01 · DiscoverUnderstand before designing.
I start by talking to the people involved. At Proximus, fifteen one-hour interviews with freelancers, in French and Dutch, showed that the name “Bizz Online” meant nothing to eleven of them. At Swift, interviews with banks tested the target journey against the actual work of the teams handling claims. Depending on the topic, I add an audit of what exists and a benchmark: five operators compared for the price perception research.
In practice: Access to end users is not a given. At Elia, the first interviews were with the Key Account Managers, who know each client from the inside, before working with the industrial clients themselves. A research track can also start outside the brief: the price research at Proximus came from a complaint I kept hearing in interviews for other projects.
02 · DefineGet everyone to agree on the problem.
I sort what the research showed to separate what design can fix from what belongs to the offer, the contract or the organisation. At Proximus, the findings were read across four environments (product, service, support, web): the page could explain the price, not shorten a two-year commitment. The outcome is written goals and hypotheses to test.
In practice: In a regulated sector, framing mostly means getting the people who carry the constraints in the same room. At Elia and at Swift, IT, legal and business took part in the workshops, and trade-offs were settled there rather than during acceptance testing. When many people need to align quickly, I use the Design Sprint format: at Elia, two days with the KAMs to map the grid connection lifecycle, place the How Might We notes on the map and vote on the question to prototype.
03 · DevelopPrototype to decide.
Wireframes, then a high-fidelity Figma prototype built from Design System components. The prototype is there to settle decisions in workshops, not to illustrate. At Swift, it became the shared reference of a team spread across the United States, Europe and Asia, then the material used to present the service to the banking community at SIBOS. Accessibility (WCAG 2.2) is checked at this stage, on the screens, not at the end of the project.
In practice: Sometimes the Design System has to be fixed before designing. At Swift, the palette had ten greys, two of them identical, and each team filled the gaps its own way. I reworked the colour foundation, with a contrast measurement for every step, so the next screens no longer had to invent it.
04 · DeliverTest, ship, measure.
Every iteration goes back in front of users. At Proximus, ten new interviews tested four hypotheses on the redesigned page before it went live with the e-marketing team: +38% conversion. At Elia, Insights joined EPIC in increments, each one tried out by ten early-adopter industrial clients. Stable components go back into the Design System.
In practice: Shipping does not close the cycle. Development runs in Agile sprints, research follows at its own pace and the backlog is prioritised with users. Some recommendations also go beyond design, such as an offer's name or a contract's length: I document them and hand them to the product teams, who make the call.