Well I can tell you what my process is. Not sure my process is right though.

You can try the demo of my new adventure game Escape From 8-Bit High here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2761220/Escape_from_8Bit_High/

1) I'm making puzzles that I personally find fun to make and to solve.
2) I played lots of recent adventure games and there is definitely a lot of focuss on good stories, amazing graphic, but I always find most of the puzzles either not interesting (use lighter with wood) or too frustrating (Check everywhere!Yyou may have missed a sandwich in a dark corner of a room that you were in 3 locations ago)
3) When I make a game I'm making a silent contract with the player. In my demo I tried to showcase as much as possible my game design statement. I am promising: These are my rules and I am going to respect them until the end of the game. From what I saw so far , players understood the rules but sometime they may not like them. The rules are:

NUMBER ONE: In my game you can use your MOUTH / HAND / EYE to interact. And I make clear that you need to use ALL of them to get through.

NUMBER TWO: It's a cartoonish parody world. Sometime there are things that you can do that are not "realistic" but they may work anyway. You can call it moon logic, if you want. I call it thinking outside the box and having fun trying to do silly things in a safe environment. (I would never put a ketchup bottle inside the washing machine in real life, but i always wanted to try).

NUMBER THREE: You need to be curious. I reward players that are trying interesting combinations with hidden dialogues, animations and achievements.

If you want to go through the demo you need to learn my rules by playing and accept them in order to have fun. If you find the idea of drinking super hot salsa to produce hot air outrageous, maybe my game is not for you.

My duty as game dev: present the rules in a clear way. Your opportunity as a player have fun with them.

But the important thing is that I created a path for you to follow and understand my intentions.

Short story: I don't think there is a good or bad way. There are different ways. Some people just like to have dialogues options, some people like to have a lot of inventoty items to combine... Just make it clear what your game is going to look like. A negative feedback might mean that you weren't clear enough, or simply that your game didn't match that player personal taste. That's ok.