Part C Developing Your Design Solution The Production Cycle Within the four stages of the design workflow there are two distinct parts. The first three stages, as presented in Part B of this book, were described as ‘The Hidden Thinking’ stages, as they are concerned with undertaking the crucial behind-the-scenes preparatory work. You may have completed them in terms of working through the book’s contents, but in visualisation projects they will continue to command your attention, even if that is reduced to a background concern. You have now reached the second distinct part of the workflow which involves developing your design solution. This stage follows a production cycle, commencing with rationalising design ideas and moving through to the development of a final solution. The term cycle is appropriate to describe this stage as there are many loops of iteration as you evolve rapidly between conceptual, practical and technical thinking. The inevitability of this iterative cycle is, in large part, again due to the nature of this pursuit being more about optimisation rather than an expectation of achieving that elusive notion of perfection. Trade- offs, compromises, and restrictions are omnipresent as you juggle ambition and necessary pragmatism. How you undertake this stage will differ considerably depending on the nature of your task. The creation of a relatively simple, single chart to be slotted into a report probably will not require the same rigour of a formal production cycle that the development of a vast interactive visualisation to be used by the public would demand. This is merely an outline of the most you will need to do – you should edit, adapt and participate the steps to fit with your context. There are several discrete steps involved in this production cycle: Conceiving ideas across the five layers of visualisation design. Wireframing and storyboarding designs. Developing prototypes or mock-up versions. 219 Testing. Refining and completing. Launching the solution. Naturally, the specific approach for developing your design solution (from prototyping through to launching) will vary hugely, depending particularly on your skills and resources: it might be an Excel chart, or a Tableau dashboard, an infographic created using Adobe Illustrator, or a web-based interactive built with the D3.js library. As I have explained in the book’s introduction, I’m not going to attempt to cover the myriad ways of implementing a solution; that would be impossible to achieve as each task and tool would require different instructions. For the scope of this book, I am focusing on taking you through the first two steps of this cycle – conceiving ideas and wireframing/storyboarding. There are parallels here with the distinctions between architecture (design) and engineering (execution) – I’m effectively chaperoning you through to the conclusion of your design thinking. To fulfil this, Part C presents a detailed breakdown of the many design .