LEGO has produced a detailed idea-generation process to assist its design teams during each phase of the overall development process. Operating as the full design cycle in miniature, the process is intended to transform business objectives into design recommendations by encouraging the development team to conduct a logical sequence of actions, with each part of the sequence having its own defined deliverables.
This sequence begins by Exploring the problem. In this research phase, the team examines the background to the design challenge through desk research, field studies and interviews with consumers and expert knowledge holders.
Insights from the exploration phase are delivered at the end of the process, and these are used by the team in the Developing phase. During this phase, basic ideas are sketched out, from mood and colour guidelines to visual or solid mock-ups of proposed designs, packaging or themes.
The ideas from the exploration phase are presented formally to the entire project team, and then undergo a rigorous process of Validation, during which they are shown to key stakeholders including potential users, their parents, retailers and sector experts, and assessed against the objectives set.
Feedback from the validation phase may be used to refine design recommendations and to generate new insights, resulting in an iterative process before the final deliverable, recommendations on how the project will be taken forward.
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Development methods and how, in this stage of the design process, prototyping and iterating the concept can get it as close to being an end product or service as possible
After completion of the cycle through the P prototyping stages, the project is reviewed and a go/no-go decision is made before the M phases take the concept forward to manufacture.
- In M1 (project kick off) designers and product managers work together to refine the product definition and the business plan that will be used to bring it to market, ensuring that all design activities will be focussed on fulfilling the precise business brief
- In M2 (business freeze) the business case is finalised and product design can be completed to meet the business requirements
- In M3 (product freeze) product design is complete and attention turns to the packaging, marketing and communication aspects of the project
- In M4 (communication freeze) all physical aspects of the product, packaging and communication materials are finalised and LEGO’s manufacturing specialists can begin the process of building the supply chain necessary to deliver the product to market
- In M5 (procurement freeze) the supply chain is completed, manufacturing is started and the product is launched.
For Smith-Meyer, the inclusion of all elements of packaging and communications design into the core Design For Business process was an essential element of the transformation. 'For me, a product itself is communication, it sends a signal to the consumer, it goes hand in hand and is as much communication as the packaging and design of the advertising.'
Does such a formal overall process stifle individual creativity? Bjørn is emphatic that it does not. 'I think it allows us to be more creative, because now our designers don’t have to think about how they are going to structure a new project as a design manager, they don’t have to spend time and suffer pain trying to reinvent things that somebody has already done. Through this we become more efficient and effective as a design team.'