Getting Design Right - Guide for Product Teams

When it comes to creating successful products, design matters. However, product design is no longer your typical sketching an outline or designing a cool interface.

In fact, product design today has transcended beyond aesthetics, having evolved into a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach to creating new products from concept to finish. It involves a systematic process of understanding the needs and expectations of users' problems and designing solutions that help them achieve their goals.

If you're on a product team and looking to get design right, this guide can help. From the basic principles of product design to the nitty-gritty details, we'll cover everything you need for digital product design. So let’s get started!

Getting the Basics Right - Principles of Successful Product Design

Your product design journey should start with understanding the principles behind successful product design. Here are some key points to keep in mind:

• Focus on your user:

Always keep your user at the centre of your design process. This way, you'll be able to create a product tailored to their needs and meets their expectations. For example, if your user base is mainly seniors, ensure you incorporate easy-to-use features for them.

Equally important is the need to fine-tune product design based on data and feedback before your competitor does it before you do.

• Deliver seamless experiences:

It’s natural to encounter obstacles during our digital experiences. But a good design can smooth out the bumps and make it a seamless experience.

The essence of successful product design is simplicity - intuitive navigation, instant load times, and efficient and precise instructions are all key user-centric components that make experiences productive and memorable.

• Emphasis on value-creation:

While it's easy to fall prey to fanciful features, most users are mainly looking for value-add features to their digital experience. Where value enriches experiences, fancy features often distract from the core offering.

A good example is movie streaming platforms that provide users with an enjoyable experience by focusing on the core offering and providing value by delivering a great user experience.

• Leverage data:

While an intuitive approach may work in the early stages of product design, it’s critical to have a practical outlook at some point. Qualitative and quantitative data can help you gain insights and create products that offer meaningful user interaction.

Not only will data broaden your perspective of your user behaviour and mindsets and help refine and respond with more user-specific offerings. So rest assured; the results are worth it!

• Maintain consistency and form:

Consistency promotes a coherent user flow. For example, using the same color scheme, font sizes, and page layouts throughout will help create a sense of familiarity as users progress through your product.

So, while consistency promotes intuitive experiences and helps with branding, an evident visual hierarchy draws the user’s attention to the critical offering.

For this reason, big and bold call-to-action buttons, the three-line menu icon in the corner of the screen, and the back-to-top button are all practical design elements that improve your user's journey.

Helpful Hints for a Successful Product Design Strategy

• Have clarity about your product:

Before getting to the drawing board, the product team must answer critical questions about what they’re building, its features, the purpose, the target group, and the problems their product will solve.

Likewise, the team should identify the roadmap to achieving the vision for the different digital interfaces their users will engage with, for example, websites, mobile app development software, and others.

Conceptual clarity is crucial to ensure the team agrees on the common goal. In addition, your vision should help arrive at a unique solution your users seek. Notably, strategies to get there can be more flexible.

• Research your users and the competitive landscape:

The design team should spare no effort to learn about the product’s users. Interviews and online surveys are effective ways to get useful insights. 

At the same time, competitive analysis is equally essential to understand the landscape design approach of your peers. This will help you identify opportunities to surpass your competition through a superior product design. Likewise, research products that may not be in the same category but still can provide a solution just like your product.

• Analyze data:

Once the teams collect user data, it's time to collate, analyze and infer it. For example, user personas and empathy maps are effective ways to get insights.

User personas are characters created to represent a synthesis of different users who will likely use the product in a similar way. Designers can use these personas as a reference point throughout the design process. Personas also come in handy during ideation, where understanding user goals and motivations helps shape the final product.

Likewise, empathy maps enable the team to gain a holistic understanding of users and drive the design process.

• Ideate:

Things begin to get interesting from here on! The team brainstorms, collaborate and use various techniques and methods to integrate user interactions, design solutions, and product information. It also allows the design team to assess their initial concepts against the research. Ideation typically involves:

1. Mapping user interactions: User journey maps and storyboards enable the product design teams to visualize user interactions with the product. Notably, journey maps may vary according to the complexity of the product, the context, and the design goals. 

Likewise, storyboards enable designers to empathize with the values of the user. Designers can also understand how products fit into their users' lives by developing short narrative experiences based on user personas.

1. Categorizing product information:

Information architecture (IA)enables design teams to structure the product’s information. This impacts the hierarchies, menus, navigation, and other elements of the product. A robust IA allows users to understand where they are and where they need to go to accomplish their goals.

Card sorting is a commonly used method to help categorize information. It throws light on user expectations about information grouping.

1. Sketching and wireframes:

During ideation, designers typically sketch potential solutions, generating several ideas and approaches simultaneously. This helps come up with solutions that may not have been obvious previously.

