Starting with a product idea, write it down
The first thing to do whenever you start with a product idea is to write it down on paper! Whether it’s on post-it note or a notebook, writing thoughts down on paper with pen is vital. There are a number of reasons why noting ideas and thoughts on paper is better than using any software to record them:
- Writing on paper is fast!
- Quickly scrap things
- Easy to iterate on drawings and written notes
- Paper notes can be sorted into good groups fast
To demonstrate this theory I jotted down a product idea in my note book. The general idea of the product is to display clearly financial markets data and give non-experts an insight into the financial market, and make understanding trading accessible to those who have never thought about trading or investing in the stock market before.
Admittedly this is not the most original product idea, but recently there have been a number of similar products & companies succeeding in this space.
As a product manager, I default to writing user stories when describe functionality. So the what you need to do as a start is note what the product will do, what it will provide its users and how will the user’s engage with it.
Next I recorded what products influenced, and should be of inspiration for this product. I also added some detail to the functionality.
The Final step I took, which does not need to be your last step in this stage of product concept, was to draw out views / screens of the application, and detail what each contains and does. As you can see on paper you can quickly draw something, cross it out and draw it again.
Things I missed out, which I will need to look into and identify later include:
- Identifying the personas of the users
- Describing a business model
- Stating the USP of this product
- Documenting my market reaserch
Originally published at defineproducts.com on May 5, 2016.
