Built to
repeat.

Start with the right problem

Every project starts with a structured kickoff. Not a brief review, but a deliberate alignment exercise. The template opens with questions the team works through together: what problem are we actually solving, who owns what, what does success look like, and which constraints are non-negotiable from the start.

The goal is to surface misalignment before it gets expensive. Assumptions that go unchecked at kickoff tend to become blockers mid-sprint. A good kickoff removes the friction that would have slowed things down later.

Ground it in reality

Before any UX work starts, the template requires a research gate. That doesn’t always mean commissioning new research. It means making a deliberate decision about what evidence the design will rest on.

• CommissionNew research is needed. The problem is poorly understood, user behaviour is assumed, or the stakes are high enough to warrant it.
• ParticipateResearch is already running. The designer joins sessions, reviews findings and feeds insights straight into the design.
• ValidateExisting research is available. Review it, challenge it, and find the gaps before moving on.

Skipping this stage doesn’t save time. It moves the risk into later phases, where changing course costs more.

The thinking layer

The UX stage is where the thinking happens, before visuals. The template covers journey mapping, user flows, information architecture and competitive analysis. This is the layer that decides whether a design solves the right problem, not just whether it looks like it does.

Jumping to UI before the UX is solid is one of the most common sources of rework in product design. The template makes the order explicit, so the team isn’t pressured into skipping it.

Make it real

Visual design and prototyping follow once the UX direction is validated. Every JD Sports project was built on a shared design system, and this is the stage where that system gets applied, extended or stress-tested against new use cases.

Prototypes are built to the fidelity the decision needs, no higher. High fidelity for stakeholder alignment. Lower fidelity for early directional feedback. The template makes that choice explicit rather than leaving it to instinct.

The reasoning is the work

The final stage covers testing, handoff and documentation. Testing is scoped to the decisions still open: not a full usability pass on everything, but a targeted look at the parts of the design that carry the most risk.

Design reasoning is documented alongside the output. Not a description of what was built, but why: what was considered, what was rejected, and what the design is built for. It protects decisions in review, and gives engineering and product the context they need when edge cases appear.