Process map
Every product has its own unique fingerprint when it comes to the process behind how it was made. My own process is far from linear and looks more like spaghetti than a straight line. It's messy, leads in a lot of directions, and for every product, there's been at least one time where I'm afraid that I've created more of a mess than an actual contribution.
I wouldn't have it any other way. Product design is its own magnification of the human experience where each person has their own process and history.
Below is a (mostly) linear version of my own product design process and details about each step.
1. DEFINITION AND STRATEGY
Determining market fit
What exists out there already? Can we build something that improves the market 10x? What do we think we know? What are we sure we know? Most importantly, what do we not know?
Centralize our intelligence
The people we work with oftentimes know the problem best. Use that existing intelligence to ask questions we can use as a platform to ask deeper questions when we actually talk with real customers.
Interview customers
Who are they, really? What are their honest and pure motivations? What causes them pain? What are the most annoying parts of their current lived experience? How are we dramatically improving their way of life or their work? Remove acronyms and extra words to help create a safe space for people to communicate without having to find the right words.
Determine success
How will we know when our work is actually done? What are our specific, measurable (both quantifiably and qualitatively), achievable, realistic, and time bound objectives? When do we expect to accomplish certain tasks, who will do what, and when will confidence levels defined?
Build the team
Who is particularly passionate about this product, customer, or outcome? What are the ways that people on our team want to grow to develop existing skills, or learn new ones? Who have you worked with before that knows the problem space?
Seek real content and data
For me, finding real content is one of the most important (and challenging) parts of the design process. I think about all of the products I work on as being built with different materials sourced from different places. By knowing the shape of that data and materials, we can more confidently establish a viewpoint and step into our initial sketches. This is also an excellent way for teams like marketing, content strategy, and others that too often are only involved later on in the process contribute earlier on in the process. Involving teams early on gives everyone the chance to go deep into their own processes and ultimately, have a larger impact.
2. SLOW DESIGN
Sketch privately
Pen and paper creates an intimate place to call my own where I can get lost with no consequences. Letting my mind wander creates the space for new ways of thinking, or discovery of past memories to use again to solve a related or similar problem. Being alone and practicing Slow Design with analog materials is especially helpful for me when needing to think deeply about systematic products and product architectures with a broad scope. Candidly, I find that as an introvert, I find that generating some of those initial ideas in a private space also helps to come in with more confidence when it comes to our initial whiteboard sessions.
Whiteboard publicly
a public space where we feel comfortable being messy together with no exclusions possible solutions. This also creates opportunities for everyone, from team members to customers, to participate by drawing or writing something down to feel more involved.
Putting work on the board together also helps us run the problem through verbally which helps everyone on the team to express themselves in the medium they feel most comfortable in.
Seek inspiration
The first place I look for inspiration is also my compulsion: my information design scrapbooks. These cutouts from print publications from all over the world help reopen my mind up to the way any kind of content can be expressed.
I find travel to be another powerful way to reset creatively before or during a project. The sound of foreign languages spoken over an airport intercom seems to erase away constricting thought patterns.
In reality though, we find inspiration everywhere. The patterns in concrete that inspire our layouts. New colors that come from two objects blending together looking out the window of a train. Playing “what’s that typeface?” as we walk down a city block.
Diagram & wireframe
being wrong early on with design artifacts that don’t feel precious. Not diving in too early to full resolution views. Thinking about the product or experience spatially helps me and our team think about digital products in a real world way we can all relate to.
Define space and interaction
What are the spaces customers will inhabit when using the product and how will they get elsewhere or to a different and intended state? How will we guide them with intention to fulfill the job or task they’re looking to fulfill? How will we make people feel rewarded in different parts of the experience? When we think about the experience between customer and product as a transaction or conversation, when is the customer giving and what are we providing in return? Is what we’re providing in that transaction providing enough value to fulfill their desires that result in continued use of the product?
Hack prototypes
With real, or realistically fake content and data. This is a excellent time for our content strategy and marketing counterparts to feel involved early on. Embracing the imperfect and prioritizing real feedback over perfection. Knowing that what we initially put down on paper at this stage isn’t what the product will actually come out to be, but gets us all one step closer to getting there. Taking small wireframes and breathing life into them. Sharing confidence levels with product and engineering teams to transparently share where design is at any moment. Getting work up on the walls to create more opportunities for impromptu questions. Over-asking if people on the team have any questions.
3. LITTLE BIG DETAILS
Predict graceful states
What do we share with customers when they have no information to display? How do we use empty states as a way to upsell and introduce their first steps into this new space they’ve entered? Page loading is another interesting empty state to think about where we have a chance to create anticipation and remove the overhead of waiting for a view to load.
What do we display when a customer does something unexpected or incorrect with making people feel they did something wrong? What do we show when it’s the product that isn’t performing the way we intended? Are there any loopholes or ways for someone to game the system? Even then, we can’t anticipate every possible outcome, so what are our fallback messages?
Worst-case scenarios: where are our proposed layouts going to break in the most extreme cases? How will we manage views when there’s more content than an initial load or data call can handle? By placing focus on the 1st and 99th percentiles we reinforce empathy across the spectrum of customers using the product.
Specify
Communicate with our teams at the right time to say when we have high confidence in our proposals. That confidence comes in different intervals though. We might have high confidence in layouts but not type or color use. Maybe we have detail views figured out, but not overview pages. Giving our team the tools and specifications they need when it comes time for details before everything’s figured out creates smaller, achievable completed tasks to help us all feel continual success.
Animate
Our products and applications today have the opportunity (even expected) to feel like living products that feel more a part of our real world. By acknowledging opportunities to make our products feel alive, we create a connection with the humans using it. Animations and transitions can be an excellent way of fostering that connection.
4. SHIPPING
Prescribe joy
what are we making that people love with surprise and delight? What new information are we giving customers? What are we sharing that they didn’t already know or have already? What will they be able to do that they couldn’t do before?
Communicate internally & externally
The words we use to describe and name products with both customers and co-workers are so important. When we use different terms for the same thing it creates this subconscious tension that makes communication more difficult. When we share a common vocabulary both within our organizations and the customer experience it means more fluidity and, one less thing to worry about.
I’ve also found success in shaping internal culture by creating unique collateral for individual projects, design principles, or just swag that people are proud to use.
Gather customer feedback
where we determine where we’re right, but more importantly, where we’re wrong? Here, we’re not just asking questions, but asking for their help to build a new or better product they would actually use. Emphasizing there won’t be hurt feelings and open honesty is the most important information.
Iterate
I firmly believe in the importance of shipping something that, at first doesn’t feel perfect. By balancing speed, quality, and impact in our product design releases, we responsibly create opportunities for real feedback from real customers. While we don’t always have the advantage of immediately iterating on our initial version, we can document potential improvements realized from real customer feedback.