What is a design decision?

12 min readJul 9, 2021

— A design profile framework

“To design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”
– Herb Simon

What is a design decision?

Design decisions could be defined as making a choice between (a number of) design alternatives. Design decisions, including a mix of different kinds of thinking, take into account human considerations.

We have a bunch of alternatives to choose from and that leads to the final product.

Why design decision is important and how it can apply to our portfolio?

The decisions are complex and ramifications, they do not occur in isolation but appear in a mix of all information. As we present how we make design decisions, the dimensions of our thinking and information integration are presented.

In this article, I will use a hypothetical example that redesigned the apple shelf for the grocery to introduce the for making design decisions and demand dismantling in the portfolio. It will go through narrow down the problem, figure out key elements, dig deeper through user research, ideation, design iterate & test, and show design results I will introduce how design decisions apply to each step, and what methodology we could use.

1. Define the problem

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a problem is “a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.” Usually, we will observe objectivity that annoyed us a lot (“The Obvious Weed” above the surface), but the underlying causes hid below the surface. Digging beneath the surface of a problem to find the key factors would be a necessary step before we start to design. It is imperative to narrow down and go to the “Root Cause” of the problem because we could identify the most effective solutions to eliminate the problem’s recurrence.

Relationship between problem and route causes

1.1 Figure out the root cause

To discover where the problem started and how it developed into a symptom that we’re now facing, tracing the actions in the interrelated system and events to find the root cause is a good way. Let’s take the apple example to understand how to dig deep the border problem to a specific root cause statement. (*In this hypothetical example, I do not do real research, all the data are fake data.)

Grocery A is facing the problem:

Fewer customers purchased apples in Grocery A this month.

It seems like a border problem; there are numerous possible reasons for a drop in sales or a decline. The first step will be pinpointing the goal to provide clarity for our further analysis and decision-making.

The Grocery A maybe aim to:

Increase the revenue of apple.
Maintain their customers.
Raise the Profit Margin of apple.
Find an alternative strategy (sale pineapple rather than the apple).
…

Let’s have a meeting with managers in the Grocery A to check which one should be their goal. Most of the managers agreed that they wanted to increase the profit of apple, so we could move on to check the key elements which affected the profit in the apple.

After defining the goal, here are some questions to be answered. What causes the profit down? How many vital elements affected the gain on the apple?

After the research, there is a formula indicating the key elements contributing to the profit of apple.

Profit = Gross Merchandise Volume of apple (GMVa) — Cost

There will be many factors which will lead profit down, the GMVa down or the rise of the cost, here I list some of the combinations:

We research the scenario for purchasing the apple and figure whether there will be any possibility of decreasing the cost or any pain point. We figure out that the cost is static and almost the lowest. It is incredible to reduce costs, so the only factor should be the reduction of GMVa.

Here we made our decision: The reduction of GMVa caused a decline in profit.

Next, we would take a look at GMVa, what are the key elements of GMVa? Let’s analyze again. There is a formula for GMVa:

Let’s assume the customer flow kept in the same situation, the variable here is Volume Ratio and Unite Price for each apple. We can conclude that the profit decline is due to the deterioration of the Volume Ratio and unreasonable Unite Prize. After further research, The Volume Ratio is affected by the purchase volume and the Customer Flow of Apple.

According to the content, we concluded that the lower Purchase Volume and lower Customer Flow of Apple would lead to a decrease in the Volume Ratio. We figured that the customers are highly involved in these two variables. The next step will be turning to user research to figure out the qualitative reasons for low Purchase Volume and Customer Flow.

1.2 Dig deeper through user research

User research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. We do user research to define the problems which are highly affected by customers.

Let’s turn to the case. First, check the first variable — the customer flow of apple. Analyzing the shelf footprint map will be an excellent way to figure out the users’ routes in the grocery.

Apple exposure rate indicated via the footprint maps. During a fixed time frame, the exposure rate of bananas had been maintaining at 75%, the exposure rate of strawberry kept at 50%, while the apple never passed 16%. According to the footprint map and the Traffic Flow analysis diagram, the apple shelf was not on the main travel route for most of the users, which led to the low attention of the apple.

After we figure the problem in the footprint, let’s move to the purchase volume. User research could help to answer:

What affected the purchase volume?
How are customers affected by these elements?
Why do customers have a low desire to purchase it?
What are their needs?
What are their actions?
…

We could apply different methodologies to do better user research, such as Interview, Questionnaire, Desirability Study, Ethnographic field study, diary/camera study, Eye Tracking… Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies could be applied here.

*Some of the interview cases and customers’ quote*

Interviewer A referred that there is a new store with an attractive discount, let’s dig a little bit into analyzing our competitor.

It is evident from the analyzed chart that Grocery B had a better location, and it applied the strategy to use a lower unit price for apple to attract more users in a short time. Our Grocery A had a huge stable amount of customers and good branding. A different pricing strategy here is necessary to prevent customers from being shilly-shallying.

After a bunch of user research, we got all the information from customers. We could group findings in a spreadsheet, create affinity diagrams, tag and separate the keywords, prioritize their needs…We might find that lots of your customers share the same characteristics, so we combined through the commonalities of our users and made them into portraits as one part of the user research result.

Overall, we figured out the route cause that affected the Purchase Volume and Customer Flow:

The low exposure rate of apple shelves and non-strategic unit price, which do not meet user’s needs, caused a decrease in profit.

