Before Plan
Review what customers are already telling you: support, reviews, analytics, sales notes
Methodology
The Design Compass® Methodology
Stop guessing what customers want. Embed their evidence in every business decision.
Design Compass® is our trademarked process for embedding lean UX research, lean design systems and voice of the customer programmes into a business. It governs every advisory engagement and sprint our team delivers. The same process sits inside every book, workshop and template, so practitioners can run it themselves.
Mindset
What you believe about customers, evidence and decisions.
Everyone in a business believes they know the customer. Design Compass® treats that belief as the first thing to check.
Methods
The practical ways of working through each stage.
Every stage has a short list of methods that suit it. You pick the one that fits the question in front of you.
Tools
The templates and instruments that make the methods quick.
Scripts, templates, checklists and Testerr, so every customer check-in takes hours to run.
Do you make these mistakes when you choose how to work?
Designers can choose from more than 800 activities across planning, research, design, testing and launch. Most use the handful they learned first.
A team that knows journey maps runs a journey map. A team that knows surveys sends a survey. The choice follows the team’s habits, regardless of what the business actually needs and is best at that stage.
A familiar method can produce a confident wrong answer.
It arrives with a slide deck, a sample size and a clear recommendation. It looks exactly like evidence, and the business acts on it.
Designers lose weeks answering a question nobody was asking, and their next study gets less attention. Leaders spend budget on a decision that felt safe. Customers feel the result, and some of them leave.
Every customer insight is only as good as the method that produced it.
One governing process for the work we deliver and the work you do yourself
When our team runs an advisory engagement or a sprint, Design Compass® governs every stage. When you run the work yourself, the same process sits behind every book, workshop and template.
The process has five stages that take a business from no system to an established one: plan, research, design, test and embed. Each stage asks one question and ends with one defined output.
The navigation has three moves inside every stage: decide, learn and improve. It helps practitioners choose the activity that suits the stage, the problem and the business, at the right time.
Before each stage, there’s a customer check-in. Every stage ends with a recorded decision.
One way of working, from your first customer conversation to a system that runs without us.
- 01
Plan
What needs attention, who decides, and by when?
It ends with: A decision with an owner, a date and the assumptions to check.
- 02
Research
What is actually happening for customers today?
It ends with: Evidence about the real problem.
- 03
Design
What is the best response?
It ends with: A small set of options, each with the behaviour it should change.
- 04
Test
Does it work with real people?
It ends with: Problems found and fixed, and a recorded decision.
- 05
Embed
Is it working in real life, and will it keep working?
It ends with: The result measured, ownership in place, and the next cycle started.
Decisions happen in every stage. Each stage ends with a recorded call: go on, change course, or stop. Embed closes the loop by setting the next Plan.
The inner loop
Decide.
Learn.
Improve.
The five stages tell you where you are. Decide, learn and improve tell you how to move through each one. You learn from what customers actually did, improve the work, then record the call before moving on. That record is what makes the system trustworthy. Six months later, anyone can see what customers said and why the decision was made.
Before each stage, we book a customer check-in.
Before Research
Five conversations with customers about the problem
Before Design
Five ideal customers weigh in on the concept, then use the prototype
Before Test
Real customers use it in real conditions before full launch
Before Embed
Thirty days after launch: the number you wrote down at the start, plus five calls to find out why it moved or didn't
From the books
Mindset
Most teams make the same few mistakes with customer evidence. They start research after the decision is already made. They ask customers what they would do and never watch what they actually do. They treat the most confident opinion in the meeting as the customer’s. The mindset in the books replaces each mistake with a better habit: decide what you need to learn first, watch before you ask, and write down what customers said before anyone argues about it.
From the books and MethodLoop
Methods
There are hundreds of ways to research and design. Design Compass® narrows them to the handful that suit the stage you’re in and the question you’re asking. In Research, that might be five customer interviews. In Test, it might be a usability session with five people. In Embed, it might be a listening post that keeps customer feedback flowing to whoever makes decisions. The books teach each one step by step, and MethodLoop holds the full library when you need to go further.
