In a world where new software comes out every day, it’s nearly impossible to make your product stand out without a beautiful, intuitive design. Successful digital product design now relies on not just having a skilled team of designers, but utilizing the right design tools and following proper design processes.
Remember, the goal is to retain your end user. Therefore, your product should be as appealing and easy to use as possible. In this article, we shall define what effective product design is and the steps you can take as a product designer to create something that will leave a lasting impression.
What is product design: how to make an excellent product
The term product design is often used synonymously with UX design or industrial design, but it is not the same thing. While UX and industrial designers focus on the user interface, usability, and accessibility of information, product design is a more transdisciplinary field process. It spans each step of product creation.
That is to say, a product designer is actively involved throughout the product-making process. It is their job to identify the target audience, spot any market gaps, come up with ideas, define the development process, and work with other UX, sound designers, and developers to bring digital products to life.
What are the stages of digital product design?
There’s no one way of designing a digital product. It depends on your company or the type of product you are designing.
However, there are key components each good product design process should include. These techniques aim at shaping product design around end-user needs.
Product vision
The product vision is simply a clear outline of what you intend to build and the business goals. Team members should understand what they are working towards.
Product vision is usually outlined at the beginning of product design. It mainly involves role definitions so everybody knows their place. This will prevent future merger conflicts and allow for a more resource-efficient process.
At the same time, it’s important to define your target users and their needs and elaborate on how the product will answer their problems.
Product vision can be broken down into three steps.
- Identify the product’s value to customers
- Define clear criteria for the design process
- Set a schedule for the project
Product research phase
At this stage, your aim as a designer should be to get an idea of where your product fits into the market and how your design can serve it better. For this, digital product designers usually try to understand what target customers need and how they think.
You can conduct user research through:
- In-depth interviews
- Focus groups
- Field study
- Surveys
- Outsourcing market research companies
- Studying existing market research
Analysis
Once you’ve obtained adequate data on the product, your next move will be to analyze it and create a design system around it. You want to better understand your audience and what drives them.
Often this includes creating user personas or imaginative examples of potential consumers of your product. Through this, you can design a product with your needs in mind.
Another good tool for digital product designers is empathy mapping. This is a 4 part chart defining what a user might think, say, feel, and do. Then, using the research and personas created, they can get an idea of the end user’s struggles.
Visualization and ideation
Through tools such as user stories, user journey mapping, and job stories, designers are able to create a visual hierarchy of the interaction process. This is from the time the user first engages in the product. They can use this to create ideas on how the product can best solve the end user’s struggles.
User journey mapping in particular, is an excellent tool used by designers across the board, as it allows you to observe a user’s flow during interaction with your app.
Design thinking is also crucial throughout the visualization and ideation process. It involves considering every small action they might take in the interaction process. This will allow you to tweak the experience to be optimally engaging.
Product design
After gathering all the necessary research, it is now time for the design team to create the product. The end goal of the design phase should be how to create software that is easy to use and intuitive. This should be done while solving problems customers could face while using it.
For the best results, start by listing design specifications. This allows a designer to create detailed prototypes with as much functionality as possible with the best user experience for a first-time user.
Testing and validation phase
Now that you’ve come up with a tangible concept, the next step is to expose it to real live users. This will enable you to get a feel for how they will receive it. At this stage, you should be able to determine whether or not you were right about your market research.
Based on the information gathered, you can modify the design to correct any major deficiencies before releasing the final product.
There are two types of testing you can use.
- Usability testing – giving a highly targeted, select group of users limited access to the product
- Guerilla testing – offering the product for testing to a larger audience
After launching, what next?
Just because the product has launched doesn’t mean the design process is complete. This is the time to observe how real-world users interact and view our product. Make sure you take note of any feedback or reactions and use the information to design better features in the next version of the product.
What product design tools do product designers use?
With the methodologies above, your digital product development process should run smoothly. However, there are some tools designers commonly use to achieve them.
Consider different tools, such as journey mapping, wireframing, graphic design, prototyping, project management, and data analysis.
And then settle on one that suits your product best.
