Behind every seamless digital product lies a robust design process. Consider Spotify, a global leader in the music streaming industry with more than 626 million users. Spotify’s success can be attributed to its meticulous product design approach, which is based on user-centric design, data-driven decision-making, and a commitment to continuous improvement.
By contrast, a weak product design process can significantly harm the user experience, functionality, and overall success of a product or service—failed product launches can cost companies millions, or billions, in direct losses, stock drops, and public sentiment.
Product designers are pivotal in crafting compelling and successful digital products that accommodate business needs and key user preferences. They expertly carry out user research, ideation, testing, and iterative processes to create immersive and enjoyable digital experiences tailored to a particular customer segment.
As a senior product designer with extensive experience in B2B, B2C, and SaaS enterprise solutions, I have worked with various product design processes throughout my career. During that time, I have found six activities that have consistently proven successful for my clients and their customers. Here, I dive into my framework for implementing these activities and offer some best practices for exceptional product design.
6 Steps to Successful Product Design
There are several product design frameworks, such as the four-stage double diamond method (discover, define, develop, and deliver) and five-day design sprints, that use design thinking to reduce risks when bringing a new product, service, or feature to the market. No matter your approach to designing products, it should include the following six essential design activities: defining product goals, research and analysis, ideation and content development, prototyping, testing and gathering feedback, and design handoff. Let’s take a look at each of these.
1. Defining Product Goals
Whether you are launching a new product or handling a redesign, defining your product goals sets the foundation for the entire product design process. Product goals are measurable, time-bound objectives that clarify the product’s purpose and desired outcomes. A lack of well-defined goals increases the likelihood of misaligned efforts, feature creep, and inefficient resource allocation. This can lead to failure to meet real user needs or achieve business objectives, as evidenced in the case of Google Glass—the splashy wearable tech that ultimately didn’t appeal to users.
When companies set out to develop digital products, they typically focus on goals like revenue generation, user satisfaction, and scalability. To gather insights and align on the product vision, product teams conduct stakeholder interviews and hold workshops or kickoff meetings. These activities should yield the answers to three key questions:
- What do we want to achieve?
- When do we want to achieve it?
- How will we measure if the goal was achieved in terms of quantifiable success metrics?
The answers to these questions guide the formation of clear and actionable goals. Product teams may also use goal-setting frameworks such as SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound—to help create meaningful objectives.
Product development tools also aid in documenting and tracking product goals, making defining clear objectives and metrics easier. For example, Aha! is product roadmap software that supports a structured approach to goal setting, allowing users to track specific objectives and key results (OKRs).
What is the payoff for well-defined product goals? Among other things, teams clearly understand what they are aiming to achieve, leading to focused design efforts and effective decision-making throughout the design process. When redesigning the minimum viable product (MVP) for Chaka, now a leading online investment platform in Nigeria, the design team faced a high drop-off rate during onboarding. Our product redesign goals, therefore, revolved around improving our onboarding experience and converting new customers into active users. Following the redesign, which began with clearly defining our product vision, our active user base grew to 300,000 users, and Chaka raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding within two years.
2. Research and Analysis
Conducting thorough research and analyzing relevant information helps designers make informed decisions and ensure that the final product effectively meets user expectations. Teams that don’t conduct comprehensive research will end up with products that fail to target user pain points, align with market needs, or stand out from competitors.
Research methods such as user surveys, competitive analysis, and market research are complemented by tools such as user personas and empathy maps to organize and visualize findings effectively. User personas represent target users based on research data, guiding the product design team toward user-centric goals and informed product decisions. Empathy maps capture and categorize end users’ sentiments, behaviors, and pain points, helping teams understand and empathize with their experiences. For example, mapping user frustrations with elements of the booking process on a hotel website aids teams in identifying specific aspects of the design that need to be improved, such as the checkout flow.
Before we launched the MVP for CoverAI, a web application for job seekers, we conducted research using desk research methodologies to ensure our product was responding to market needs. We first performed market research and competitive analysis, studying competitor products, pricing strategies, and positioning to identify gaps in the market. A market trend analysis then revealed cover letter creation as a significant frustration in job applications. To address this issue, we focused our MVP on making cover letter writing easier. This research enabled us to launch our MVP in less than two weeks and acquire 15,000 customers in three months with no customer acquisition cost.
