When you think about great quality products, the term that is considered as the most important feature is design. Whether you are a product manager, or a developer, or a designer, it is an essential task for you to learn the product development process to put your best foot forward.
If you are wondering about the steps involved in the process of product design, you don't need to stress more. We have brought to you a comprehensive guide on the process of product design in this blog post. Let's have a deeper dive into the guide.
1. Thinking is the origin
Design thinking is the very first step for finding the real solutions to the problem. Thinking about the design at first is the origin of the whole route map. These days, thinking has become popular for building the design and holds an important place in product design.
The approach of thinking encompasses all the methods and ideas of the design that are human-specific. Then, it helps to bring them all into a single unified concept.
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2. Defining the Vision and Strategy
The next important step of the process of product design is defining the vision clearly and then deciding the proper strategy.
Before you start designing a product, you need to understand the purpose behind it. This time, you must define the vision and set a goal with a proper strategy.
A good design needs a clear vision that sets the target and defines the direction. It is needed to guide the product development process with clarity of thoughts.
3. Defining value proposition
When you're building the route map of the project, defining the Value proposition helps in the initial steps involved in the process of product design.
It helps to bring out the key aspects of the project and the product, defining what the product actually is, whom it is aiming at, when the product will be used, and where it will be delivered. Value proposition helps the designers’ team and the stakeholders to build the blueprint of the product.
4. Defining the goal
It's an essential step to have a clear goal that you want to accomplish with the product. It's obvious that you might not know at the beginning of the UX design process that the final goal will be. But you should have measured and anticipated the target far before delving into the project.
You have to define some explicit success criteria like the expected number of sales per month and key performance indicators that are called KPI in short. During this phase, targets are established for the evaluation of progress. This step also helps in achieving a more results-driven process of product design.
5. Researching on the product
Once you have defined the product design vision and strategy as well as set the target, you need to start product research in order to get the best outcome of the process of product design.
Research involves mainly user and market research that provide the necessary information for a great design. In order to maximize the chance of success, you must conduct insightful research before starting the product design.
Thorough research helps you to collect all the necessary information for your product. Eventually, it will save a lot of resources like time and money. With extensive research, it will be easier for you to sell your ideas to the stakeholders.
6. User Analysis
After the research phase, the team of designers steps into the analysis phase. The phase of analysis's main goal is to draw meaningful insights from the data collected in the research phase. Then you need to capture, organize, and draw inferences about users' requirements.
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7. Ideation
Here comes another important phase of the process of product design: Ideation. In this phase, the team members brainstorm on a diverse range of ideas that address the project's main goals.
Product designers must apply different techniques for ideation that can range from sketching or drawing the idea on a vision board to making storyboards. Sketching helps in visualizing the aspects of the design, whether storyboarding helps in visualizing the interactions with a product.
8. Creating the product
After the phase of ideation, the team builds a clear vision and a route map of the product.
Now, the team begins creating the solution and giving life to their ideas. For implementing a design, the stages include:
- Prototyping
- Reviewing
- Refining
9. Testing and Validation
This phase helps a product design team ensure the design concept works as per the goal set. Product testing is an art in itself. When the testing is done right, designers derive insights that help them further make changes in the product design strategy.
10. Activities after the product launch
After a product is officially launched, the process still continues as it is said that designing a product is an ongoing process. When people start using the product, the designers' team will still need to learn the outcomes and take the necessary decisions to improve the product.
Closing Thoughts
A good designer should remember that when he is designing a product, it is always intended for people. To build a great design, you must deliver the right solutions to the target audience.
Identifying proper solutions and doing thorough research about the problems, you should focus on the design process.
This way, your idea will be born in the form of a nice product that will create a long effect on its users' minds. Thus, a great design is scripted!