CTC Continuous Exploration Playbook

A Framework for Successful Digital Products

We use a double diamond design process that encourages creativity and innovation while focusing on the core issue and its impact on end-users. It involves four main stages with a measure stage at the end.

Our first diamond is about discovering and defining the problem in which we explore and research our user needs, review analytics, UX artifacts, and other early-phase research methods. We then use these to define the problem and how it impacts users. Our design team may iterate over phases a few times until they get to the core issue and create user personas, customer journey maps, a problem statement, or empathy maps and a design brief to guide the second half of the design process towards finding an appropriate solution.

The second diamond is developing and delivering the solution in which we ideate, prototype and test to find a suitable solution. In this stage our teams use various tools and methods to then create low-fidelity designs, while collaboratively discussing ideas for feedback on possible challenges and constraints, iterating and testing until we find a solution. We then choose a single solution that aligns with user needs with a focus on usability and user experience to create high-fidelity designs for conducting testing, ensuring the final result satisfies the design brief and stakeholders. Here, we prep for design handoff to develop the final product for release.

Lastly, we continue to measure to identify for success and to identify new opportunities.