Similarly, wireframes, which reflect the design structure, hierarchy, and layout, allow a comprehensive understanding of the product. By clearly defining the design elements and layout, wireframes enable designers to explain their idea to cross-functional stakeholders and remote teams visually and concisely.

1. Validation using design sprints:

Regardless of the ideation process, designers should always validate their ideas with users to identify any disconnect between the design team’s idea and user requirements. Design sprints are short, focused workshops (typically five days) that help validate ideas quickly and efficiently.

On consecutive days, the designer moves through design sprint phases such as understanding user needs, sketching, prototyping, and testing with real users.

In the initial stages of ideation, design sprints play a crucial role in helping the product design team focus on customer needs and develop creative solutions. In contrast, ineffective solutions are identified and discarded.

1. Actual product design:

Now that the team has a better understanding of expectations from design solutions, teams start to complete the final designs for onward progress to the development team. The developers are provided with design specs, including thorough information product interface, for example, colours, fonts, typefaces, illustrations, animation details, user flows, product behavior, and even concise measurements. In some cases, product design teams have to deliver usable prototypes.

1. Run usability tests and design validation:

After product development, the design begins testing and validation to determine the product’s effectiveness and observe user behavior not previously predicted.

Usability testing generally enables design teams to validate the product’s design with target users and document user interactions first-hand. In addition, qualitative data is obtained through verbal and non-verbal feedback to determine the user’s satisfaction and pain points, if any.

If any significant issue arises during this stage, the development team may try to fix it or return to the design stage. Regardless, the testing stage repeats until a robust final product is developed.

1. Post-launch adjustments:

From adding new features to monitoring changes in user needs and implementing enhancements, a product designer’s job continues even after the main launch. 

For example, A/B testing is often used by design teams. For this purpose, the designers implement two competing designs and assign them to an equal number of users randomly. The analytics tools help measure the performance of the designs, and by understanding how users interact with the products, designers can make better decisions.

Pain Points - Common Challenges in Product Design

As with most areas of product development, there are some obstacles to successful design. Here are the five most common issues teams encounter:

• Lack of objectivity: Designers often get attached to their ideas and overlook the limitations of their design. It’s important to step back and be objective to identify areas for improvement. Using objectives, key results, and/or KPIs, you can put design choices into perspective and quickly identify areas that need improvement.
• Due diligence vs. Cost control: It's important to balance quality and cost. Nonetheless, it’s essential to research the best method and do your due diligence to achieve the desired design outcomes in the long run. Also, you'll be able to differentiate from competitors by offering high-quality design.
• User research: Convincing your finance and budget team about the need for user research can be challenging. But gathering user feedback while the design is still in progress will ensure that you create something your customers will like and use.

Furthermore, implementing user research when access is limited can be challenging. Identify potential collaborators with user research data access to get the insights you need. If not, waiting until you can access the correct information may be better.

• Leveraging insights: Often, the biggest challenge lies in capturing relevant user data and translating it into the actionable design. Here's where expert design teams should weed out irrelevant information and focus on elements that eventually help in improving user experience and consequently help the business grow.

Common Mistakes to Avoid During Product Design

You're likely to run into a few bumps on the way - it's part of the design process. Here are some common mistakes to steer clear of to keep your project running smoothly: 

• Bypassing feedback:

It's tempting to believe that you have all the answers, but feedback is a valuable part of any design project. It's the only way to create a product that hits the mark and resonates with your customer. In the digital space, the design-test-refine cycle is essential.

• Poor scalability:

Complex designs are beautiful but can also be hard to scale. When creating a product, think about how well it will work on different platforms and devices. The last thing you want is for your design to become a technical nightmare that's difficult to maintain.

• Confusing hierarchy:

Prioritizing content and structuring navigation in a clear hierarchy makes it easier for customers to find what they need quickly

For example, one common mistake in apps and websites is the confusing hierarchy in assigning call-to-action buttons, resulting in users clicking on a less critical CTA. Even if you have multiple CTAs, make sure the most important one stands out and is easy to identify. Use colour, size, position, and such design principles to ensure your users click the right button.

Conclusion

Design is an integral part of product development, and it's important to get it right if you truly believe in building functional, user-centred products. 

By assessing the risks in advance, researching your users, leveraging insights, and avoiding common mistakes, you can create products that will give your customers a great experience.

Most importantly, remember that good design is not just about making something look nice - it's about creating a meaningful experience for your customers. With this guide as a reference, you can ensure success for every design project you tackle.

Keywords are Design, Product Design, Design Strategy, Product development,  Product development design strategy, the design strategy for product development