How to utilize digital co-creation to facilitate product development?

We are all users of hundreds of products and services in our daily life: Imagine cleaning your coffee machine, using the self-checkout in a grocery store, tapping the icon of your music App, or adjusting your office chair. Although many people are not working on the frontline of developing services and products, everyone is competent at evaluating them. In almost every product, customers can easily identify which features are well-designed or not: an overly soft backrest, the drip tray's inaccessible corners, or a responsive and intuitive UI. The reason we can say what we like (or dislike) is due to a simple fact: we are using and experiencing the final product.

The importance of a prototype

To reduce the risk of producing useless products or unpleasant user experiences, it is necessary to create product representations and models during development. Their purpose is to experience and better understand a particular aspect of the product before it even exists. Let’s assume we needed to create a new self-checkout counter. To better comprehend the ergonomics, you may build a life-size cardboard model. You could create a visualization to better understand the final design intent and material choice. You could also provide a digital click dummy to verify the user interface and checkout procedure. Each model and method helps to shine the light on a particular aspect of the product experience.

How we do it

At Notation, product development is classified into four main phases. As the product (or service) evolves?throughout these cycles, models and representation techniques also change:

In the early stages, methods answer to the broad conceptual blocks, whereas in later stages, methods should address more specific concerns of feasibility and aesthetics. The listed methods are especially relevant to industrial and UI/UX design. You can add and remove some techniques based on your design discipline.

Visual co-creation method

I want to share with you an early-stage method that I frequently use and is highly valuable for designing first product ideas. I refer to this technique as "visual co-creation", and it has shown to be a great way to create first product topologies, particularly if the work needs to be done remotely and an in-person workshop is not possible. The technique combines ideation, product visualization and the building of mutual understanding early in the concept phase. The concept is straightforward: The whole development team meets remotely and collaborates on the product's first design, which we design in real-time on a shared screen. Working in 2D is excellent for focusing on the essence of the concept, but we also use different 3D tools when necessary. As designers, our primary role is to interpret and reflect the participants' vision by operating as a facilitator and asking the right questions. The ideal outcome is a "Frankenstein" version of the final product. Although it probably doesn't look beautiful at this point, its topology, size, proportions and functions are visualized and can be discussed, and the unknowns defined. Another benefit of this approach is that it allows you to quickly create duplicates and generate variations of an idea.

(example of a remote collaborative design session where the first ideas of the client were translated in real-time in a first design mock-ups)

Conclusion

A collaborative and visual approach to service and product design creates many synergies as ideas, insights, expertise and vision come together. The “sketch” is a visual documentation that can be quickly shared after the meeting and helps establish a common vision and knowledge foundation for the entire team (which will eventually share it with other team-members). The method has proven to be very beneficial and fun for our clients and mostly triggers important conceptual decisions, that at first seemed already clarified. It is true for all methods that timing and the choice of participants are key to unlock their full potential.

If you want to learn more feel free to reach out to us!

Reach out to Pierre: [email protected]

General inquiries: [email protected]