Product Design Tools And Techniques Pdf

Product Design: Process, Tools and techniques

Frequently asked questions on Product Design

The goal of this story:

If you are curious to know everything that Product design involves then this story is for you.
If you have gone through the internet and found some ideas on product ideas and jargons and not sure where to start then this is for you.
If you are already practicing Product design techniques and want to know other techniques then this can be helpful to you.

Introduction to Product Design

Q1- What key problems it solves?

Whether you are in a startup or in Large/Medium scale organization the need to reach the market faster is critical for business. When there are multiple ideas floating around the biggest problem that organizations face today is to identify and decide the best idea in which they should invest in.

Q2- Why product design is important?

The implementation of a new product requires a series of activities. Typically the product goes through the phases like idea generation, idea screening, concept development and testing, marketing strategy, business analysis, product development, test marketing, and commercialization. Each of them has a large uncertainty in the results and considerable cost associated.

Validating the Idea on all aspects (Desirability/ Feasibility/Viability) is crucial before organizations should actually start building products. Especially in the case of Software products, where business/technology changes every day the decision process for validating the idea must be based on Product Design process which will provide value to organization.

Many innovative new products don't succeed in the marketplace. One common reason: Companies don't focus enough on understanding how customers evaluate products and make purchase decisions.

-https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/why-great-new-products-fail/

Q3- What exactly is Product design?

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told,Make it look good! That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. — Steve Jobs

An idea at its core is just a thought which requires to be analyzed critically in all aspects. Product Design is one way which allows Ideas to become concrete - Something which can be executed for customers /users to get the values.
All the digital products which are available today are built with a purpose to solve the critical issues which users face.
We do design for people who will use the products so that they can achieve their goals.
We do design as this is the first thing that the user notice when they see the product. Users can form an opinion about the product by just looking at the product design.
Design is not only about color, layout, pixels but much more than that. It is about understanding the users' journey, their thought processes and fulfilling their needs.

Look at your frequently used apps/products and ask yourself "Why do I use those products/apps"

Source- http://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-statistics/#3

Tools and Techniques

Q4- What tools and techniques to be used to design a feature/product?

Tools/Techniques to design a product revolves around people and their goal. We build the product for users to help them achieve their goal. It is important to understand who we are building for? Why would they use the product?

Some techniques to look for derived from user-centric design principle:

User story

Who is the user?
What is it they need?
Why do they need it?

Persona

Persona goes deep in detailing the user group.

For example- This medium publication platform has a number of categories under which stories are created. Users with specific interest will go into that specific category to explore the stories.

What type of users will go for the paid plan and who will go for a free subscription. This understanding of user group will trigger more conversation which in turn will allow in understanding the problem/issues and ultimately for product design.

Emotional thinking

Take the example of Medium again, let's say you published a story and you start getting claps then it connects emotionally to you. You feel happy.

And let's say you have done a lot of hard work and written a story and don't want the product to lose the data then this is also somehow linked to emotion.

The product when designed with this emotional thinking often succeeds. Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn's " like" button is another example of connecting to users emotionally.

Simplicity

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to1,000 things.

Steve Jobs

Simplicity means doing one thing in a product which would differentiate your product from all others. Simplicity is to keep asking this question until you get fully convinced.

This one thing should be clear, concise and simple to explain to anyone.

Usability Testing

Let's say you released a movie and it had comedy, thriller and emotional scenes. You as a director would expect your audience to react the way movie is made. In the comedy scene, they should laugh, in the emotional scenes, they must get emotional. What if this does not happen in reality!!

This means your movie making has flaws which need to be corrected. You can relate usability testing with this.

Usability testing focuses on measuring a human-made product's capacity to meet its intended purpose.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing

Out of all these which one is critical and which one to consider is left to you to decide. It is recommended to go through each of these during the design process. Which brings us to the next question, how quickly these techniques can be performed and what should be the process.

Q5- What Process we need to do Product Design?

The goal of the team doing the product design would be to:

Quickly come up with a product prototype listing the features, design to illustrate the product functioning?
And get business funding
And reach the market faster

There are multiple processes defined in Product Design:

Agile UX
Lean UX
Design Thinking

But here I will be talking on a process called "Design Sprint"

Design Sprint a quick Overview

Day1: Define the Problem and agree on the long term Goal

Day2: Learn the solutions — Emphasises critical thinking

Day3: Criticise the solution and agree on the best solution matching the long term goal. Create Storyboard: a step-by-step plan for your prototype.

Day4: Turn that storyboard into a prototype. The goal is to focus on the customer-facing surface of your product or service and finish your prototype in just one day.

Day 5: Interview your customers and learn by watching them react to your prototype.

At the end of the day, you'll know how far you have to go, and you'll know just what to do next.

A quick note on a Design sprint

While the process might give you a feeling that you can achieve things quickly but it may not be the case if we don't do these things:

Before starting the sprint, it is important to Know your team who will be part of this. Their understanding level and motivation.
Defining the problem on the first day would work is the subject matter experts have given heads up around it so they come prepared on the questions on the business, technical or market-related.
A great facilitator is a key to success of such sprint who will drive things towards the goal of each day. The facilitator needs to know the specific action items and goals.
Who will finally approve or reject? While voting is a good idea of coming to a consensus. We should never ignore the solutions which were also discussed.
What happens after the sprint is over? What deliverables come up and how to take things forward to execution.

Conclusion

While I tried to answer many of the questions it is important to know the basics. Process/techniques may differ but if the fundamentals are strong then a product design has to be successful.

A design like any other creative work is an iterative process and requires a lot of thinking in coming to a simple yet valuable solution.
Design helps in defining the interaction of the user with product and users communicate with the product.

Reference reading