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.
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