7 Stages of Design Process Lecture:
In this lecture, we learnt about the 7 different stages of design process, which are:
1) Define
2) Research
3) Ideate
4) Prototype
5) Select
6) Implement
7) Learn

Stage 1 consists of asking these questions:
-What are the key elements of the product?
-Who is the target audience?
-What is the design?
-When will it be needed?
-Where will it be used?
-Why does the client think a design solution is required?
All of these questions should point you in a direction to follow. Even if it is the wrong direction, at first, these questions will provoke an idea and then that will progress.
It is important to realise that the product may not appeal to everyone and narrowing down your target audience will help you in creating a design as you will not be considering everyone.

The second stage is research, and this is where initial ideas are found. You will need to find both primary sources, which comes from your own experience or findings, and secondary sources, which come from other peoples experiences and findings. It is important to create your own information as you can't completely rely on someone else's knowledge to back up your design.

The third stage is to ideate. We looked at a quote from Gavin Ambrose, who said:
'Creativity  conveys a sense of pure inventiveness and lack of boundaries, yet design requires applied creativity towards a specific end'.
This introduced this stage nicely as this stage is about ideas and not vocabulary. It is advised to avoid preconceptions also. A range of examples were given that support the idea that, the simplest idea is usually the best one. I recognise Okham's Razor from studying Philosophy at A-Level and in the case of proving the existence of God, it worked to an extent. However, when applied to other concepts, such as an idea for a design, it is good to keep it simple and not over complicate ideas or concepts.
At the end of this stage, you should have some kind of rough language of what you are going to create. This may include sketches or thumbnails or trying out ideas.

The fourth stage is the prototype stage. This is about testing the feasibility of  each idea and how they work with the guidelines from the brief. This stage is about exploring what the outcome may look like. This is an example of good animation that probably was defined in the prototype stage.
Tine Milk - Olympic Film from Echoic : Music and Sound Design on Vimeo.
At the end of this stage, you should have a comprehensive layout or a 'comp' for short. As well as this, you should know what idea you want to take forward.

Stage six is implement.
This is building the output and defining the details and refining what has been trailed and clarified. This stage is where the outcome forms and you finish your work.

Stage seven is to learn from the project.
This means you should encourage feedback and reassess your work. Note improvements and things that work well so the next brief you work on, the outcome can be even better and more efficiently done.

This lecture gave a very interesting insight on how to work through a brief and I think that I will stick to a structure like this as it is solid and easy to follow. I enjoyed learning about a different way of working and definitely took the stages on board for the next time I am given a brief.