How do you ensure quality and usability in product innovation?

1 Define your goals and criteria

Before you start developing your product, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. What are the problems you are solving, the benefits you are delivering, and the value proposition you are offering? What are the key features and functions of your product, and how do they align with your customer segments and personas? What are the quality standards and usability principles that you will follow, and how will you test and validate them? Having a well-defined scope and criteria will help you focus your efforts and avoid unnecessary complexity and waste.

2 Involve your users and stakeholders

One of the best ways to ensure quality and usability in product innovation is to involve your users and stakeholders throughout the process. They are the ones who will use, buy, or influence your product, so their feedback and input are essential to understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. You can use various methods to engage your users and stakeholders, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, co-creation workshops, prototypes, beta testing, and user testing. By involving them early and often, you can validate your assumptions, identify gaps and opportunities, and improve your product based on their insights and suggestions.

3 Apply design thinking and agile methods

Another way to ensure quality and usability in product innovation is to apply design thinking and agile methods to your development process. Design thinking is a human-centered approach that helps you empathize with your users, define their problems, ideate solutions, prototype and test them, and iterate based on feedback. Agile methods are flexible and adaptive ways of working that help you deliver value faster, respond to change, and collaborate effectively. By combining design thinking and agile methods, you can create products that are desirable, feasible, and viable, while ensuring quality and usability at every stage.

4 Use tools and frameworks

To ensure quality and usability in product innovation, there are many tools and frameworks available. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a technique that helps to translate customer requirements into product specifications and prioritize them according to importance and difficulty. Usability testing evaluates the ease and effectiveness of your product by observing real users performing tasks and collecting feedback. Heuristic evaluation assesses the usability of your product based on a set of general principles or guidelines. User interface (UI) design creates the visual and interactive elements of your product, such as layout, color, typography, icons, buttons, menus, etc., while user experience (UX) design creates the overall impression and emotion that your product evokes in users.