I also recommend implementing design thinking in the research phase. This human-centered design approach fosters empathy and encourages designers to actively address user needs by employing methods such as user interviews and observation, which are instrumental in capturing the nuances of user behavior, motivations, and challenges. However you approach the research phase, remember that an effective research strategy helps uncover valuable insights and minimizes the likelihood of flawed solutions.
3. Ideation and Concept Development
The ideation phase is crucial in product design as it facilitates creativity and the exploration of innovative solutions. Successful ideation encourages imagination and experimentation, laying the groundwork for developing compelling design concepts that resonate with users and align with business goals.
Brainstorming sessions, mind maps, and mood boards are common product idea generation techniques. I suggest generating as many ideas as possible so that you can explore a wide range of concepts and possibilities. Ideally, your team will have members with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to ensure that a more comprehensive set of potential solutions is explored.
Once you’ve generated a range of ideas, you need to select the most viable concepts by prioritizing them based on previously identified constraints and the solution’s feasibility and projected impact. Three widely used ideation prioritization techniques are MoSCow, RICE, and Kano. I focus on MoSCoW here, as I’ve used it most often.
The MoSCoW technique stands for Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, and Won’t-have. When redesigning the Chaka mobile app home screen, we used MoSCoW to prioritize our features. Our research highlighted several areas for improvement, including making it easier for users to switch between global and local stocks; providing an easily viewable chart of their portfolio performance over time; and allowing access to other items important to users (referrals, watchlists, and trending stocks, etc.). Based on the customer behavior insights we collected, I created MoSCoW quadrants and plotted our customers’ needs in must-have (M), should-have (S), could-have (C), or won’t-have (W) boxes. This helped us quickly determine our most important and urgent features (our must-haves) for the home screen: global and local stock views, trending stocks, and the latest news stories.
4. Prototyping
The prototyping phase allows product designers to visualize concepts, test a product’s functionality, and gather feedback early in the design process. Without prototyping, there is a risk of developing products that do not align with user expectations, leading to potential usability issues and costly revisions later on; this was the case with the 2014 launch of a flawed Apple Maps, which led to a formal apology by CEO Tim Cook after users complained about the service’s geographic errors and information gaps.
In the early stages of design, when I am outlining the primary structure of a webpage or an app’s core navigation, I begin with simple paper sketches or low-fidelity wireframes. Paper sketching, a key aspect of my creative process, enables quick visualization and easy modification. Other popular tools for creating low-fi wireframes include MockFlow, Justinmind, and Flinto. As project complexity increases, utilizing tools like Figma, Sketch, and InVision will allow you to build and showcase high-fidelity prototypes. Showcasing hi-fi prototypes is a method often used in data visualization and multistep processes that require user-input verification, such as user registration or password reset flows.
When projects demand an in-depth simulation of the final product, designers can create promptframes. These advanced prototypes blend functionality, layout, and AI-generated cues, such as instructional text and call-to-action buttons, to guide user interactions within a product interface. This method can provide contextual guidance or enable real-time interactions for potential users or stakeholders. For instance, in telemedicine applications featuring medication reminders and virtual consultations, a lifelike demonstration might be necessary to illustrate how the platform enriches patient care.
Well-designed prototypes are powerful communication tools for showcasing a product’s potential and functionality to stakeholders and clients. At SBSC, a software consulting firm, I collaborated with business developers on several occasions to create clickable prototypes that we used when bidding on project contracts. Our interactive prototypes ensured we won three of those bids. Now, at WriteSea, an AI-enabled career services platform, we use prototypes in our sales calls to show prospective customers the product roadmap’s features and also in our user research sessions to get early feedback.
5. Testing and Gathering Feedback
User testing is conducted throughout the product design process, but testing prototypes produces the most effective results as it provides instant value to the design team. Testing prototypes allows design teams to validate concepts, identify user experience issues, and gather qualitative feedback before the product is fully developed. This iterative process helps prevent costly changes post-launch and ensures the product is functional and aligned with user needs and expectations.
