milestone 2: form the hypothesis

Following the flood of questions, we need to look at the problem from all angles to best decide an intuitive approach to the solution—so now we get the answers. Where do we find these answers?

• Creative brief
• Client briefing
• Content aggregation
• Proposed sitemap
• Competitor sites
• Benchmark sites
• Current site
• Brand assets
• Internal discussions
• Brainstorming sessions
• Research and discovery
• The list goes on, keep searching until you are satisfied…there’s always ‘Google’

After careful assessment of your results, you can now form a hypothesis generated from the context, which are the site objectives; the message, which is the information to be disseminated through the functionality of the site; and the audience, which accounts for the target user group of the site. The context and the message revolve around the audience like an electron cloud orbiting the nucleus of an atom.



As the audience is at the central core we need to determine the different types of users through personas to form a concrete hypothesis. A persona is a user profile that helps you make design and functionality decisions in order to make the site usable. Why is a persona important? It helps you get to know your end-users because understanding their needs is a vital step in creating an end-solution that suits their needs in a way that will make sense to them.


Continued Milestone 3 - Create a solution