Design Operations: How To Empower New Product Strategy (Part 3)

The Ultimate Guide to Operationalising Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile Development for Product Strategy and Management

LeAP Design Method

LeAP Design?Method

Part 1 of this series made a case for the strategic role of Design and established the need for a robust methodology.

In Part 2 of this series, I introduced the Lean Adaptive Product Design Methodology (LeAP). I presented how it integrates Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile into a workable methodology and discussed how it addresses the limitations of gaps left by Gartner’s proposed integration1. I focused on the purpose of the LeAP methodology?—?to enable effective business decision-making. I started at the process’s decision points?—?the Measure, Learn and Decide steps.

In this final instalment, I will explain how you can operationalise the preceding steps of Targeting, Empathising, Defining, Ideating, Designing and Building.

Strategy and Target?Segments

I won’t dwell too much on how to do Strategy. You’ll easily find many good sources and structured methods to use2. I find a few attributes useful in anchoring Strategic Thinking, which might be helpful to you.

It’s easy to get lost or overwhelmed by the many frameworks, models and techniques that experts will swear by. The success of your Strategy doesn’t come from the tools you choose but from how you employ them. The attributes above will help you cut through the fog when it rises.

In most (if not all) efforts to strategise, you will typically:

• Analyse your business mix or portfolio3 and consider your ambitions and competitive threats;
• Research your market and competition?, acquire data and build models;
• Identify market segments?, generally based on geographic (region, population density, etc.), demographic (age, gender, occupation, education, income, life stage, etc.), psychographic (attitudes, motivations, lifestyle preferences, values, etc.) and behavioural (consumption patterns, benefits sought, econographics, etc.) factors;
• Arrive at a particular market need or gap? that you want to address;
• Infer, or intuit, a product that fits? the market need and your business situation, and
• Formulate how to get to your desired state?.

Your most crucial output here is a clear segment profile, a high-level product concept and an approach that is likely to get you there.

You’ll need honest and humble analysts at this stage.

Segment Definition

Defining market segments is a matter of applying the following criteria?:

1. Homogeneity: the common needs within the segment

2. Distinction: the segment being identifiably different from other segments

3. Reaction: the segment having a similar reaction or Behavioural Response (this is where Design will come in).

The attributes of Geography, Demography, Psychography and Behaviour can be agglomerated in many ways. Use the criteria above to define the groups you need to target.

Cluster Analysis is a useful technique in defining segments. Its basic principles are simple enough, but it’s fraught with nuanced definitions, assumptions and choices that affect how your segment is clustered.

Just because you are working with Data, Algorithms and/or Machine Learning doesn’t mean you are being objective.

Even if you’re not a Data Scientist, you must understand which parameters and what variance levels are used for defining segment clusters. A slight tweak in parameters or definitions can make your segment look very different.

Product Concept

The needs and reactions above should inform or influence your Idea. You will understand whether the distinct group is small (niche) or large (mass) in size. Your product concept is meant to address the needs and leverage the reactions for competitive advantage.

Everything you address comes at a cost. It is, therefore, worthwhile to structure your concept along Kotler and Keller’s five levels.

The above model is also known as the Customer-Perceived Value Hierarchy and the Extended Products Model. It is common to look at your product concept as “it’ll do this, this and that for the segment”. I recommend drawing on the needs and reactions data to categorise the capabilities of the product or service idea.

This categorisation will also help you when you need to make decisions based on the segment’s response to your product. It will also help you consider costs against competitive differentiation.

One thing to remember here:

At this stage, your idea is a hypothesis. If your product concept is too specific at higher levels, you’ve gone too far. Dial it back to a more fuzzy and adaptable concept that recognises (and respects) the unknowns.

As you move forward, you will need a clear sense of how you’ll know whether the product concept fulfils the need and elicits the reactions you imagine. At this stage, it is worthwhile to ask yourself?—?What does the reality check of Design need to tell you about your Strategy, Segmentation or Proposition? What assumptions and information gaps can Design address?

I also recommend being clear on what you’re prepared to do if the Strategy isn’t working well (or at all). What are the limits of viability for your product? If it’s beyond your business, there is no point in ideating, prioritising, prototyping and testing a trip to the moon, even if the target segment really really wants it.

