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The Draw Backwards Process is a three-phase research and strategic planning approach that helps businesses understand a problem fully before building a solution. Instead of jumping straight to answers, you step back, get a 360-degree view of the opportunity, draw the bow backwards, and aim before you release. The result: solutions that actually hit the bullseye.
What Is the Draw Backwards Process?
The Draw Backwards Process is how we coach our clients to create meaningful customer experiences. It works by looking beyond the user interface into the core business problem, keeping the customer and end users at the centre of every decision, and holding everyone accountable with a "what by when" culture that keeps things moving.
When you're faced with a new business challenge, it can be tough to know where to start. But it can be even tougher to resist the urge to jump straight in with solutions. Whether you're nailing the right marketing strategy, building stronger internal workflows, or enhancing customer experience through product improvements, you need a proven process to keep you on the right path.
We've honed this process over nearly 20 years of work with clients across all kinds of industries and every type of business problem. Here are the three phases that can help you drive unexpected delight for your customers and success for your business.
Phase 1: Research and Empathize
Why does research come before solutions?
Because you can't know how to get somewhere if you don't first have a clear vision of where you're going and the challenges standing in the way.
Before you even think about solutions, you need to understand everything you can about the opportunity in front of you. We lead every engagement with research to make sure our clients understand every user in the process and their challenges. We talk to as many internal and external stakeholders as possible to get a clear 360-degree view of their assumptions, needs, and pain points. Then we study the external environmental and market factors that might impact any potential solution.
Many teams jump straight to solutions. We've seen plenty of great ideas get driven off a cliff this way. How will you stay on the right path if you can't identify the assumptions that could lead you astray?
This step doesn't just define and clarify the path ahead. It also starts to draw out unexpected solutions. By listening to your employees, you can uncover ways they're already delighting customers. Then you can build on those insights to create large-scale solutions.
Who counts as a stakeholder?
Your stakeholders are really anybody who interacts with your process, product, or business internally or externally. Sit down and make a list of all the possible people this could include and make plans to reach out to them. Here are just a few examples of stakeholders to consider:
- Current Customers
- Potential Target Customers
- Internal Users / Employees / Stakeholders (across management levels and business divisions)
- Front-Line Customer-Facing Service Providers (Technicians, Customer Service Reps, etc.)
Phase 2: Define and Ideate
How do you turn research insights into a business strategy?
You bring those insights into a strategic ideation workshop. We work with clients to review initial assumptions, understand the biggest pain points of customers and employees, sketch out potential solutions, and create a roadmap for future prototyping and testing.
This process is not just for user interfaces and design elements. We're looking in our workshops for ways to improve things like marketing messaging, new service and product options, and ideas to delight customers. These ideation intensives help everyone take a step back and see the whole playing field instead of jumping right in with solutions.
Yes, design is in our DNA, but ultimately we're in the business of solving business problems. We know our clients don't always have the in-house resources, or time, to look at their immediate problems and product requests at a strategic level. That's why we give them an outside perspective to think strategically about these problems and the extra brain and design power to turn that strategy into real content and product features.
What happens in a Draw Backwards workshop?
Workshops can be as big or as small as you need, but they should always be thoughtfully planned with activities that will help your team process the information uncovered in Phase 1. Here are just a few of our favourite workshop activities:
- Establishment of user personas
- Build empathy maps and user journeys based on persona data
- Create lean business model canvases
- Define assumptions
- Rapid ideation and low-fidelity prototypes
- Design test experiments to execute
- Build project/product roadmaps
Phase 3: Prototype, Test, and Repeat
Why is prototyping and testing essential before launching a solution?
Because if you assume you have the right answer the first time, those assumptions will often burn through a limited budget on solutions that aren't viable.
Coming out of Phase 2, you have preliminary models of what might work to solve the biggest pain points and drive towards your identified business opportunities. You've examined your assumptions and reviewed everything you've learned about your customers and stakeholders. Now it's time to test those drafts and models to explore their feasibility and effectiveness.
We take the time to build out these initial solutions into prototypes that can be tested by real people. We then take that feedback to build the next draft solution and test it through a cycle of perpetual improvements that lead to exponential growth.
When the C-suite gives you a budget, you have to prove that you have the right strategy to solve the right problems. The value of research and strategic planning can easily get lost in mediocre solutions that haven't been tested and ultimately won't work. That's why we want our clients to be able to walk into the executive suite to pitch a solution knowing they can confidently calculate and demonstrate the ROI.
What are the best practices for prototyping and testing?
Effective prototyping and testing takes time and effort, all of which will pay off in the final solution. Try not to cut corners and think carefully about what it will take to test your solution in as real an environment as possible. Here are a few of our best practices:
- Build prototypes with various levels of fidelity
- Create, groom, and adjust plans in bi-weekly sprints
- Test and measure progress of each iteration
- Conduct usability testing, surveys, and other experiments
- Learn, adjust, and repeat. Favour flexibility over rigidity and stay open to new options
A Proven Process for Success
The Draw Backwards Process requires careful attention to detail and a continuous commitment to creating truly meaningful experiences and solutions for customers.
If you're feeling weighed down with problems you need to solve for your business and just don't have the team to handle all of it, we're here to help. We can provide the strategy for your rockstar team of designers and developers to execute. They'll have the freedom to put their talent and effort into creating a solution and you'll have the confidence to know you're heading in the right direction.
Contact us to see how we can help you draw backwards to drive forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "draw backwards" actually mean in practice?
It means resisting the urge to jump straight to solutions. Just like drawing a bow backwards before releasing an arrow, the process is about stepping back, getting a full view of the problem, and aiming carefully before you act.
How long does the Draw Backwards Process take?
It depends on the size and complexity of the challenge, but the process is designed to be iterative. Phases move through bi-weekly sprints so you're always making forward progress while staying flexible enough to adjust course.
Can this process work for problems beyond product design?
Yes. While design is in our DNA, the Draw Backwards Process is used to tackle marketing strategy, internal workflows, customer service improvements, and new product or service development. If it's a business problem, the process applies.
How do you know when you've done enough research before moving to ideation?
When you've spoken to enough internal and external stakeholders to surface the core assumptions, pain points, and opportunities without hearing many surprises. The goal isn't exhaustive research. It's a clear, honest 360-degree view of the problem before you start building solutions.
What if we already have a solution in mind before starting the process?
That's exactly when the process matters most. One of the biggest things Phase 1 does is surface the assumptions baked into your existing thinking. Sometimes your instinct is right. Often, the research will refine it, redirect it, or reveal a better path you hadn't considered.
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