Marvel - Delivering Design at Speed

I created a product design process called Marvel and wanted to share it as it's a really nice way to work with the design, product and engineering trinity. Over the years it's been refined and optimised to suit a range of tasks. Whether you're working on small tasks or large-scale initiatives, Marvel is adaptable; steps can be done quickly, or even skipped for smaller projects. For very small design tasks, no formal process is necessary.

As a purist designer I wanted a process that worked across all scenarios. But, as Mike Tyson wisely said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." The real world requires flexibility. One of the first decisions to make is the level of process needed: full, light or none at all.

Marvel is a blend of design thinking, Google sprints, lean, kanban, double diamond and other frameworks I've gathered over time.

Workshops

Marvel typically begins with a series of discovery workshops before going into design. Workshops save time by aligning the team, deeply exploring the problem space and baking in technical constraints early on. While some see workshops as a waste of time, I've found them invaluable by saving time later.

I’ve learned that it’s best to hold these workshops within a single week. Extending them over weekends introduces problems like people forgetting, getting sick, or taking leave. A cross-functional team is invited to these sessions, including the trinity of design, product, and engineering.

The Marvel Process

Brief or Problem Outline

The workshop process starts with a short summary of the customer problem, led by the PM or project sponsor. This can include hypotheses, metrics, and background context.

*Optional subject matter experts (SMEs) provide a brief 10-15 minute presentation to ensure the team has a deep understanding of the problem space.

Competitor Solution Review

Each participant completes a competitor deep-dive as pre-work and presents it to the team. Sometimes, these aren’t direct competitors but companies that have solved similar problems in unique ways.

Customer Needs Analysis

This step transforms business requirements into customer needs. If you can’t articulate a customer need, you shouldn’t be building the feature. This exercise forces a sharp focus on the customer problem, with all participants contributing through post-its, affinity mapping, and dot-voting.

Customer Journey Mapping

Journey maps are crucial even for single pages - because they make you think about the full experience: where users come from and where they go next. I often use a framework that includes "doing, thinking, and feeling" across the journey, along with pain points and opportunities (occasionally touch points).

Team Sketching Session

Once all the initial workshops are done, we hold a sketching session. I encourage low-fidelity sketching with paper and pens only, which activates the creative side of the brain. The goal is to focus on UX, not UI. Crazy 8s is a great warm-up, followed by a 30-60 minute sketching session. Each person then gets 2 minutes to present their ideas.

Workshops are usually broken into 2-3 sessions, each lasting 1.5 hours or less, with breaks to maintain focus.

From Workshops to Design

After the workshops, I consolidate the best ideas into a final solution. This marks the end of the cross-functional team’s discovery phase. From here, the design team continues UI design, peer reviews, stakeholder feedback, design system reviews and final sign-off before moving into delivery.

What About Research?

The Marvel process generally excludes upfront research to save time, unless the risk is high. Research or validation often occurs post-launch or post-sign-off. While the first version of a feature might not be perfect, getting the product into customers' hands as quickly as possible is the first stage of research.

If products are hypotheses designed to satisfy customer needs. The fastest way to get feedback is through real-world use.

Conclusion: Why Marvel Works

Marvel is a speedy process designed to deliver value quickly. By involving a cross-functional team and deeply examining the problem space it generates well-rounded solutions. This process aligns teams. It ensures engineers and product teams can critically review and improve final outputs, leading to exceptional quality product delivered at speed. ??