Product design, or how to design products

In the world of universal Internet access, a company's competitiveness is very often determined by its ability to quickly adapt to market changes and adapt its offer to customer needs. That is why more and more companies realize that in order to gain an advantage, they must become more flexible and stay in line with their audience. But how do successful organizations do this? For many, product design is the answer.

Product design is a broad concept related to the creation of a product. It includes a number of activities that make up the process that results in the creation of a product. However, it is not only about creating, but also about understanding the problem of users, finding an answer, and then checking whether our solution satisfies them. Only such a holistic approach makes sense and excludes the occurrence of many errors that could appear after creating the product and handing it over to the users.

What are the stages of product design?

Designing software and any digital product consists of several phases. In our company, they are as follows:

1. Understanding

The first stage of designing is understanding the problem and users' needs. For this purpose, we create personas, i.e. people representing the target users. At this stage, it is important to look for a way to solve the problem while taking into account the business needs of the company we work with. We always take into account technological possibilities and set goals.

2. Create a strategy

At this stage, we start working on the concept and strategy. So we determine which problems will be solved and what we will deal with in the first place. The goal of this phase is to brainstorm, come up with ideas for features, and discuss and map users' journeys.

3. Building structure

In this phase, our product designers and ux designers focus on creating the structure and outlining the system architecture.

4. Manufacture of the product

When the strategy is ready, the project team begins to create, among others: mock-ups, information architecture and prototypes. Then comes the time for testing, implementation and retesting.

5. Delivering the product to users

This is the most exciting moment because it is then that the product collides with the users' expectations. At this stage, we examine whether the product responds to their needs and to what extent it satisfies them. We verify whether something needs to be improved, we listen to the voice of users, analyze and consider how to further develop the product.

Product design includes several stages and each of them is important. The most important thing is a holistic approach to the design process, taking into account the user experience. First you need to understand the problem your users are struggling with, then work out a solution, and finally move on to creating the product. As a result, software, applications or products from outside the digital world will respond to the needs of users.