The process of designing a synchronous counter that will count in a nonbinary manner is primarily based on:

• external logic circuits that decode the various states of the counter to apply the correct logic levels to the J-K inputs
• modifying BCD counters to change states on every second input clock pulse
• modifying asynchronous counters to change states on every second input clock pulse
• elimination of the counter stages and the addition of combinational logic circuits to produce the desired counts