I’ve worked on hundreds of projects in my 26-year career, and each of them were so incredibly unique.
However, I could distill all of them down to the same 3-step framework that I use every time:
- Say what I’m going to do.
- Do what I said.
- Say what I did.
This works at a macro level and a micro level, and at any stage in the process. Some examples:
- In a pitch, I propose something to a prospective client. If I win the project, I do what I said in the pitch. At the end, my leave-behind is a recap of everything I’ve done for them.
- Before I design anything, I’ll write a brief that states what I intend to do. I get a client to agree that it’s pointed in the right direction. Then, I design. Then, when I’m presenting a design, I tell the client what I designed that we agreed upon.
- When I start work for the day, I post to my team what I plan on doing. Then I do it. At the end of the day, I’ll post a recap of what I did.
If you follow a standard daily stand-up format with your team, you already have practice doing what I’m talking about.
To even call it three steps is a bit misleading. Really, it’s a 2-step virtuous cycle:
I know it’s vague. I’m sorry if you were expecting something more specific. A lot of designers have—and yearn for—a process that includes words like define, ideate, test, prototype, empathize, deliver, and more. I’ve tried versions that include all of these words, some of them, none of them, and different orderings of each. What I learned was that it doesn’t really matter that much. No particular permutation was significantly better or worse. But, regardless of the process, if I didn’t use this “say, do, say” cycle, trouble arose.
So I stick with this. It’s specific enough to give me instructions and open enough that I can try new things within it. It keeps me accountable to the thing that really matters: delivering value every week.
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