Applying Design?Thinking

In the previous step, you’ve defined who you’re targeting, why, and with what. You’ve also drawn the boundaries within which you’re willing and able to play. Now you can pick up the market segment(s), empathise, define and ideate.

Empathise

It’s essential to understand the difference between Empathy and Sympathy. It’s not enough to just know that such experiences occur in people. You need to draw on your own similar experiences to connect with another person’s needs or problems at an emotional level.

It is essential to remain mindful of a couple of things. First, you are empathising with a whole group, not a specific individual. Second, you provide comfort through the Design of your product.

Empathy Maps

Empathising typically seeks to fill out an Empathy Map. A few variations attempt to focus or anchor the exercise on particular aspects.

Make sure the description and research data you provide for your segment is good enough to help people connect with the group. Data selection and its presentation are key here.

It’s essential to focus your empathy on the type of motivations, desires, needs and real-life contexts of use. When, where, how and why would someone use a product to fulfil their need? What real-life situations would help or hinder them from using it? What would they think or feel when they use it and when they can’t?

Define

Answers to the above questions will lead to a representation of the target segment and customer problem definitions. Typically, segment representations will be in the form of Personas or Archetypes, and problem statements will describe their need and reactions.

The User

The target segment is generally described as an individual Persona or an Archetype. Having a more ‘humanised’ description helps Empathise, but getting too specific in creating a fictional person can be misleading.

A Persona1? is a ‘fictitious’ person representing a varied group of people?—?a whole market segment or sub-segment. Archetypes are similar but with fewer personification features like photo, name and biography. The former is a ‘user as an individual’ type description, the latter more of a ‘segment data and variables’ representation.

Your team’s composition and mindset will decide whether you should use a Persona or an Archetype. If they are able to emotionally connect with the implied persons in a data profile, go for the latter. If not, go for the former.

While it’s easier to relate to Persona definitions like “Christie is living in a small apartment in Toronto, Canada. She’s 23 years old, single, studies ethnography, and works as a waiter during her free time,” 11 it’s critical to be conscious of the diversity in your segment. That is why I recommend that you:

1. Create a few different Persona or Archetype definitions to capture the variance in the segment.
2. Include the research data and assumptions behind each. In the above example, you could include data like “20–25-year-olds comprise X%, singles are Y% and students working part-time are Z% of the segment.”

It has a way of reminding people that it is a construct based on statistics and that there is a variance in those numbers.

You will find many templates and formats of Persona definitions. You will also find a conflation (read “confusion”) of Personas with Archetypes. You may think that it doesn’t matter much as long as the stakeholders and participants can Ideate with it, but you’d be wrong.

Your choice has consequences that will become evident later when you test your prototypes and decide how to move forward. How well you define your target user will impact how accurately you conceive their needs, how effective your Ideation is and how close to the mark your eventual Design will be. (see the section on Augment and Adapt in Part 2 of this series )

The Need or Customer?Problem

Perhaps the most critical output that follows the User Definition is the Customer Problem Statement. As Charles Franklin Kettering said:

“A problem well stated is a problem half?solved.”

As with user descriptions, you will find many templates and formats for problem statements. Here’s my advice on how to select or make one that suits your purpose:

1. Stick to the problem and challenges. Many templates will go into potential solutions and strategies for problem resolution. Avoid them. They can misdirect your Ideation session or Design efforts by diverting the focus from the problem.
2. Capture the Context of the problem. A context-less problem definition will likely result in a context-less solution. Defining or viewing the problem within a Context-of-Use12 or Situational Context13 helps with the quality and focus in Ideation, Design and Assessments.
3. Capture the motivations, drives and desires behind the user’s activity, tasks or jobs where the problem occurs1?. Understanding motivations is critical to evaluating, filtering and prioritising product ideas and features, as well as in the Research Design towards assessing your product.
4. Capture the cognitive and emotional reactions to the successful and unsuccessful resolution of the problem. In simple terms, it is valuable to understand how users would react if your product solved the problem and how they would feel if it didn’t.
5. Present the research insight that qualifies the problem definition. As discussed above, there is a variation range to the customer profile, their needs and their reactions. I repeat… it is critical to remain conscious of the variance in your segment and to avoid being too absolute.

