The UX Design Process Wheel

As a UX design consultant, one of your biggest challenges is explaining the design process to a new project team or client. Misalignment between designers, stakeholders, and software developers can lead to wasted effort, duplicated work, and ultimately, a product that falls short of user and business needs.UX design is a discipline that runs parallel to development, providing product clarity and collaborative opportunities while championing human needs. However, all too often, teams and stakeholders don’t fully understand the cyclical nature of UX design, leading to miscommunication and misunderstanding.So how do you effectively communicate the UX design process as a UX design consultant on a new project team? Especially when existing representations are easily misinterpreted by client stakeholders and software developers alike.To ensure client trust in the design process, the representation needs to:Emphasize progress and evolutionAllow for tight feedback loopsBe concise, precise, and jargon freeBe tailored to the project and its maturityA better alternative is a model that balances clarity and flexibility, one that ensures UX stays integrated with development without causing bottlenecks. Enter the UX Design Process Wheel, which addresses these needs by categorizing all design activities into three “spokes”: Find Out, Translate, and Create. This model promotes continuous, flexible, tight feedback loops of constant collaboration and alignment, which fosters team autonomy, leading to improved performance and financial outcomes.Challenges with Existing Process RepresentationsDesign processes are often visualized in ways that shape how teams and stakeholders understand and interact with them. Many existing process representations contribute to this confusion:Linear models (e.g., Double Diamond) give the impression that UX design is a one-time phase, reinforcing a waterfall-style workflow.Cyclical models more accurately reflect design’s iterative nature but can feel endless—frustrating clients who expect clear milestones and predictable costs.Activity-based models risk being too prescriptive or rigid, failing to evolve alongside the product.I further explore the strengths and shortcomings of these representations. Linear Process RepresentationsThe Double Diamond model, with its stages of Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver, gives the impression that design is a sequential process that ends once development begins. This misunderstanding implies a waterfall process, and can create silos between design and development teams. Design Process Visualisation from Geeks For GeeksLinear processes fail to accurately convey the ongoing nature of design activities that occur throughout the project lifecycle. For this reason, cyclical, iterative representations have gained popularity to describe the design process. Cyclical Process RepresentationsAlthough more accurate than linear processes, cyclical (or figure of eight) models can seem endless and lack clear milestones, causing clients to worry about progress and costs. This lack of clearly conveyed progress is also evident in the way cyclical representations fail to evolve with project maturity.Design Process Visualisation from The Interaction Design FoundationDesign Process Visualisation from Nielsen NormanMost cyclical representations do not promote the same tight feedback loops championed in agile development. The sheer size of a design revolution means these models often fail to align with development sprints, leading to frustration and potential misalignment within the team. Focus on Activities or on ConceptsFocusing on specific activities (e.g., wireframing, prototyping) can lack the flexibility needed to adapt to different project stages and product maturities. Different activities are required when applying design to a new, greenfield project—unrestricted by practical considerations, financial constraints, or current limitations, enabling the pursuit of bold and potentially groundbreaking ideas—versus a mature, legacy one.Design Process Visualisation from The UX Design InstituteFor instance, for a greenfield project, I emphasize stakeholder and user interviews, contextual inquiry, and analogous research during the research stage. For a mature, legacy product, I focus on performing a product audit including usability testing and integrating analytical tools. Design Process Visualisation from SkillcrushBecause this approach treats development as a step to come after design prototyping rather than activity to occur in parallel, it can inadvertently promote a waterfall mindset, where design is seen as a bottleneck rather than a collaborative, integrated discipline.However, a focus on broad concepts such as Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver seen in the Double Diamond can be too vague, leading to confusion among stakeholders about what designers are actually doing.This ambiguity can result in misalignment and misinterpretation of the desig

Mar 26, 2025 - 20:01
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The UX Design Process Wheel

As a UX design consultant, one of your biggest challenges is explaining the design process to a new project team or client. Misalignment between designers, stakeholders, and software developers can lead to wasted effort, duplicated work, and ultimately, a product that falls short of user and business needs.
UX design is a discipline that runs parallel to development, providing product clarity and collaborative opportunities while championing human needs. However, all too often, teams and stakeholders don’t fully understand the cyclical nature of UX design, leading to miscommunication and misunderstanding.

