The Ultimate Guide To Product Design Process
The work of a product designer in a software house comes with many different challenges. The first of them is to be versatile – after all, a product designer is not only an advocate for the user, but also helps to achieve the client’s goals. Creativity and analytical thinking are required, as well as the ability to work with multiple stakeholders at once, clients, project managers, analysts, testers and developers.
Product design process
Double diamond
It is a great tool that illustrates the design process, but you may feel that some steps are missing from it. Depending on how the individual sections of a Double Diamond are interpreted, the end result can be either a prototype or a ready-to-market product two completely different things.
Discovery
The result of your design process may be solutions that do not match user needs. They can also lead to an incorrectly defined project scope or other unforeseen problems. Although the client or team may feel that they know the answers to all questions and want to go straight to the implementation, it is important first to adjust and verify the assumptions we set for ourselves.
Problem discovery
In the product design process, the discovery phase allows us to verify our assumptions, collect and analyze data, which helps us determine the purpose, potential and threats of a given project.
Problem definition
In the problem definition phase, it is essential to analyze all the collected data and extract the most important information. Defining it is a crucial step, directly affecting the direction in which the team is going when designing the solution.
Problem validation
Once the problem is defined, it is important to validate it. We must verify if the idea needs to be modified and whether it fits the market. Choosing the wrong design challenge can lead to creating a product that does not suit user needs properly.
Pre-production
During this product design process step, the team generates ideas for solving a predefined problem and creates the foundations for designing the UI of the application. Brainstorming is a good idea to unleash your imagination and generate as many ideas as possible without focusing on limitations.
Design & development
Based on the previous steps and the so-called proof of concept, we can continue working on the physical representation of our solution: flows, screens, and UI. The result of the design team’s work is the implementation of the solution and its introduction to the market by development teams.
Conclusion
The most important thing to remember when designing products is that design is for people. To design great products, you must deliver the right features, with the right user experience for the right people.