The product design context
key questions to consider for a holistic understanding of the organization
Understanding your organization’s intricacies is essential for designing products that benefit both the company and the users. This article serves as a guide to navigating the factors influencing digital product development. By addressing these key questions, you can make more informed decisions and gain a holistic view of how the product fits into the broader organizational context.
While product design processes start with a focus on understanding user needs, one area of the product is often overlooked: the organization and the context in which the product exists.
Designing a product without a clear understanding of the organization can be problematic because it could lead to a lack of alignment with a business from the start of a project while the main efforts should be to make foundations that are as strong as possible to avoid future risks.
Why is it important for a UX designer to understand the business?
For a UX designer, it’s crucial to understand the organization, as it allows the creation of a user experience that is coherent and well-aligned with the company’s identity and context. The user, the product, and the organization cannot be dissociated because they all depend on each other. Therefore, we should consider them as a whole. The product plays a central role in the interaction between users and the organization, with the goal of converting an experience into value for both parties.
Where do we begin to understand an organization and its context?
This article serves as a guide to help navigate and comprehend the intricate web of factors that can influence the conception of digital products. By addressing these key questions, you can gain a more holistic view of how one or multiple products fit into the broader organizational context. Keeping this knowledge in mind can help you make informed decisions, maximize success, and ensure that the product contributes positively to both the user and the overall business objectives.
1. Understanding Organizational Alignment and Challenges
- Strategic Alignment
How does the product align with the organization’s strategic goals? - Corporate issues
What are the company’s challenges? How can the product help solve them? - Organization’s concerns
What are the organization’s concerns? Do they want the process to be good, fast, or cheap? How could the business preoccupations might impact the product’s success?
2. Financial Considerations
- Costs
What are the project’s costs, both direct and indirect? - Revenues
What are the project’s revenues? - Monetization
What revenue does the organization want to generate from the monetization strategies? What are the objectives in the short, medium and long term? - Financing
Where does project funding come from and what are the primary sources? - Where does the money come from
How do the sources of money can have an influence on the product? - Financial sustainability
Is the financing sustainable? Does the product support its own financing? - Employee Resources
What are the monetary and personnel resources dedicated to monetizing the product?
3. Dependencies and Risks
- Interdependencies
Does the Product Have Dependencies? Interconnections Among Projects, Systems, Objectives, Budgets, and Resources.” - Competition Assessment
Are there any other projects with a better return on investment and a similar budget? - Employee Morale
What impact does the product have on the morale and motivation of internal resources? - Timeline Impacts
Does the product affect the timelines of other projects, and if so, how? - Maintenance Planning
Is product maintenance considered, and what sustainability factors should be addressed? - Project Timing
When does the project start, and when is it expected to conclude? - Reluctance
What obstacles hinder stakeholders from taking action, and what factors influence their readiness or reluctance to do so, considering political, emotional, resource-related, and timing aspects? - Losses related to change
What are the types of loss caused by change? There are 6 types of losses to consider according to Bree Groff when making an organizational change: control, pride, narrative, time, compétence and familiarity.
4. Product Impact and Prioritization
- Business value
What benefits does the product bring to the company, whether in terms of monetary value, mission fulfillment or otherwise? - Product Priority
Where does the product rank in terms of priority compared to other company products? - Competing Interests
Are there competing projects, events, or priorities that might affect the product’s focus? - Impact
Does the product have an impact on other products?
5. Project Roles, Resources, and Stakeholders
- Internal resources
What internal expertise and resources are required? - External resources
Does the product require external resources? What aspects of the project will require these resources? - Sponsorship
Who sponsors the product, providing financial and material support, and for what purposes? - Governance Authority
Who are the individuals or entities within an organization that possess the authority and responsibility to make decisions and shape the course of a particular product or project? - Project Direction
Who provides direction for the project and is in charge of developing, managing and porting it? - Decision-makers
Who are the decision-makers involved in this product? - Reference Person
Who serves as the reference person responsible for the project? - Product team
What expertise does the product team comprise? What is their respective role and what are they accountable for? - Team and Expertise Capacity
How extensive is the capacity of the team and the expertise of those involved? - Team objectives
What are the product team’s objectives? - Pain points
What are the product team’s pain points? - Stakeholders
Which stakeholders have a stake in the product’s success? - Partners
Who are the partners who collaborate on the product to create added value? Partners are companies or entities external to the company that are essential to the smooth running of the service. They can deliver goods, supply materials, process data, etc. Example: UPS is an Amazon partner, playing a role in the delivery of goods and helping to complete the experience. - The suppliers
Who are the suppliers involved and what do they do? - Roles and responsibilities
What are the roles and responsibilities within the project team? What is the (RACI)? Who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed?
6. Product Offerings, Services, and Alignment
- Content formats
What content formats does the product offer? - Services
What services does the product provide? A service can be seen as an autonomous unit offering added value to users, which can be used independently or integrated with several products in a digital ecosystem to create a complete and coherent user experience while reducing production and maintenance efforts. - Organizational Fit
How does the product align with the organization’s mission and objectives? - Communication Channels
What are the product’s communication channels? - Business needs
What does the product need to accomplish for the organization? - User needs
What the product should do for users? What user needs does the product meet? Why do users need the product? - Product success
How do you measure product success? What are the KPIs? - Technological Aspects
What essential information should we gather regarding the technology? This may include insights on technical debt, the optimal starting point, programming languages employed, and other relevant details. - Devices
Which devices are used by the users to access the product?
7. Data and Metadata
- Data Insights
What internal and external data sources inform decision-making, and how do they contribute to the product’s evolution? - User research
What do we know about users? - Analytics
Does the product have analytical data? - Documentation
What product documentation is available? - Data Sources
What internal and external data sources are available? - Metadata
What metadata are available? - Indexation and taxonomy
How is content indexed? What is the taxonomy used?
8. Users
- Personas
Who are the personas for this product? Are the data on which they are based reliable? Are they complete? - Target audience
Who is the product’s target audience? - Primary users
Who are the primary users? - Expectations
What are users’ expectations? - Habits
What are users’ habits? - Time of use
When do users use the platform? - Tasks and activities
What tasks and activities does the user want to accomplish? - Features
Which features are directly linked with the user's needs? - User value
What benefits do users derive from using the product, and what specific functional and emotional advantages are we delivering to them?
Understanding organizational alignment, financial aspects, dependencies, and user insights is essential for creating a great digital product. With the knowledge of the organization and its intricacies in mind, you can help to conceive digital products that are meaningful for both the users and the organizations.
I hope these questions will help you make more informed decisions and better understand the context in which the product lives.