From the books and MethodLoop
Tools
Every method comes with the tools that make it quick: interview scripts, test plans, decision logs and recruitment checklists. When you need people to test with, Testerr puts your product in front of design experts and real customers.
How Design Compass® works with the methods you already know
Design Compass® works alongside the frameworks your team already trusts. Here’s where each one is strongest, and what Design Compass® adds.
FrameworkWhat it’s best forWhat Design Compass® adds
Design Thinking
IDEO, Stanford d.school
Best forFraming problems and generating ideas as a team
Design Compass® addsAn ongoing system, with a recorded decision at every stage
Double Diamond
UK Design Council
Best forA shared language for discovery and delivery
Design Compass® addsA way to choose the activity inside each phase, plus an Embed stage after launch
Lean UX
Gothelf and Seiden
Best forTesting hypotheses inside agile delivery teams
Design Compass® addsA Plan stage that ties each hypothesis to a business decision, usable beyond product teams
Design Sprint
Google Ventures
Best forAnswering one big question in five days
Design Compass® addsMeasurement after launch, and the next cycle started
Jobs to be Done
Best forUnderstanding why customers hire a product
Design Compass® addsA place for it at the stage where it fits best
Already using one of these? Keep it. Design Compass® sits above your current process and sets when it runs, what feeds it and where its output goes.
What happens when customers are heard first
Myer
$30m+
in measured uplift
Telstra Health
18
acquired companies united for a third of the budget
Startup Goal
422%
lift in activation
Take their word for it.
Anton is a deeply impressive Design Leader with a breadth and depth of digital domain expertise that is extremely rare in the Australian market. He brings holistic design thinking together with commercial acumen and data-driven thinking. Anton isn't merely world-class, but world-beating.
Stu French
Chief Digital Officer, AGL
Rarely do you meet an individual with the vision, strategy, and drive to transform a business. Anton is just such an individual. He produced a clear and concise strategy and embodied the lean start-up mentality, his enthusiasm, detail, and deep knowledge made him excel as both a project lead and product owner.
Troy Bebee
CTO, Google Cloud
Anton's a high-class design leader who has worked in very challenging environments. He thrives when faced with challenges. User experience is his bread and butter, and he works tirelessly to champion that mindset.
Jordan Barnard
Director, EY
An invaluable team member with the innate ability to simplify complex design problems, delivering effective and engaging user experiences. I know, right... an absolute unicorn!
Angela Edwards
Founder, Elli Cares
Questions
Questions technical teams ask before they commit
No. Design Compass® sits above Scrum, Lean UX, Design Thinking or whatever your team runs today, and adds sequence, activity choice and a path into business decisions.
They answer three questions at each stage: what decision is waiting, what they need to learn or make, and what time, budget and customer access they have. Together these usually narrow the choice to two or three activities.
Yes. The five stages can run within a single sprint for a small question, or across a quarter for a larger programme. Check-ins and recorded decisions fit into existing ceremonies.
No. Design Compass® works for anyone from a solo designer to an enterprise. One person can run it from the books, and it scales as more people join.
Every Plan stage records the number you expect to move, and Embed checks it thirty days after launch. Across the business, you track how many major decisions have customer evidence recorded behind them.
Every stage has a defined output, so progress shows from the first stage. Quick wins usually appear once existing customer data has been reviewed properly.
Yes. It has been used in healthcare, where clinical and compliance teams need to see how every decision was made. The decision record shows them.
AI speeds up the sorting: analysing recordings, summarising interviews and drafting prototypes. Design Compass® makes sure every output is checked with real customers before anything gets built.
No. The stages work the same way for services, retail experiences and internal tools.
Designers can start with a $6.99 book. Leaders can read the offer document to see how our team runs the process. If you’re unsure which fits, take the Customer Healthcheck. Take the Customer Healthcheck.
Run Design Compass® yourself, or have our team run it for you.
Start with a $6.99 book and a live workshop. Our team takes on three or four clients at a time.