User testing incorporates stakeholders and target users into the prototyping process to collect a range of perspectives and insights. Specific methods include conducting usability testing sessions, gathering feedback through surveys, interviews, or focus groups, analyzing user interactions with prototypes, and observing user behavior to identify pain points and areas for improvement. Teams can also use tools like UserTesting and Userlytics to capture user feedback, and heat mapping software like Hotjar and Crazy Egg to track and analyze user interactions on websites or applications.
User testing must be well organized to ensure that the insights gained lead to meaningful improvements. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I led the redesign of a purchase flow for a virtual trade expo for the online loan provider CoopLag—a redesign that yielded a 330% increase in company revenue three weeks after launch. Transitioning from a physical trade expo to a virtual one involved leveraging technology to create an efficient and intuitive online experience. In particular, CoopLag wanted to ensure secure online transactions for attendees and vendors.
The design team conducted test sessions with a selection of the event’s vendors, promoters, and target users to ensure that they could manage online transactions without any constraints. We held repeated sessions to evaluate product performance, gather key user feedback, and identify usability issues over time. To help keep us organized throughout the testing phase, we created a test plan.
In general, a user testing strategy can be broken down into five stages:
Define Objectives and Scope
Start by establishing your goals and objectives for the testing phase, such as identifying usability issues or evaluating specific features. Then, define the scope of the test plan, including the target audience, testing methodologies, devices, platforms, and features to be tested.
Identify Test Scenarios and Tasks
Next, you need to develop user testing scenarios that mimic real-world interactions, such as payment processing or product ordering, to assess how users engage with the product. Be sure to determine specific tasks that users will be asked to perform, focusing on critical user flows, key features, and potential pain points. For example, validate whether users can add items to their cart and complete their purchase without errors.
Determine Testing Methods and Tools
Choose a testing method, such as moderated or unmoderated usability testing, A/B testing, or beta testing. You can use testing tools and resources, such as screen recording software, survey tools, or heat mapping tools, to facilitate data collection and analysis.
Recruit Participants
Identify and recruit participants who match the target user demographics and have varying levels of experience with similar products. Ensure that an adequate number of participants are recruited for the testing sessions. While there is no fixed rule for the number of users to test, your budget, feature complexity, and user testing methods are important factors to consider.
Create a Testing Schedule and Reporting Structure
Establish a timeline for conducting testing sessions, including each session’s dates, times, and durations. Then, determine a structure for reporting test results, including metrics to evaluate, data collection and analysis methods, and a format for presenting findings and recommendations.
The most popular tools for creating and managing test plans include Jira, TestRail, and Trello.
6. Design Handoff
Design handoff is the final step of the product design process. During this stage the final designs and relevant specifications and assets are handed over to the development team for implementation. Communicating your design’s intent effectively to the development team ensures they clearly understand how the product should look, feel, and function. This clarity leads to more accurate and efficient implementation, reduces the need for back-and-forth clarification, and minimizes the risk of costly rework.
In my experience, there are two ways to ensure a seamless design handoff: documenting important information and creating a design system. By documenting all feedback from stakeholders, clients, and team members, along with subsequent revisions in product design tools, designers provide developers with the context to understand the design intent, the rationale behind certain choices, and the basis for any iterations the project has undergone. Most leading product design tools, including Figma and Adobe XD, offer version history or control features to help with this. Maintaining thorough and accessible documentation also helps establish a feedback loop between design and development tasks during implementation.
A design system is a comprehensive guide containing a project’s visual design language, UX patterns, and technical specifications. It often includes UI elements like buttons and input fields with predefined styles and behaviors. For designers, creating a design system can bring them peace of mind that developers can replicate their ideas accurately, ensuring consistency across the product. For developers, the design system is a reference and toolkit, streamlining the development process by providing clear guidelines and reusable assets.
Of course, there are additional ways to ensure a seamless design handoff. At WriteSea, we use the Figma Dev Mode tool in our handoff process to give developers direct access to design specifications, assets, and code snippets within the Figma interface. Once a design has been approved we create a handoff page in the design file. Here, we include the brand style guide, with guidance for logo usage, color palettes, typography, imagery, and the application of graphic elements.
Robust design frameworks help deliver effective products, but only to the extent that they remain focused on users. Implementing these six key activities will ensure you craft products that meet users’ needs and have strong market demand. Throughout my career, these core activities have helped me achieve positive outcomes for my clients, and they remain a fundamental part of my product design process today.
