The product design mindset — moving from experimentation to scale.
This article is a recap of a panel discussion at South Summit, Madrid between Brian Farrell, Founder of Far Co, Teo Ortega, former Chief Product Officer of Citibox and Carlos Garrido, Design Director at Eleven Labs.
Building and growing a business requires focus, clarity and perseverance. The mindset to build products successfully inside a business changes depending if you are an early phase startup or a later stage scale-up. Below is a guide to understand the goal of each phase, detect when it is time to switch mindsets, and traps to avoid along the way.
The early-phase mindset
The goal of the early phase is to move fast and learn. Attempt to optimise all processes to be able to put all of the focus on finding and understanding the potential user. With an open mind, listen and learn as much as possible:
- What user need are you trying to solve?
- Who are those users and what moves them?
- What influences their purchase decision?
Through rapid rounds of testing and feedback channels, this will be the opportunity to hear directly from your potential customers.
Additionally, certain foundational elements should be defined at this early phase to set the groundwork for future evolution. The brand platform — vision, mission, brand position, values — as well as experience or design principles will create the brand story to inspire and guide future product decisions.
The biggest trap of this phase is to want to scale too quickly. Scaling early is expensive and can be a huge risk with a product or service that does not yet have a proven user. Tech teams naturally want to think in scale, and it’s important to train them to build differently during this early phase. They are building something to test rapidly, not to scale to a million of users.
Do’s during the early-phase:
- Listen and learn
- Test rapidly to validate hypothesis
- Define vision and design principles
- Define the “minimum” in MVP
Do not’s during the early-phase:
- Find investors
- Build product that scales to millions of users
- Build product that has not been previously tested
Inflection point that signals it’s time to shift to a growth mindset
The main inflection point is when you have found product market fit. This is clear when both user acquisition and user retention are going up together. Another positive sign is when you have a scalability problem and all of a sudden you have to do a lot of customer support. All this means that systems are needed to achieve efficiencies as the company grows.
Tip to discover if you have product market fit
Through user testing, ask an NPS style question “How terrible would it be if this product or service ceased to exist?” 1 being not terrible and 10 being really terrible. Of all responses you want at least 40% to be 9s and 10s, those are your core users.
Be careful of detractors that will distract you from finding product market fit:
- Vanity metrics — for instance likes on social media — are not a sign of traction and should not be a metrics that validates product market fit.
- Product market fit is not a collection of features, or building one more feature. It is about solving a problem.
- Thinking that you can “growth hack” your product to market fit
- Thinking more marketing can get you to product market fit
- Blindly implementing feedback from non-paying customers within a paid service
The scale-up mindset
The goal of the scale-up phase is to put in place processes and systems that permit growth to happen efficiently and consistently. Normally lots of new users are coming in and it’s critical to think about standardizing how products are built in order to allow both design and technology to scale.
Two key tools of this phase are a Product Creation Model and a Design System. The Product Creation Model will define the steps for all team members (business, design and technology) to follow as an idea moves from conception to launch and evolution. The Design System will define both design and development patterns to be reused across all digital products.
If there are doubts about the design of the current product and how it aligns with the brand or responds to user need, the development of a Design System is the perfect opportunity to make these changes in design and launch with an evolved product that can scale.
Benefits of a Design System
There are clear financial benefits to building a design system when scaling a business, below are benefits more related to the product build:
For more information or clarity on any point, please reach out to Brian Farrell at brian.farrell@farcostudio.com
Far Co is a studio of designers and developers that design and build digital products that drive business growth. We partner with clients to rethink, make, and scale their products — website, mobile app, or touchscreen — with clear business objectives related to lead capture, conversion, and the monetization of each idea.
Our startup mindset creates a unique business model — an “inverse pyramid” of significant partner involvement on all projects, backed by an agile team of senior talent. This allows us to think big, move fast, and create strong relationships with our clients based on common values and goals.
www.farcostudio.com