Customer problems are rarely self-contained or isolated. They are related to other problems and reactions. Even if these relations may not be evident at the start, it is important to remain conscious that they exist.

The user and problem definitions serve to trigger ideas. The insights you attach help anchor the output of a caffeine-fuelled idea-generation frenzy.

If you do not have the expertise to formulate your own framework, I recommend using the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) approach:

Ideate

If you get your definitions right, they’ll stimulate relevant ideas. It would be best if you didn’t stem the flow or limit the quantity of ideas, but you must organise them. Seeing where an idea fits (and where it doesn’t) often helps with new ones.

The formulation of ideas is essential to their classification and their assessment for prioritisation. I wouldn’t recommend limiting ideas or viewing them as good or bad. Sometimes, a so-called bad idea can lead to a good one. When they’re flying in thick and fast, it’s worthwhile to keep an eye on the following criteria:

Clarity and Closure

An idea needs to translate into one or more requirements. Keep an eye out for ideas that appear vague or too open-ended. If there are some, encourage people to explore or shape them further.

Relevance

If an idea appears to fit within the Core, Generic, Expected, Augmented and Potential levels of the product, it is relevant. If not, add it to the “others” pile and critically review them later or keep them for something else.

Completeness

If you cannot decide how you will know if the idea has been implemented successfully, keep thinking. Without it, it’s not a complete idea.

Depending on the session's dynamic, you may want to defer the criteria assessment for later so you don’t disrupt the creative flow. I tend to use coloured sticky notes on the board below.

Prioritise

The first thing to do after collecting your idea cards or sticky notes is to shape them towards Requirements Definition.

One thing that differentiates an idea from a requirement is the fit criteria. Fit criteria answer the question?—?how will we know the requirement is fulfilled?

A more concrete definition of the Idea as a Requirement will happen during the Design stage. It is, however, worthwhile to consider what observations or measurements will indicate that the Idea is accomplishing what we intend.

The second thing to do is to apply structured reasoning to organise Ideas in a way that gives Design and Planning an understanding of what needs to come before or above others. In principle, you prioritise based on two key aspects:

• the value (customer or business) an Idea is expected to generate, and
• the cost (effort, complexity or resources) of implementing said Idea.

Prioritisation must be based on data and a consistent logic. Stakeholders will likely feel strongly about some Ideas over others. Get their buy-in to the method rather than priorities.

Design

Pre-Design

It’s tempting to pick up the requirements and jump straight into creating user interfaces. It is, however, critical to establish certain principles or rules the Design will follow to increase its chances of providing a successful solution1?.

I recommend starting with Design Principles or Guidelines first. If the product or experience is very new, put together Design Heuristics. It doesn’t take experienced designers much time to assemble these, and they are always worthwhile.

If you’re wondering, these are not Style Guides or Design Systems. These include relevant design knowledge and directives to guide the product’s creation, testing and iteration. You will need senior and experienced designers for this.

The drive to be “lean” can tempt you to go with less experienced (“expensive”) designers to render user interfaces for the requirements, but you need strategic thinking here.

Design for Behaviour and?Emotion

I also recommend designers with a firm grounding in Behavioural Design at this stage. This will be invaluable when you reach the Measure and Learn stages.

Whether your objectives are purely commercial, personal well-being, social change, economic and/or environmental impact, it is critical to have a clear sense of how the design aims to affect behaviour.

This means keeping how they feel front and centre. How people feel shapes how they behave and connect with your product. As the great Maya Angelou once said:

"I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them?feel."

Prototyping

You may also be inclined to quickly assemble a low-fidelity (paper or static/click-through) prototype and test it. If you have followed the process, have faith and resist the inclination.

Interaction and the UI’s behaviour are fundamental to how the user feels about your product. A lo-fi prototype is poor at imparting the experience you aim for. Testing results of such prototypes will also be lo-fi.

I also don’t see much point in prototyping flows that users can easily imagine, such as social sign-ups or payments. Unless you bring something drastically new there, you can skip those and not lose any helpful insight in early testing.

Start with designing the points of difference and delight parts of the experience when prototyping.