Before we move to the solution part, let’s go back to take a look.

We made four decisions to narrow down the problem from” Fewer customers purchased apples” to “The low exposure rate of apple shelves and non-strategic unit price caused a decrease in profit.” Literally, when we deal with the real case, there must be hundreds of decisions and force back rather than the linear process. When making the decisions, do remember to list as many elements as you can, find characteristics, define areas of interest and extremes, list places, people (personas), experiences that are related, and can be explored. As a result, you ought to come up with a revamped brief through your decisions.

Let’s move on to the solution part to figure out how to increase the exposure rate and apply the strategy of Unite Price.

2. Problem Solving

In reality, production processes, converting brainstormed ideas into finalized products, will go through countless product iterations and design decisions. In this section, I will use one example of one completed product iteration scenario to explain the framework.

2.1 Ideation

Ideation is the most exciting process in the diverging phase. We do Brainstorming, Role storming, Card Sorting, Mind Mapping, “How might we…” Questions, etc., to open our minds.

Take our apple example, here are several solutions list on the whiteboard:

Solution1: Re-planning the shelves.
Solution2: Improve the visit route inside the grocery A.
Solution3: Redesign the shelf for the apple and the discounts.
Solution4: Establish a new branding system for apple.
Solution5: Launch new products.

As a result of the ideation, we can decide to end up with one or a few ideas you want to design the prototype and test later to find the best solution to our refined problem. How to prioritize them and plan the roadmap for the next step?

We could apply methodologies such as Red Routes, Prioritization Matrix, Individually Vote Based on Expertise, Prototype Testing…

In this example, we evaluate the impact and cost of each solution by a prioritization matrix.

Solution1: High impact and high cost.
Solution2: High cost and normal impact.
Solution3: High impact and low cost.
Solution4: low impact and low cost.
Solution5: low impact and high cost.

The ranking should be S3 > S1 > S2 > S4 > S5. We choose solution3, which costs less and has a better impact. During the ideation process, we decide to focus on the solution:

Redesign the shelf for the apple and the discounts.

2.2 Prototype & test

Before we start the on hand design work, background knowledge is needed to support the prototype better. We research a little bit for the apple: the low level of oxygen will lead to the ferment of apples, the stacked display will reduce the oxygen between apples; apples are sensitive to low temperatures, a ventilated place is suitable for exhibition.

Let’s try to make some prototypes that consider the background. There are many prototyping tools out there; prototypr.io is an excellent place to figure out the right tool for you.

*Shelf prototypes made by simple material*

Here we got three prototypes for the shelf:

Prototype1: Obvious price tag and promotional activities on a big display platform with a huge amount of apple.
Prototype2: High shelf with clean shelf arrangement and separated price tag.
Prototype3. Dedicated apple exhibition; Have slogan at the bottom of the shelf.

As a result of this part, we ought to choose one or several of the prototypes to go deeper into the design. Here are several methods that can help us to make the decision for a prototype: usability test, Pilot, Measure/Evaluate, Capabilities Quicksheet, Pitch, Road map, and so on.

In the apple example, to decide which one we should move on in the apple example, we put three prototypes into Grocery A to have a usability test.

*Observing and recording user paths when applying different prototypes*

After the usability test, 40 % of the customers stopped by prototype 3, 68% of them purchased the apple. And through observing the user's action, users preferred to buy the apple on the fourth floor of the shelf. And the delicate exhibition of apples better matched our branding for good quality. Since prototype 3 had a better Conversion Rate and branding exposure than the other two, we decided to move ahead of this one.

*Result from usability test helping us to make decision*

2.3 Design iteration & test

In this part, we move on to the detail of the design. We will have hundreds of iterations to bring us to the final product. Sometimes we go back to the first version or even prototype when we are iterating design.

During the iteration, we will make many design decisions in the design details, why and how we choose this version to continue are extremely important.

Let’s take the example of designing the details for the price mark on the shelf. We have three options and the reasons for each one:

Design 1: Price tag with mental material. According to user action and environment, the wrong material affects the readability of the price tag.
Design 2: Price tag with small text and heavy information. According to persona, our main users are older people, smaller text is not visible for them.
Design 3: Price tag with plastic and clear information hierarchy. Good visualization and clear information, let’s choose this one.

…

Here we decided according to our user research to choose the best design language for users. Design 3 made sense in user action and accessibility. The methodologies like Measure and Evaluate, Gut Check, Availability Heuristic, could also be applied here. Be careful when designing our product and making decisions; make sure we create it on the right track according to our research. Remember to look back at the problem definition part and user research to check whether there is any conflict between the design details and the requirements.

2.4 Show the results

Congratulations! Through all the steps, we finally get here! The final product was delivered and placed in grocery A for three months. And we got the data that through using the new design of the apple shelf, the purchase volume increased 38%, customer flow of apple increased 26%, GMVa increased 21%, the profit of the apple increased 20%. Amazing growth of the profit!

3. Brief

let’s go back to take a look at how we made the decisions:

We made eight decisions from” fewer customers purchased apples” to “the final solution of the apple shelf.” All our decisions bring the concept to a full-edged product. This simple case shows the framework for how decision applies to the workflow with the liner scenario, in our real design case, there will be much more design decision to be specific. Do remember, The things that make your product unique are YOUR DECISIONS.