Designing Better: Project Definition
Asad Hamir
Co-Founder Klyk | 1 x Exit | Investor | Reformed technologist, on a mission to make Circular IT the new standard in Business Tech. Happy employees, happy planet & a delighted CFO, all in a Single Klyk. ??
You’ve picked your design partner, paid your initial kick-off fee,and you’re excited to get rolling. If, like me (the first time round), you haven’t done this before, you’re probably expecting lots of visual work and conceptualisation at the beginning - wrong!
The first and most important part of the design process is called the project definition. A lot of this is desk based research and very little visual creation. It’s all about alignment and essentially building a business case and narrative around the product you are going to be creating. Get this right and the rest of the design process will be smooth and you will get a kick ass product at the end of it. Get it wrong, and you will have a Frankenstein! ??
Your role as the product owner
Your primary role is to get the design team up to speed as quickly as possible. I like to feed my agencies with more information than less here:the target market, the size of the market, price points in the market, our competitor USPs, social listening on what the market is saying, and any thoughts on where I think the gap is.
Key is to show direction, but not give them all the answers. That’s why you’ve come to them - to help you cut through the noise and create a product or experience that stands out.
Constraint is key
It’s easy at this stage to dream up a product which solves every possible use case out there, and if this is what your design agency suggests, the alarm bells should be ringing. You should be looking to get to a primary feature/benefit which is going to be totally unique in the market - one thing it’s going to be famous for, that creates the most value for the customer; then, any secondary and potential tertiary features that would be nice to have. Adding too many features adds complexity in the manufacturing process, extra development time and of course ??????
It's important to remember that product development is not a sprint. Your next generation of products can always be improved and added to over time.
Keep (Above): We got this one wrong. Got carried away with a dream device with all the perfect features, all crammed into tight real estate which was just really hard to make. Cost us ￡30-40k + time cost invested.
Rope in your manufacturing partner early!
It’s really important to understand early the maturity of the ecosystem of manufacturers. Have your manufacturing partners done this type of product before, and if there are existing electronics solutions available to modify / add to with your UX enhancements? Plus an indication of costs for tooling, development costs, schedules from their end to align on, etc.
Identify any watch outs in the manufacturing stage that should be considered in the design phase - be it around battery products and safety, or heat control. It’s about nipping it in the bud early, anything that can be built into the design process it’s much more expensive and time consuming to rectify later!
The Response
You will normally have a kick off call where the agency will start to immerse themselves in your world, plus with any of the above information, you have provided. They will then go away and respond to you with their interpretation of the brief and they all follow a similar process:
WHY the product should exist - your ‘elevator pitch’
HOW the product can be different and what is the user journey? ow is it solving for the customer insight & what features/benefits the product can own?
WHAT the primary use case is of the product & any secondary use cases
WHO is the product for (who is the audience)?
WHERE is the product going to be used (home, work, on the move etc)?
Often at the end of this pitch, the design agency wants to hear immediate feedback. Understandable since they’ve spent ages prepping the response. But this document potentially shapes hundreds of thousands/millions of revenue, so I like to take a few days to digest, sleep on it, and put it in front of a few friendlies to get their views before I respond to the agency and freeze the brief.
Next steps
Now the brief is frozen, you need to keep the creative team in check. It’s very easy in the next phases of the creative process to deviate. But you have to treat this process commercially - you must deliver the product on time and on budget. You staying focused will sharpen everyone in the team’s pencil also.
The brief will also become part of your marketing materials when you come to sell the product - be it through asset creation or briefing of retailers/sales teams.
Now for alignment on design direction & the concept generation...Lets go!
COO @ Fourmeta | Leveraging UX research / website & app design to propel profits
3 年Asad, thanks for sharing!??
?? I help entrepreneurs & investors scale their positive impact on people and nature
3 年Nice article Asad Hamir. Thanks for sharing. Here are my thoughts. Better collaboration = Better results Full alignment between your design partner and business leadership teams is crucial for any project success (even more in hardware). At Possibility?, we have 4 collaboration pillars that help us navigate every complex project both in hardware, brand or digital. 1. Design is a business of trust and a dance of balance. It takes one to ping and two to pong. Designing better products or services is complex. Navigating the best solutions for the business, design the user, the market and our planet will be complex too. Clarity is key to keep all projects stakeholders aligned all a long the project. With clarity comes the usual challenge of listening versus doing. To build clarity we need to listen before we talk. A good design partner starts by asking many (good) question to truly understand the full picture of the project, the business and all its key stakeholders. From our experience, if this phase is ignored the project is more likely to fail. 2. The train does not stop. We’ll run side by side with you. Creativity needs time and limitations but hey, businesses don't stop and things change. From my experience, the value of good design is directly correlated with the value of keeping up to how the business evolves and its requirements. A good design partner understands this and makes sure to keep balancing the value of design into how the business and their suppliers / manufactures evolve. This requires a good flow between client and the design partner and a special team persistency to drive in such fast pace environments - side by side with the client teams. 3. Collaborative and continuous design business integration Good design is good business. A good design partner understands business and how design and business need to walk hand-by-hand. Something not to forget is that creativity in design is not only to the design the best product but also to design the best ways to collaborate so the design development integrates seamlessly with your business goals, resources, budget and on-going development. Better collaboration = Better results. 4. Today always better than yesterday. Everyday. Perfection is the enemy of progress. Easier said than done - specially in hardware. I truly believe that the mindset of progress versus perfection can really help to get projects to move forward, better and stronger. A good design partner understands and respects that growth is a process and integrates agile continuous improvements to keep making a better difference, everyday. Hope this helps to share our learnings and perspective and would love to discuss it further. What are your thoughts Asad Hamir ?