So how do you effectively communicate the UX design process as a UX design consultant on a new project team? Especially when existing representations are easily misinterpreted by client stakeholders and software developers alike.

To ensure client trust in the design process, the representation needs to:

  • Emphasize progress and evolution
  • Allow for tight feedback loops
  • Be concise, precise, and jargon free
  • Be tailored to the project and its maturity

A better alternative is a model that balances clarity and flexibility, one that ensures UX stays integrated with development without causing bottlenecks. Enter the UX Design Process Wheel, which addresses these needs by categorizing all design activities into three “spokes”: Find Out, Translate, and Create. This model promotes continuous, flexible, tight feedback loops of constant collaboration and alignment, which fosters team autonomy, leading to improved performance and financial outcomes.

Challenges with Existing Process Representations

Design processes are often visualized in ways that shape how teams and stakeholders understand and interact with them. Many existing process representations contribute to this confusion:

  • Linear models (e.g., Double Diamond) give the impression that UX design is a one-time phase, reinforcing a waterfall-style workflow.
  • Cyclical models more accurately reflect design’s iterative nature but can feel endless—frustrating clients who expect clear milestones and predictable costs.
  • Activity-based models risk being too prescriptive or rigid, failing to evolve alongside the product.

I further explore the strengths and shortcomings of these representations.

Linear Process Representations

The Double Diamond model, with its stages of Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver, gives the impression that design is a sequential process that ends once development begins. This misunderstanding implies a waterfall process, and can create silos between design and development teams. 

Design Process Visualisation from Geeks For Geeks

Linear processes fail to accurately convey the ongoing nature of design activities that occur throughout the project lifecycle. For this reason, cyclical, iterative representations have gained popularity to describe the design process.

Cyclical Process Representations

Although more accurate than linear processes, cyclical (or figure of eight) models can seem endless and lack clear milestones, causing clients to worry about progress and costs. This lack of clearly conveyed progress is also evident in the way cyclical representations fail to evolve with project maturity.

Design Process Visualisation from The Interaction Design Foundation
Design Process Visualisation from Nielsen Norman

Most cyclical representations do not promote the same tight feedback loops championed in agile development. The sheer size of a design revolution means these models often fail to align with development sprints, leading to frustration and potential misalignment within the team.

Focus on Activities or on Concepts

Focusing on specific activities (e.g., wireframing, prototyping) can lack the flexibility needed to adapt to different project stages and product maturities. Different activities are required when applying design to a new, greenfield project—unrestricted by practical considerations, financial constraints, or current limitations, enabling the pursuit of bold and potentially groundbreaking ideas—versus a mature, legacy one.

Design Process Visualisation from The UX Design Institute

For instance, for a greenfield project, I emphasize stakeholder and user interviews, contextual inquiry, and analogous research during the research stage. For a mature, legacy product, I focus on performing a product audit including usability testing and integrating analytical tools.
 

Design Process Visualisation from Skillcrush

Because this approach treats development as a step to come after design prototyping rather than activity to occur in parallel, it can inadvertently promote a waterfall mindset, where design is seen as a bottleneck rather than a collaborative, integrated discipline.

However, a focus on broad concepts such as Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver seen in the Double Diamond can be too vague, leading to confusion among stakeholders about what designers are actually doing.

This ambiguity can result in misalignment and misinterpretation of the design process. To a designer, Double Diamond “discovery” refers to the initial research activities empathizing with users. To developers, “discovery” means gathering requirements from clients, often at odds with design. Double Diamond “development” refers to the divergence of solution ideation rather than the software “development” required to build the product in code.

A Better Way: The UX Design Process Wheel

The UX Design Process Wheel solves the challenges other approaches can’t by structuring UX activities into three core spokes: Find Out, Translate, and Create. This approach aligns UX with agile development, enabling continuous learning and adaptation while ensuring clear progress markers.