Plan, Build and?Release

A high-fidelity prototype requires some coding. It’s an excellent opportunity to work out the Design Handover. It can also tell you something about the complexity of coding and testing.

You’ll need a good Product Development Manager, Systems Architect and Technical Lead here. The rest is standard Agile Development?—?tickets, sprint planning, retrospectives, etc. You might not need a big development team in early prototypes, and you can grow it as the product scope expands.

Release planning is essential here. Each release must have a clear business purpose and design objective.

What are you looking to achieve with each release? Concept test? Acceptance or Adoption assessment? Operational activation? Technical or Architectural implementation? Let these define your release milestones.

Avoid falling into the technical trap in Release Planning. Technical milestones and business or design milestones can be different. You might end up with an Alpha, Beta, V1, V2… or MVP 1, MVP 2, MVP 3, etc., that are too focused on features or system components.

You need to maintain a ‘line of sight’ to your strategy. Each major release should manifest a part of your strategy and give you a measure of how well it’s working.

Conclusion

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at the role and business value of Design in Strategy.

In Part 2 , I presented the Lean Adaptive Product Design Methodology that integrates Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile Development more effectively. We looked at how the steps of Measurement and Learning can lead to better Decision-Making.

In this final instalment of the series, we have seen what to consider and what to use for the steps in the LeAP Design Methodology leading up to Measurement, Learning and Deciding.

What are your thoughts, reactions or criticisms of this method? I would love to know. Remember, the LeAP Design Methodology is free to use and adapt under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 .

Please feel free to get in touch if you need any further clarifications or help.

References?& Notes

1. See this report from Gartner Research
2. See for example: a.https://www.iia.org.uk/resources/auditing-business-functions/auditing-strategy/ ; b.https://hbr.org/2007/09/demystifying-strategy-the-what ; c.https://rogermartin.medium.com/strategy-vs-planning-complements-not-substitutes-ea08e56809d6
3. See McKinsey on flexible or “rotating” business portfolio (mix) https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/why-youve-got-to-put-your-portfolio-on-the-move
4. See Investopedia’s overview of Market Research a.https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-research.asp also, see their comparison between Porter’s 5 Forces and PESTLE analysis towards competitive positioning b.https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/041015/whats-difference-between-porters-5-forces-and-pestle-analysis.asp
5. See Investopedia’s overview of Market Segments a.https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketsegmentation.asp and Target Market Definition; b.https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/target-market.asp
6. See Outcome-Driven Innovation and Jobs To Be Done Theory approaches to defining market needs a.https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done ; b.https://jobs-to-be-done.com/outcome-driven-innovation-odi-is-jobs-to-be-done-theory-in-practice-2944c6ebc40e
7. See for example? a.https://foundr.com/articles/building-a-business/new-product-ideas ; b.https://hbr.org/2022/12/validating-product-market-fit-in-the-real-world
8. See Balanced Score Card’s comprehensive and structured method a.https://balancedscorecard.org/about/nine-steps/ or a more generic insight into the requirements of effective strategy implementation b.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263237320301316
9. See Investopedia’s overview of Market Segmentation https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketsegmentation.asp
10. Personas come in different types https://www.nngroup.com/articles/persona-types/
11. See the Persona Example (Step 5) here https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/personas-why-and-how-you-should-use-them
12. Context of Use is employed in Human-Computer Interaction, User Experience and Design. It refers to Situations (see below) in which the technology is used:? a.https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-glossary-of-human-computer-interaction/context-of-use ; b.https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/contexts-of-use
13. Situational Context is a term used in Sociological, Behavioural, Linguistic and other fields of academic research. It takes a wider view of the Context and may include socio-cultural, political, economic and other such factors in addition to personal and environmental ones. See, for example: a.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B0080430767007610 b.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B0080430767015503
14. There are a few different approaches and theories to modelling motivation. See an overview here: https://www.encyclopedia.com/management/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/motivation-and-motivation-theory
15. To understand the difference between Design Principles, Guidelines and Heuristics, see: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/mechanicaldesign/article-abstract/138/10/101103/376302/Design-Principles-Literature-Review-Analysis-and a free-to-read PDF available here: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/120032/md_138_10_101103.pdf