it later in wasted cycles, rework, and frustrated teams. Alignment is insurance against churn.

We’ve gone over the first parts of the process, and now we’re getting into the heart of design craft. But first, it’s worth making a quick note on process fluidity:

No process is perfect, and design is never a straight line. The goal isn’t to march through a checklist of activities; it’s to move a project forward with the right level of rigor. Good designers use their organizational context and design experience to know when to adjust, when to compress or skip steps, and when to double down. What matters is the outcome: clarity, alignment, quality, and impact.

Design the solution

Different companies will map these phases slightly differently, and likely have various names for the different steps, but loosely speaking, the craft of design can be broken down into the following three groups:

Design discovery: explore

Outcome: shared understanding of problems and potential solutions

This is where you cast the net wide. Research the space, run workshops to frame the problem, generate ideas, and align stakeholders. Quick prototypes or vibe coding experiments can create tangible ideas for discussion. Good discovery avoids expensive detours later.

Design creation: make

Outcome: evidence for what works best and a refined solution

Here’s where the pen meets the page. Sketch, wireframe, prototype. Test assumptions quickly. Iterate before pixels harden, run usability tests. Generate evidence for what works best. Refine to get it right. Nail the visuals, interactions, and hierarchy.

Design delivery: ship

Outcome: a product in users’ hands with measurable impact

The last mile matters. Clear design specs, well written documentation, refined test plans. Partner with engineering during QA to ensure the final product matches intent, keep a change log as a paper trail for agreement on any updates made. Go back to your initial measures for success and set up metrics so you know where and how the product (and design) made an impact. Backlog the iterations. Come back and do it all again later for v2.

Behaviors for success: how it gets done

How it gets done is as important (maybe even more so) as what gets done. How designers approach the work will make or break the process and product, and while each company usually has a unique set of designer qualities they value, I find this set of traits is a good starting point for most designers:

Mindset

• Curiosity — Ask why until you get to the real answer. Keep digging.

• Growth mindset — Learn new tools, embrace feedback, read books, try new things. Mistakes are just learning in motion.

• Adaptability — Markets shift, roadmaps change, priorities flip. Remain flexible. Know when to skip, consolidate, or push back.

Drive

• Initiative — Don’t wait to be told every next step. Identify gaps and move.

• Ownership — Care about outcomes, not just outputs.

Influence

• Communication — Write it down, share early, share often, be aware of your environment, remote communication can sometimes be different than in person, calibrate accordingly

• Presentation — Tell a story, don’t just show screens. Articulate decisions, speak in terms of holistic understanding (not just the user)

• Collaboration — Work with PMs, engineers, researchers, marketers, and whoever else needs to be involved in the process. Collect feedback. You can’t design in a vacuum.

Leadership

• Mentorship — Force multiply by growing others; build a stronger team by investing in skills, learning, and shared practices.

• Vision — Look beyond immediate tasks to imagine what’s next; push boundaries, explore new possibilities, and inspire others with a compelling direction.

The bottom line

Design is not magic. It’s a process that balances structure and fluidity, executed by professionals who combine craft, contextual awareness, and collaboration to create impact. When design leaders structure the process correctly, it doesn’t just produce better products, it creates clear expectations, measurable growth paths, and a team culture that scales.