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Basics5 min readOctober 2026

What is the UX design process?

Short answer

The UX design process is a repeating cycle: understand users and the problem, define what to solve, explore ideas, prototype, test with real people, then build and measure. It is often drawn as the Double Diamond: discover, define, develop and deliver. Real teams loop back whenever testing shows a problem.

Core Takeaway

  • Discover: research users, context and the business problem
  • Define: agree on the exact problem and how success is measured
  • Develop: explore ideas, wireframe, prototype and test
  • Deliver: build, launch, measure and improve
  • AI speeds up synthesis and drafting, but decisions stay with the team

Most UX processes follow the same idea, whatever they are called: understand before you design, and test before you build. The Double Diamond, introduced by the UK Design Council, is the most common way to draw it.

Discover. Talk to users, watch them work, review analytics and support tickets, and look at competitors. The goal is to understand the real problem rather than the assumed one.

Define. Turn what you learned into a clear problem statement and a measure of success, for example "new users can create their first invoice in under five minutes". This keeps later decisions focused.

Develop. Explore several solutions with sketches and wireframes, choose the most promising, and build prototypes. Test them with real people, even five users can reveal the biggest problems, and change the design based on what you see.

Deliver. Work with developers to build it, launch, and measure against the success metric. The process then starts again with what you learned. AI tools now help at most steps, from summarising interviews to generating drafts and code, and ExodeUI, which we make, helps at the deliver step by making interactive components the same file in design and in code.

Frequently asked questions

What are the 5 stages of the design process?

Design thinking often lists empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test. It covers the same ground as the Double Diamond with different names.

How long does the UX process take?

Anything from a few days for a small feature to several months for a new product. The steps scale down; they do not disappear.

Is the UX process linear?

No. Testing often sends you back to define or develop. Treat it as a loop, not a checklist.

Where does AI fit in the UX process?

Mostly in speeding up work: summarising research, generating drafts and variants, writing test scripts and turning designs into code. People still make the decisions.

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