Designing a product from a basic concept to a fully functioning system is a highly complex process, involving layers and layers of decisions. It’s a process that can quickly become overwhelming, draining time, energy and money from a founder and their team. So how do you avoid getting lost in the weeds? The answer is: research.
If you’ve read parts 1, 2 and 3 of this blog series, you’ll know that research always comes before design. Why? Because any design that happens before research will be based on guesses and assumptions - it won’t be informed by evidence and understanding of what users need. If you then test that design with users and find it doesn’t work, it can be hard, if not impossible, to figure out why. Design decisions get tangled up with each other, making it difficult to figure out which one was the wrong one. Is the overall concept flawed, or did one particular feature fall flat? Is the structure confusing or are users rejecting the entire idea?
It shows you quickly whether an idea has any potential and allows you to pivot before time and money is wasted on developing a flawed concept. It’s far easier to decide how a product should look and function when you know what users need, expect and want
Using research to structure the design process
Once you’ve verified your idea is a good one, done some basic research and gathered key information on your users, the next step is to use the insights you’ve generated to create a product that fits what your users need. This is an iterative process, where each decision and change is tested with users and verified before a new decision is made. Designing iteratively ensures that you flag up issues quickly, without the need to dig back through multiple changes to identify failures.
When you’re designing and testing your product, you need to consider two different aspects - what the product delivers as a whole, in terms of purpose and value, and how the product functions, i.e. structure, screens and functionality. While they’re closely related, they also need to be looked at separately. For a product to be truly successful, both the concept and execution have to work for users.
Design and test quickly and cheaply
Don’t be lured into building a complex and costly MVP too soon. Start as simply as you can - paper prototyping is a very cheap and quick way to rapidly run through different layouts and structures with users. Once you have a good idea of how the product should function, you can progress to building wireframes, using tools like Figma. Don’t worry too much about branding, or look and feel - these are important, but to begin with you should focus on functionality.
The key questions you should consider when testing designs is:
-
Do users understand what the product does? Is the concept clear to them?
-
Do they identify ways in which they could use the product in their lives?
-
Do they talk about how this product could fit into their current processes/way of doing things?
-
Does the structure of the product make sense to them? Do they feel anything is missing?
-
If asked to complete a simple task, do they understand how to move from one screen to another? Are there any points of confusion?
The obvious benefit of testing regularly is that it quickly flags up features and changes that users don’t want or need, ensuring that you don’t waste time building things that don’t have a future. A less obvious but more valuable benefit is that seeing a person engage with your product brings it to life, allowing you to see how it might exist as a real product. Having a more realistic idea of how your product will function allows you to identify issues such as rigid workflows or regulatory barriers that might not have otherwise been obvious. It also throws up potential opportunities and ideas that wouldn’t have occurred to you in isolation. In short, it allows you to see into the future, cutting out the guesswork that tends to result in startups getting distracted and bogged down.
Need help planning and running your research and testing processes? The Nightingale team are experts at getting great ideas to market.
Get in touch for advice or research support. Sign up to the newsletter to get latest updates delivered to your mailbox.
