dgroup • Understand — Create — Deliver: How to quickly develop digital services
The dthinking-method lays the perfect foundation to support the digital innovation process. It helps to identify user problems, translating them into customer-centric solutions and ultimately supporting the testing of initial prototypes. The result can be best described as a “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP). A lean, beta version of a service or product is then introduced to the market.
“The popular design-thinking method had a great impact on our innovation process”, explains Martin Wider, Associate Partner at dgroup. “However, we realized that for our own innovation process we had to make some changes to traditional design-thinking models. dthinking accelerates the pace of the innovation process, fits our needs and is the best-in-class method for the creation of mobile products and digital services.”
User insights and an ideation process focused on usability lie at the very heart of dthinking. The goal is to get a clear sense of the future user, his or her motivations, needs and pain points. Personas and customer journeys help teams to better understand the behavior and experience of different customer segments while interacting with the product. However, the customer centricity of dthinking does not stop here. Prototypes are immediately tested by a set of sample users. The feedback is analyzed and affects the further development of the product or service. “Users are heavily involved in every step of our design process. This helps to ensure that the output is highly relevant and appealing to the end-user”, states Martin Wider. With dthinking users become active participants in shaping and designing digital solutions according to their needs and desires.
Phase “Understand”
#1 Understand the problem
Get a common understanding of the core task. Define a precise problem area on which the solution should focus on. Objective: find the correct question from a user perspective, so the team can work on finding the optimal solution for a digital service.
#2 Gain rich insights
Try to consider as many aspects as possible with regards to the previous defined problem area. Get a clear picture on users’ pain points, desires and needs. In addition, try to gain even more insights by using quantitative and qualitative data. This further helps to come up with user-driven solutions.
#3 Define the standpoint
Gather and consolidate all the insights and impressions. Specify a joint standpoint for the core problems of the user. This common ground needs to be at the center around which to design the solution.
Phase “Create”
#4 Generate ideas
This is where creativity kicks in: try to come up with as many results as possible. Here it’s about quantity beating quality. Embrace lateral thinking in teams, because not every optimal solution is the most obvious one for digital services.
#5 Build prototypes
Reality check: analyze whether the generated ideas are realizable with regards to brand-fit, time, budget, legal restrictions etc. In order to test promising ideas, prototypes need to be created: rapid prototyping on the paper, prototyping-tools or click-dummys enable a realistic experience.
#6 Test prototypes
Test your prototype with potential users. Doing so will immediately indicate, whether users would be willing to adopt a service or product-idea.
Phase “Deliver”
#7 Introduce MVP to the market
Martin Wider recommends to “First design an MVP based on the feedback from your prototype testing. Create a product or service with minimal, problem-solving functions and features”.
Speed is a crucial success factor. “Aiming for the perfect product is counterproductive”, advises the dgroup Associate Partner. This explains why Martin Wider emphasizes to enter the market with a minimum viable product. Over time companies receive user feedback and ratings which help in the continuous improvement and development of the original product. “Prototypes and simple MVP’s in combination with user-feedback enable an accelerated pace for the go-to market of digital products and service”, Martin Wider concludes.
This article has been published in our dgroup magazine dmag — The Mobile Issue. If you are interested in learning more about the topic or need help in this area, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Martin Wider is Associate Partner at dgroup. His focus lies on FMCG, Digital Branding, Digital Storytelling, Social Marketing and Ad/Marketing Tech. In the past 20 years he worked for tech startups, independent creative agencies and key international networks.
Originally published at www.d-group.com.
