Talking about Product Design with no context may be overwhelming. What does “product” mean? What exactly are we “designing”? And what does that design really entail?
In this article, we’ll discuss these questions while focusing on how the process works and why Product Design matters. Let’s go!
What is Product Design?
While most of the time, we associate the word product with material objects, the definition has broadened significantly over time.
The concept of product currently encloses also digital products, such as the websites and mobile apps we use daily for several areas.
Something similar happens with the word design! We often view design as only the aesthetics surrounding something.
But, since it also encloses solving problems by acknowledging how things work, there is also a lot more to design than just how things look or feel.
With some settled context, what is Product Design? Welp, Product Design is the process of finding market opportunities to solve real problems with a digital product.
This definition sounds simple enough, yet it covers a lot of areas. Yes, it includes UX UI, graphic, and animation design, but it also includes user research, data analysis, and business strategy.
Design Thinking for Product Design
In most cases, the design process stems from the concept of Design Thinking, a term born in the 1950s that has remained growing over the years.
When it comes to Design Thinking, there are three main questions to ask yourself about a digital product and its features: "What is the problem being solved?" "Who are the ones that have this problem?” and “What do we want to achieve?”
To answer these questions, Design Thinking comprises five main phases: empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing. The process starts with focusing on researching users' needs, and it goes on to define those needs and problems.
Later on, teams come together with ideas to fulfill those needs or solve those problems. While the prototyping stage creates potential solutions, the latter stage, testing, tries those solutions out.
How does Product Design work?
1. Goals
Before starting to design a product, you’ll need to work on your vision and goals for it. What is the problem? Why are you trying to solve it?
These questions are key for everyone involved in the process to understand what they’re working toward.
Your vision will illustrate the essence of the product and give all team members the needed information, tools, and procedures to build it successfully.
You should also consider the Product Design strategy, which contains both your vision and goals for the product. There are some things you should consider for this step:
The first one is your Value Proposition, which includes what the product is for, who the product is for, and when and where it will be used.
Since defining the Value Proposition allows everyone to agree on what the product will be, Both design and development teams and stakeholders should be a part of it.
Likewise, you should also have clear success criteria, focused on knowing what you wish to achieve with the product you’re designing from the get-go.
Yet, success criteria can have many forms depending on the projects. It could go from sales numbers to downloads for a mobile app or the number of visitors to a website.
2. Research
With a clear goal definition, the next step is to dive into thorough research. Research might seem time-consuming, but it actually saves you time in the long run!
First, knowing your users with User Research is essential for adjusting your Product Design to their expectations while leading to better User Experiences.
For successful User Research, you can conduct interviews, create online surveys, or have a contextual inquiry, whether they’re online or in person.
Yet, besides thinking about the users, you should also have your product’s market in mind. Chances are, there are similar products in the market. What are they doing/not doing?
This mindset gives you the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage over existing products by, for instance, adding an extra feature potential users need or want.
After gathering information from your users and product research, it’s time to analyze all the data! You can interpret data and make assumptions based on it.
With this data, you can create personas that represent key segments of your audience or diagram workflows to determine what the team knows about the user.
3. Brainstorming
At this step, teams brainstorm potential ideas to fulfill both the project goals and test assumptions. Several procedures can help here!
For instance, User Stories can help you understand something specific the user wishes to do with your product. Typically, a user story will have the following structure:
As a (description of the user), I like to (action/feature) so that (outcome/benefit).
Likewise, Journey Maps help you capture the series of steps to achieve a specific goal and better understand the experience of a user while interacting with your product.
Another great example is storyboards, which help you recreate scenarios to describe how the product fits into the daily life of a user.
Lastly, wireframing covers everything from structure and layout to user flow and intended behaviors in a two-dimensional outline to keep the product user-oriented.
The list of approaches is quite long! Yet, the selection will depend on your specific requirements and what edges of users, markets, and data your project should prioritize.
4. Planning
You've gone through the brainstorming phase, deciding which option fits your goals and user needs. It’s time to establish the particular requirements and plan the design stage.
Here, Design Sprints can be quite the tool to validate an idea or even a handful of different ideas. Like creating an MVP to validate initial thoughts!
5. Designing
If you have a clear idea of the product you want to build, it’s now time to build it. You can start with a brief outline and then move on to make a prototype!
While there are various design and prototyping tools you can use, such as Figma or InVision, you can also make your prototypes on paper if you prefer.
Prototyping usually entails three stages: modeling, reviewing, and refining. In the first step, focus on building an experimental model to test your solution.
With this model, you can get feedback from both stakeholders and users to help you have a good idea of what works and what does not.
Later on, with the gathered reviews and feedback, you can assess what changes need to be made. Apply these to your next prototype until no more refining is needed!
6. Validating
There's one final step before launching a product to the market: testing it! Testing helps your team to make sure the product works as intended.
As you carry out the testing, you can check each aspect of your product to see if it’s properly working.
Both the team and potential users should test the product, with Usability Testing being the most commonly used type to identify any usability issues.
Why is Product Design Important?
In a previous article, we’ve covered the relevance of design for Mobile Apps. Well, the same concept applies to why product design matters in general!
Design includes what users see and how they interact with a product, meaning it can make or break your product both in user acquisition and user retention.
Good product design conveys clear objectives and strategic decision-making on target audiences and potential competitors.
Moreover, it implies you've gone over multiple possibilities to achieve the best result: a product friendly for users able to broaden your target audience.
Conclusion
Many people don’t think about all that comes before a digital product goes live on the market, but the process implies a lot of work!
We hope our Product Design guidelines give you a clear idea of what product design is. Looking to build disruptive solutions with outstanding design? Get in touch!
