This article reports the outcomes of an inquiry which set out to assist novice, first year visual communication design students to develop awareness of their design process. To facilitate this, a learning intervention was incorporated into the teaching structure. This took the form of a design process diary/journal which enabled students to track their design activities during a six-week assignment. The key component of the diary was the inclusion of a six-stage design process model devised by Swann in 2002. Findings suggest that many of the students found the model allowed them to develop a more explicit understanding of the stages they went through while designing and that their previous understanding of design process had been advanced through the use of the process model.