DEV Community: Kauri Africa

6 THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN STARTING YOUR FIRST PROJECT IN PRODUCT DESIGN

Kauri Africa — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 13:12:00 +0000

TABLE OF CONTENT

What is product design?
Six step guide to starting a product design project.

What is product design?

The process of creating a new product for sale to customers is known as product design. The product design expert works with art, science and technology to create these products. In the case of designing complex products as an application, the process of product design may involve dozens of professionals such as graphic designers, UX designers, animators, marketing specialists, business analysts, user behavior researchers etc.

It is a complex multi-step process at the junction of engineering, management, and graphics. It provides a comprehensive understanding of what the final product would look like and what tasks and with what problems the product is looking to solve.

Here are six (6) steps to guide you when starting your product design project;

Define the product

Always brainstorm to arrive at this stage so as too have a clear cut definition of a product, one needs to perceive and highlight general expectations for adequate implementation. The output is an abstract list.

The activity is not targeted at perfection but rather gathering a fair idea about what actions and directions to take as a team.

Conduct a user research

User research deals with several aspects that include; market research to define the presence of competitors, the definition of trends, the assessment of the product’s prospective longevity, etc.

This task is mostly done by business research analysts and marketers. The research provides grounds to study and build what the consumer wants and render a better understanding to you, developing the product.

A well thought out research should make available the following details; gender, age, marital status, income level, place of residence (geography), employment, job position, typical problems, needs, fears, and desires etc.

Sketch

Coordinate a sketch to have a clearer view of the direction the product is going to take on a significant budget. Sketch narrows down the direction when choosing a specific concept, composition, layouts, edits, refinement of concept etc.

Prototype

Create a prototype knowing that the result obtained isn’t the beautiful final appearance but rather the skeleton of the product's future usage. The creation of the prototype allows the avoidance of lofty errors and corrections in the future.

This helps save time, money and nerves both the consumer and the designer.

Specifications

The list of specifications is the process that involves the requirement specific elaboration. It allows reviewing all the requirements for the finished product and possible solutions in maximizing details.

These specifications should contain the final delimitation of responsibilities, deadlines, and costs. These documents would be essential at the product development stage.

Sample Testing

Testing samples helps in timely identifying the flaws of the product inconsistencies with the requirements of specifications before you even begin an expensive procedure of its implementation.

Manufacturing and testing the samples can be iterated as much as needed until they correspond to all the requirements and gain enough of the positive feedback from customers.

In conclusion, designing any product is quite complicated. Its requirement involves the participation of diverse specialists. That is why it is important to note down these key things to help your product design thought process.

BUILDING AMAZING PRODUCTS WITH THE RIGHT DESIGN CHOICES.

Kauri Africa — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 12:07:14 +0000

Product design is the process of imagining, creating and iterating problems to solve the needs of users and meet the business goals in a given market. The art of building can be seen as a way of communicating or solving a problem.

Sometimes it takes a very long time to come up with design specifications for the right product. All this is due to the weight of the project and purpose.

Design always puts the “user” first in everything. There are two aspects to product design.

They are;

User Interface Design (UI)
User Experience Design (UX)

All starting with the word “user” obviously cements the former explanation to user centering. Every product is built to suit a user’s purpose, style and preference. A perfect product combines the two aspects to achieve a complete and perfect package to user satisfaction.

There are also some things to consider when building functional products. These are aesthetics, ergonomics, modularity, materials etc. These aforementioned elements help in the way the design appears and looks always with the user in mind.

User Interface (UI)

User Interface is defined as communication between two or more things more so human-computer interaction in a device or product. This way through which the user interacts with the product, application or website.

The UI is often talked about in conjunction with user experience UX, which may include the aesthetic appearance of the device, response time and the content that is presented to the user within the context of the user interface.

User Experience (UX)

User Experience is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, service or system. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother.
The addition of simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own and a joy to use. User experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features.

The right amount of everything makes a design a perfect fit for a product. Making the right choices and reassessing whatever is needed to make a product work to the users advantage whether it’s a mobile or web application.

THE IRONY OF BEING A FULL STACK DEVELOPER

Kauri Africa — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 11:11:14 +0000

Table of content

Everyone wants to be called a fullstack developer
The irony, the struggle and the risk
Why not just be called a developer?

Everyone wants to be called a full stack developer.

In this blog, i will be talking about how being a full stack developer evolves and behaves. I always wonder momentarily and ask myself what all these developer titles really mean and its effects on how well people work.

I also had a hard time figuring out how one person could do a lot and still be called something of worth and even be paid measurably. Over the years, there hasn’t been a single moment where I have never questioned if one man could do it all.

There was a time I wondered if one person could have all the knowledge about software. People get the impression once they can code a bit of front-end and back-end, it makes them specialists in all fields of code.

Having spoken to a few professionals, it is a fallacy, a joke and requires some level of decorum to help survive in the nerdy world of 0s and 1s.

The irony, the struggle and the risk.

The whole farce about being a fullstack developer is like slippery slop, blind spot and needle in a hay stack to all the things that matter. Full stack development is said to be the combination of front-end, back-end and maybe devOps, cloud computing and data. That is where most people miss out on the point. DevOps is a new discovery in recent times.

A devop has basic knowledge of both IT development and software. Knowing how well everything operates and how to make products and software work to the satisfaction of the people involved both on the side of creation and usage.

These technologies come with loads of frameworks and tools. These include that of front-end, back-end and DevOps. Siting some examples of these tools and frameworks, js front end frameworks, .net blazor, HTML, CSS, PHP, Java, Laravel, C++, C#, Microsoft Azure DevOps etc.

All this in the mind of one man? Not a chance. I mean it is slightly possible but there could be a lot of short falls and challenges. Challenges which might include, limited time, new developments, opportunity to specialize and several others.

Why not just a “developer'' instead?

If there was a choice of which there is, I believe being called a developer with no extra appellation keeps things very open and teachable. There is always a thin line between being a Pro and a Beginner.

In a case where titles don’t dictate how well you perform, there is much more effort in performance which has been statistically proven on work ethics. In the end, the goal is to build awesome products as a developer.

Titles don’t prove whether or not you’re good, the work does.