The Design Process Wheel

Find Out

Research activities that inform design decisions, conducted throughout the project lifecycle to avoid outdated assumptions. 

Examples

  • Stakeholder and user interviews
  • Competitive analysis
  • Prototype and beta testing
  • Post-release usability studies

Conducting these activities throughout the project ensures a deep understanding of user needs, business viability, and technical feasibility. 

Translate

Synthesizing research into actionable insights, ensuring all stakeholders share the same understanding

Examples:

  • Service blueprints
  • Customer journey mapping
  • Design-thinking workshops
  • Refining problem statements

Translation aligns the team’s understanding of evidence from the Find Out spoke, inspiring user-centered design, and guiding the creation process. This opportunity for alignment is very important, as it allows the team to determine whether another revolution in the current phase is needed, or whether the design has reached a level of maturity that allows an evolution — it can turn through creation into the next phase.

Create

Developing design artifacts that drive iteration and refinement

Examples:

  • Wireframes and prototypes
  • Usability test scripts
  • High-fidelity UI designs
  • Design specifications, guidelines, and component libraries
  • Developer documentation

These outputs are essential for gathering user feedback, which prompts another turn of the wheel and further refines the design through continuous feedback loops.

The Design Process Wheel is constantly turning, with each successive loop increasing the quality and maturity of the design and strengthening product confidence.

Collaboration with development teams during this spoke ensures realistic interactions and faithful feedback, leading to a more effective and integrated design process. This dual focus on user feedback and team support ensures that all aspects of the design are well-informed and cohesively implemented.

The UX Design Process Wheel Works

Investing in custom software solutions requires a design approach that is predictable, efficient, and collaborative.

  1. Continuous Progress, Not Endless Loops
    Unlike linear models that suggest a “one-and-done” approach, the “wheel” form emphasizes the ongoing cyclical nature of UX design. Progress is continuous, with design rolling alongside development as an ongoing, evolving influence on tangible project outcomes. Design doesn’t have a finish line where development begins — it adds value at every phase, working in sync with the entire product team.

    This model allows for constant refinement — ideal for Agile projects, where ongoing feedback and iteration are key. Whether the product is new or well-established, the wheel ensures that UX stays relevant and responsive with every turn.

    This ongoing refinement reduces costly rework, speeds up time to market, and keeps the business competitive by flexibly adapting the product to user needs.

  2. Tight Feedback Loops Reduce Risk
    The wheel’s format promotes tight feedback loops, enabling the team to quickly validate decisions and stay aligned. More frequent feedback touchpoints build trust in the design outcome and improve the product’s fit with user needs, reducing the risk of veering off-course.

    The Design Process Wheel encourages tighter feedback loops. Here, Nielsen Norman's Design Thinking cycle can be broken down into at least two loops.

    Incremental improvements based on real feedback data prevent untested assumptions from taking root, leading to a more polished and responsive user experience. This boosts product launch success and market fit, reducing post-release issues and support costs, and increasing customer satisfaction — driving long-term growth.

  3. Flexible to Any Project Phase
    The wheel’s non-prescriptive categories of Find Out, Translate, Create make it adaptable to the unique needs of each project, as they cover a range of activities that shift based on project maturity and requirements. This flexibility ensures design process relevance and efficacy regardless of project phase.

    The wheel’s flexibility allows you to start with any spoke — just as a wheel turns from pushing any part of it. It might feel most natural for a UX designer to begin with Finding Out, though there could be business pressure to get Creating. The continuous nature of the wheel ensures that any creation will be validated in the next Find Out step, allowing design to yield to business pressure without endangering user satisfaction — and aligning design efforts with business priorities.

  4. Collaborative for Stronger Outcomes
    The wheel’s flexibility encourages collaboration between designers, developers and business stakeholders, as the terms Find Out, Translate and Create can describe activities for any discipline — that can be conducted in parallel or together. During a Find Out step, a designer and product owner might audit the existing user experience while developers audit the existing codebase — breaking down silos and fostering shared ownership and respect, while leveraging the team’s cross-functional strengths for greater velocity.

