A Team Skilled in All Areas of Product Design and Development

Why Smart Product Design Matters 

In a world where consumers expect digital products to be flashy, fast, and easy to use, thoughtful product design is more important than ever. 

Providing great products and services is the lifeblood of any modern business; creativity, innovation, and empathy are expected at every turn. These same attributes are a big part of the software design process.

What Is Product Design?

Simply put, product design is creating or iterating on a product (digital or physical) that a business or other organization can sell or share with its customers or stakeholders. 

Beyond this, product design is a comprehensive process. It involves generating ideas and creating products that fill an identified market opportunity and solve user problems or needs. (More on that in a second.)

Then vs. Today

Once upon a time, product design was solely about designing physical consumer products. But now that we live in an exceedingly digital world, product design includes software products. Think app design, website design, and platform UX/UI.

Product designers closely consider user needs and the business’s goals when creating such products for brands. The goal is to provide solutions through an optimal user experience. At the same time, product design is about building software that sustains the brand’s long-term needs.

What Does the Product Design Process Look Like?

Every product design process can look differently, depending on the project, user, and brand. Here are four steps most often involved:

1. Before the Design: Nailing Down the Product Vision

The first step of product design happens before any hands-on designing happens. It’s about making sure the product idea matches consumer demand. (Remember, we want to stay human-centered at every step.)

This can include connecting with users, stakeholders, product managers, and subject matter experts to identify opportunities (i.e. problem areas that need solutions). Product designers should clearly understand users’ goals, needs, motivations, and more.

From here, you’ll have a firm grasp on the product vision and what you want to achieve with the product. 

This stage often involves a kickoff meeting, where everyone comes together to set expectations and goals, and create an outline for the design process. However, kickoff meetings can also happen at different stages in the process.

2. Conducting User and Product Research

You can’t go into product design blind (and still deliver a thoughtful, useful product). That’s why, even with the project vision defined, you still need to research. 

Product designers will conduct user research to understand what your users really need (rather than their presumed needs). The process might involve online surveys, in-person interviews, market research, competitor research, and/ or contextual inquiry.

During the research phase, designers will also create personas based on the target user, complete with details about the user’s job, location, personality, and more. User analysis ensures the team always considers how users think and what they need. 

According to the Interaction Design Foundation, creating user personas with actual data and some made-up details to induce empathy is best.

3. Ideation and Brainstorming

During the brainstorming or ideation step, your Revelry team will develop innovative ideas for the project. Sketching, mapping, storyboarding, and user stories are examples of visualizing the interface and user journey when using the product.

4. Prototyping, Testing, and Redefining

Once your product team knows the product they want to create, the design phase can begin. A prototype — an experimental product model that can be reviewed and tested — is created. 

Digital products will typically involve interactive digital prototypes that people can interact with. Feedback is gathered, and the team pinpoints areas that might need clarification or redefinition.

Using low-fidelity prototypes allows a team to perform usability testing as soon as possible, often saving a lot of resources and time. A product team might then move on to the more refined high-fidelity prototype based on the brand’s vision.

The process is hands-on, creative, and challenges old thought processes. Instead of focusing on just how the product looks or feels, a product designer looks at how the product impacts the entire user experience.

They’re facing the entire process with both eyes open for what’s most effective, efficient, and user-focused.

Get a UX Audit, People!

As you can see, product design is a thorough, involved process with various (and varying) steps. Keep in mind that it’s not a linear process; a product team will base their strategy on the specific of the product’s vision and goals. And the user is always at the center of the product’s design and function.

At Revelry, we help businesses improve processes that are barriers to their full potential. Our Lean Agile process optimizes our workflows, trims the fat, and delivers the best results in scalable digital products for companies worldwide.

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