When a product fails, it can be devastating for a company. Not only does it mean lost revenue, but it can also damage your reputation and result in the loss of customers. If you want to avoid this, you need to make sure that your product is designed and developed with care. This means having a team that is aligned with your goals, and that is focused on the needs of your customers. It also means having a clear understanding of the problem you're trying to solve, and using design thinking to create a solution that meets those needs. Finally, it means having a defined process that everyone understands and agrees to follow.
If you can do all of these things, you'll be much more likely to create a successful product, and you’ll be able to get back on track if your product development process has failed. Let's take a closer look at each of these factors.
Get Team Alignment
When you're designing and developing a product, it's important to have a team that is aligned with your goals. This means having a clear understanding of what you're trying to achieve, and making sure that everyone on the team is working towards that goal. It can be easy for team members to get bogged down in the details, or to lose sight of the big picture. It is also easy to invest time and money on engineering a product, before you have a clear understanding of what your customers actually want.
This is why it's so important to find a way to keep everyone aligned, or realign everyone. One way to do this is to have regular team meetings, where you review the progress of the project and make sure that everyone is still on track. This could be made easier by using design thinking, design workshops and prototyping. If you have already gone down the route of designing a product, but it has failed, it is not too late to go back to the drawing board and do things differently, and even bring in help from experts. And it doesn't need to take very long either; design sprints can be completed in as little as 2 weeks. So a high fidelity prototype of your redesigned product can be quickly created, allowing you to validate your new design and restart the development process quickly.
Get Customer Focus
Another important factor to consider when you're designing and developing a product is the needs of your customers. It's easy to get caught up in the technical aspects of the product, and forget that it's ultimately being designed for someone else to use. This is why it's so important to keep your customers in mind at all times. You need to understand their needs and wants, and design a product that meets those needs. It's also important to get feedback from your customers throughout the process, so you can make sure that you're on track.
Through 1-to-1 interviews, surveys, and user testing, you can get a clear understanding of where your product has gone wrong in the past, and what needs to be changed. This feedback should then be used to inform the design of your product, so you can reiterate and improve upon your previous design. The reiterative process should continue until you have a product that meets the needs of your customers.
Get into Design Thinking
Design thinking is a process that can be used to solve problems, and if you are not already using it, you should be! It involves understanding the user, defining the problem, brainstorming solutions, prototyping, and testing.
This means taking the time to understand the root cause of the problem, and not just the symptoms. This process can be used to understand the needs of your customers, and to come up with solutions that meet those needs.
Develop or Adopt a Defined Process
When you're designing and developing a product, it's important to have a defined process that everyone on the team understands and agrees to follow. This will help to ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal, and the product is being developed in a consistent manner. It also allows you to track the progress of the project, and to identify any areas where there may be problems.
For example, at nuom, we have created a rapid prototyping innovation product called Pace, which allows for the development of high fidelity prototypes in as little as 2 weeks. This process involves: ideation, design, development, testing and iteration. By following this process, we are able to quickly create prototypes that can be used to validate our designs and make sure that they meet the needs of our customers. This process has saved our clients a lot of time and money, and helped get their products to market faster. It also allows us to see where designs need improving, so we can make the necessary changes before final product development begins.
By taking these factors into account, you can get your product back on track, and create a product that meets the needs of your customers, developed in a way that is efficient and effective.
