6 Things , Startup need to know about Product Design

Product Design is at the heart of a startup. An idea needs a LOT of work before it develops into a well received product.

here is a way to make sure you don’t do blunders, but build great products that people love!

1. Understand The Problem :

I want you to first understand the significance of the problem you are solving. Write down the problem statement before you start thinking about your product. You should look at it as many times as possible

Every problem has a trigger, a frustration point and an objective. When you face a frustration point triggered by something (time, place, can be anything), you desperately want to not face it again — that’s your objective.

Let’s see one Example.

Say you were to start Snickers as a product and identify Peter as a potential user. Peter didn’t buy Snickers cause he matched your segmentation or he is similar to you.

He will buy the snickers (objective), if he feels hungry (trigger) because he needs to satisfy his hunger on the go. (frustration).

Identify the smaller problems that need to be solved to solve the bigger problem. Identifying the problem that your users need to be solved is a very crucial step.

Great products always start with real problems.

2. Understand Your Users Like You Never Have Before :

Define a target audience, the kind of people who you think need your product. These people will be a very small subset of the ones who may use your product. This identification is important. If you don’t target the right audience, the product fails — as simple as that.

Now take your problem statement into the real world and get human feedback. Talk about the problem, and not about the super cool idea you have. Friends and family may give you a distorted perspective. So meet potential users on a 1–1 basis, record their reaction and you will find a pattern.

When we understand the user’s perspective, we make products better suited to them.

3. Learn — As Much As You Can :

Learn about the problem and stick to the fundamentals while doing so. Jumping into deep research and unexplored areas will only distract you from solving the problem. Learn about the foundation first — always.

Ideas are created only when you see other ideas.

4. Scratch Your Brain And Get Creative :

This is where the markers and papers come in. Draw as many solutions as you can and keep drawing until you can think of no more. Throw feasibility out of the window for now.

Sketch out your solution and create many alternatives (or variations) along the way. This will help you define Plan As and Plans Bs for the entire product. 

In design, there is never one solution, it’s always a range of solutions

5. Test & Iterate :

By this point, you have put in a lot of effort. So go out with your product and test it. The key to rapid user testing is understanding that significant feedback will fade out after 5–7 users.

Plug in the feedback module in the product so you get all the data to validate your solution. Data should never be left out in design. 

Wire your brain to go back to step 5 if your test fails. It won’t work the first time and that’s good. Repeat this process till you have something that works.

Design is an iterative process.

6. It Doesn’t End Here — Keep Designing! 

I mentioned “babies” as a term for your products. Now its time to raise themAll designers have a taste, a set of personal principles that they believe in. Apply all of these to the product.

Building great products is hard and getting people to use it again and again is harder. When you have got your product going, you can now focus on improving and marketing it. As a product designer, its your duty to make sure the product not only works, it grows too!

It’s better to build something that a small number of users love, than a large number of users like