Der Prozess das geeignete, angemessene bzw. beste Design im jeweiligen Kontext zu entwickeln, läßt sich vereinfacht als Ideenfindungs- und Reflektionsprozess der gefundenen, unterschiedlicher Ansätze mit jeweiliger Abwägung von Vor- und Nachteilen darstellen.

In 'Sketchung User Experiences' von Bill Buxton wird dieser Prozess anschaulich dargestellt.

'Getting the right design is about considering many ideas and then choosing between them. That is:

• generate many ideas, e.g., inspired by brainstorming, discussions, lateral thinking, client discussions, observations of end users, etc.
• refelect on all your ideas
• choose the ones that look most promising and develop those in parallel
• add in new ideas as they come up

The right figure illustrates this process as a tree, where multiple solutions are developed, and choices made about which of the one or more branches - ideas - are worth following.

'Paul Leseau (1980) had another way to look at this, where he described the design process as symbiotic relationship between idea elaboration and ideas reduction.

• Elaboration: generate solutions. Theese are the opportunities.
• Reduction: decide on the ones worth pursuing, and then elaborate on those solutions.

As a designer, you elaborate to expand your repertoire of ideas, while at the same time reducing the number of ideas - ultimately to the one that is most promising'

(Bill Buxton - 'Sketching User Experiences')