What does your ideal product design process look like? What are your absolute requirements? What are your nice to haves?

What does your ideal product design process look like?

My ideal process is broken into a few parts.

1. Research: What would make a good product. Who are your users, what are your goals?
2. Development: Now that you know your options, userbase, etc, it’s time to brainstorm. Iterative design processes help as does listing ideas out, chatting with others. This may be a sketch, a prototype, or a mock product.
3. Refine: The refinement stage is time to try variations, try new combinations and to really hone in on solving your problem. You may involve user testing or generative design.
4. Production: This stage is all about getting things finished and polishing the final product. This may include working with partners and vendors, a special release, making sure the details are getting finished properly, etc.
5. Testing: Now it’s time to makes sure your product lives up to it’s name. Are the standards met? Does the product hold up to testing, scaling, reproduction? Will your users use the product?
6. Release: You have to give people the key to the bus! You have to let your users know your product is coming, a date, marketing, materials, documentation. Without the key to the bus the dang thing won’t even run!
7. Follow up: Once your release is finished it’s time for a retrospective. What went well? What did users really like? Do they need support? Are there bugs? Follow through is very important for maintaining a happy customer base!

What are your absolute requirements?

I think every great product starts with the why. There has to be a need, want, utility or reason. Second, a great product has a great strategy behind it. By breaking the product design life cycle into steps it allows for certain areas to have focus.

What are your nice to haves?

My nice to haves are weighted based on their importance. Time management becomes extremely important. Rating the importance of features can help you determine how to manage your time. I generally favor function over form. It has to work well and complete the task first and then look great!