Products usually pertain to the physical or tangible objects you buy in stores – may it be an appliance, device, food, or furniture. But in this age of technology, products have expanded to digital products. Prime examples of digital products are apps and websites.
Product design is responsible for the creation of physical and digital products. However, it is more than just a creation. Website design companies don’t create products just for the sake of it. They create products to solve user problems while considering the optimum experience and interface for their users and achieving their business objectives.
In the U.S. alone, the product design and development market was valued at $8.6 billion in 2021. The steady growth in the market can be attributed to the need to reduce costs, innovate products quickly, and rise in demand for quality products and healthcare. So whether you are a product manager, business owner, developer, marketing manager, or product designer for hire, you must know how you should start your product design project.
In order to help aspiring product designers or other people interested in product design start their projects, we created this product design process guide for you.
Brainstorming
The first step to start your design project is brainstorming. Product design involves different professionals, such as creative designers, marketing members, program developers, product development professionals, and more.
Thus, brainstorming is essential to create and develop a product that addresses a specific user problem and is aligned with your organization’s business goals. The rule for brainstorming is to come up with as many ideas as possible without limitations.
Defining the Product
Once you have a general idea from brainstorming, you can define the idea and start conceptualizing the product. In this step, you should at least have answers to the following questions:
- What does the product want to achieve?
- How can the product achieve its goals?
- Why did you create this product?
- Who is the product for?
By answering these questions, you are gradually shaping the product’s identity.
Conducting User Research
Now that you have defined your product, it’s now time for research. First, you need to conduct user experience (UX) research. It involves understanding user needs, behaviors, and motivations. Understanding your users helps build user-centric products.
Take the case of United Airlines as an example. By conducting user research to better understand its customers’ needs, the airline has seen a 200% increase in online ticketing. Some UX research methods you can do are surveys, interviews, field studies, and creating personas and empathy maps.
Sketching and Prototyping
Sketching allows you to explore and explain the design concepts of the product. For example, product designers don’t create websites right away. They usually sketch their ideas on paper and show some details for the site. It will serve as their guide while creating the site.
Meanwhile, prototyping is an important aspect of product design. It serves as the backbone of the product and proves that the initial idea of the product can work. Prototypes can be a simple model of your proposed product.
Testing and Production
After creating the prototype of your product, you can ask a target audience of users to test the prototype and receive feedback. The characteristics of a good usability test are the following:
- Users can easily learn to use the product.
- Users can use the product quickly and efficiently.
- Users can remember how to use the product after they return it.
- There are no bugs and errors that require resolving.
- The product offers a satisfying experience.
According to an Adobe survey, about 50% of the design professionals surveyed said that uncovering usability issues helped them the most during the testing phase. So this is a vital step in the product design project.
Once you meet these requirements, you can now create the final phase of your product. But if not, you should make the necessary adjustments to satisfy the needs and wants of the customers.
Final Thoughts
Product design is not an easy task. Companies or businesses invest in product design teams to create and develop a product that can solve a user problem and is aligned with their business goals.
If you don’t know how to start a product design, hopefully, this article guide helped you. Always remember that to start your product design project, you need to brainstorm with the team, define the product, conduct user research, sketch ideas, create a prototype, and test the prototype. Moreover, if there are no more problems with the product, or you have made the necessary adjustments to the product, that’s the best time to launch the final product.