    With reduced miscommunication and accelerated decision-making, development cycles move more quickly leading to lower costs and a more cohesive product that meets both user needs and business goals.

Putting the Wheel Into Action

As mentioned, the wheel is not prescriptive of the exact types of activities that the designer must perform, as these vary depending on the maturity and needs of the project. For instance, a designer might join a team to design new features or update existing ones when the product is in Phase 5. In addition, the designer may emphasize the Find Out spoke more in the early phases of product development, and focus more on the Create phase in late phases.


Here are some examples that consider what activities a team might undertake when designing a new personalised habit-tracking tool for Headspace, a popular meditation app.

Phase 1: Initial Discovery

  • Find Out: Conduct stakeholder interviews, perform a product audit, competitive analysis, and analogous research.
  • Translate: Synthesize initial discoveries, present a project plan, create a service blueprint, and conduct design-thinking workshops.
  • Create: Develop user interview guides and scripts, and build a research plan.

Example: For Headspace’s proposed habit-tracking tool, this might involve interviewing meditation teachers alongside internal stakeholders to understand the domain as well as business goals and feasibility. It might also include auditing existing features in the app, analyzing competitors like Calm, Happier, and Insight Timer to identify unique opportunities for growth or differentiation — and researching analogous tracking tools in apps such as Strava, Flo, or Duolingo to gather inspiration and identify gaps.

Phase 2: Meet the Users

  • Find Out: Conduct user interviews, contextual inquiry, and usability tests.
  • Translate: Synthesize user interviews, update the service blueprint, create customer journey maps and personas, and present recommendations.
  • Create: Conduct sketch ideation sessions, create low-fidelity prototypes, and develop interview guides for testing sessions.

Example: Engaging and observing Headspace users to understand their current meditation and progress-tracking habits, alongside testing the usability of existing Headspace or competitor meditation tracking routines to understand motivations and frustrations. Insights from interviews and testing would feed into user personas and journey maps, highlighting opportunities for a personalized, meaningful habit-tracking experience.

Phase 3: Align with Users

  • Find Out: Test low-fidelity concepts and prototypes.
  • Translate: Synthesize testing sessions, advance insights, present feedback, and create a new service blueprint.
  • Create: Refine wireframes/prototypes and prepare high-fidelity designs.

Example: Testing an early prototype of the habit-tracking tool that uses gamified elements, such as streaks or progress graphs. Feedback would refine the concept, ensuring it aligns with user expectations for simplicity, personalization, and improved mental well-being without feeling overwhelming, judgmental, or creating anxiety through excessive engagement.

Phase 4: Delight Users

  • Find Out: Test high-fidelity concepts and prototypes.
  • Translate: Synthesize high-fidelity testing sessions, present feedback, and update the service blueprint.
  • Create: Further refine prototypes, apply branding, and establish documentation and guidelines.

Example: Validating a polished version of the habit-tracking tool that visually celebrates user milestones and integrates seamlessly with Headspace’s meditation and wellness content. Applying brand colors and Headspace’s friendly tone ensures the feature aligns with the app’s overall experience.

Phase 5: Monitor Users

  • Find Out: Conduct post-release UX testing, usability testing in production, beta testing, and collect data from analytics tools.
  • Translate: Synthesize post-release data, present success metrics, and identify areas for enhancement.
  • Create: Continuously refine features and develop new functionalities, as needed.

Example: Analyzing user interaction data with the habit-tracking tool alongside mental well-being to understand engagement and health effects long term. Post-release usability testing and user feedback would inform iterative tweaks, such as adding new personalization options, or improving the clarity of progress visualizations.

Conclusion: A Smarter UX Model For Product Success

By structuring UX around Find Out, Translate, and Create, the UX Design Process Wheel balances clarity and flexibility — giving teams a practical, scalable approach that delivers real business impact.

If you’re looking to transform your product’s UX without slowing down development, let’s talk.