Design work is often associated with the idea of creative inspiration, as if good ideas come magically to the designer. This passive perspective is not very helpful for you or the general understanding of design in the industry.

Design is about solving problems. In order to solve them, you need to deeply understand your user needs, explore many different possibilities, and evaluate what works in a given context. Your intuition and taste will definitely help, but you cannot rely only on those.

The techniques presented in this chapter allow you to explore the design space in an organized way, based on what you know about the users, and identify and check various hypotheses. Conveying this process will help those who are receiving your ideas understand that they are not just coming out of the blue.