Strategic Product Design: A Business and Human-Centered Design Consultancy
This isn’t a formula or the secret to success. I’ll tell you how, at Flux IT, we help businesses bring innovative human-centered ideas to life, tailoring different techniques/methodologies to a process that lasts between 1 and 3 months. A service that, along with Lucrecia Feller (who has been putting it into practice for years), we’ve been polishing case by case.
I personally enjoy working on the product development early stages, both the physical and digital ones. Realizing that we can find many innovative solutions when faced with particular issues is really engaging. For those of us who come from the graphic design field, working on this area opens our minds to understanding needs and solutions with a 360° view, transcending the 2D canvas we come from.
In the digital product world, we have the opportunity to support SMBs and established companies when it comes to bringing their ideas to life through a quick Product Design process which, in many cases, leads us towards these companies’ digital transformation.
Until recently, everyone talked about the digital transformation challenge. Nowadays, in many industries (such as the financial one), the real challenge has to do with how to update or keep the business models on track. On top of that, the pandemic context added an even greater challenge: the enormous growth of financial apps forced companies to reshape their structure to adapt to the new ways of interaction regarding money management. Thus, in some cases, Strategic Product Design means leaping to digital transformation; and, in other cases, it’s about setting creativity in motion to help digital businesses stay on track and find their differentiating trait to avoid becoming just another replica of what already exists in the market.
In either situation, to develop or redesign a product, implementing an effective plan is not enough: nowadays, user experience can help us take that leap from a product based on good ideas or technologies to a product that people choose to use.
So, how are we helping companies boost their businesses?
Strategic Product Design
Those who are familiar with designing user experiences will know different methods, models, techniques, and tools to drive innovation regarding products or services.
When we provide this service, we put the design mindset into practice: empathizing, materializing, and testing from a strategic point of view that adds value to the business. Thus, we turn human-centered design into a tool to help us approach business models.
Relying upon the Double Diamond model, Design Thinking, Design Sprint, and recommendations from This is Service Design Doing, we built a deep and dynamic work structure. We decided to start tailoring everything we know and we’ve put to practice to fit both our clients’ needs and our work methods.
Now let me tell you what it is about:
Who implements Strategic Product Design?
People who focus on user experience, who can moderate, coordinate and provide the service. They carry it out with an interdisciplinary team (UX and UI analysts, functional analysts, devs, leaders), which is also in charge of the design process.
Work premises
- Collaboration and co-creation as means to boost results. Involving everyone who has contact points with the product allows us to enrich the proposal thanks to cross-disciplinary knowledge.
- Fostering a healthy work environment. Building a playful and relaxed environment improves all the actors’ willingness and participation.
- Being resilient and embracing uncertainty. Although there’s a roadmap and a work plan, we don’t really know what we’ll come across, so having an open mindset and being flexible is key to adapt to the unknown and learn from any situation.
The roadmap
We adjust it to the requirement and the project’s complexity, but it generally lasts between 1 and a half and 2 and a half months.
The roadmap is key to ensure that everything goes smoothly. Although product design processes call for uncertainty (and that’s the most challenging and motivating part 🤩), in the context of this service we need to draw a sharp and precise roadmap. On the one hand, because of the pressing market times: solutions must be ready and tested quickly, so agility is key. On the other hand, because we can achieve greater participation, engagement, and motivation from everyone involved if there are arranged meetings and a good work pace.
We’re not gonna lie: this is a really intense work dynamic both for the team and the client.
When we approach a Strategic Product Design process, we root it on 3 stages:
1. Discovery
At this stage, we align many objectives: carrying out research (both with our clients and the users), setting the project dynamics, and getting to know the clients who requested the service in depth (what kind of client they are, how they work, their priorities) to forge a bond. The goal is to ensure that our clients are not only information providers but that we dive into the work dynamic together
This stage is crucial to understand and define. Many times, clients have clear ideas; and, in other cases, they raise a concern and they expect us to help them figure it out. In either case, Discovery is our tool to gain an understanding of the context (which is key so that the team can relate to the issue), to define the product development goal among everyone involved. That is to say: understanding the business, the context, the users, the value proposition, and reaching agreements with the client regarding the course of the project.
Therefore, it’s also about building trust, because during the period in which we work together we’ll dive into the heart of their products and take part in strategic definitions.
It’s a rallying time within the service, which sparks lots of reactions: from clients that fearfully tell us: “I already know about our issues, why are you airing our dirty laundry? to others that -surprised- confess: “we can’t believe we never realized this was happening”. The important thing is that everyone should know about those issues and bring them to the table to give them meaning and identify insights. For instance, with one of our clients, we managed to support ideas they considered hard to implement for their users because, before the pandemic, users were reluctant to embrace about money digitalization and financial inclusion; however, because of the pandemic, people overcame that fear and, what seemed impossible in some business segments is now to be expected.
Duration: two to three weeks to have the big picture of the problem and identify opportunities. At this stage, we don’t seek to gain an understanding of the whole business; instead, it’s about identifying what we want to delve into to pursue the product proposal. Producing results based on the client’s knowledge in contrast with user needs is key.
2. Ideation
It’s a practice that can be developed in many contexts and with diverse goals. As part of these projects, it has to include a clear scope that supports the clients’ objectives. It will most probably have to do with short-term estimation/implementation, defined technologies, budget, and project expectations.
To make innovation happen, we must define the premises we’ll work on since they will be the starting point to spread ideas. Thus, the result of the discovery stage will be key to define what we’ll ideate about.
Once again, this is a collaborative process in which all perspectives contribute to a plurality of ideas as well as the confluence of prototypes agreed upon by everyone involved.
In order to determine the quality and approval of these ideas, we should assess them, so that we can determine their future success or failure. Thus, at this stage, we validate them with real users to improve, adjust or rule out proposals before working further on them.
Ideation is one of my favorite moments in Strategic Product Design because, from the first session, we switch on the creative thought that will stay on throughout the rest of the project. Designers, the IT or business teams all keep producing ideas that add value to the experience until the project finishes.
Recently, while working with one of our clients, after having built the architecture of the product, they kept ideating ways to boost the business model. We incorporated some things and others remained as future improvements.
Duration: 5 to 7 days. We start with an intensive ideation session in which interdisciplinary groups from different areas participate (business, IT, marketing, design, sales) to have different points of view. Then, based on the results obtained from the Discovery and Ideation stages, the UX, UI, or FA team that delivers the service works on designing the first conceptual prototypes that will define the architecture, key screens, and the app’s soul.
3. Conceptual Prototyping
Finally, results turn into prototypes. This stage usually lasts longer and we seek to develop conceptual models that embody the value proposal, which, in turn, depends on the Discovery and Ideation findings.
Sometimes the challenges lie in architecture or functionalities and, in other cases, it’s about the interactive experience or the UI design. That’s why, both the way we approach this stage and the kind of prototypes we develop will be subject to the previous results. If we have to define the ecosystem of several products or design the coexistence of several users, this is the time to show those correlations.
We’ve recently worked with a fintech company that, among other goals, aimed at increasing financial inclusion. Thus, part of the ideation and conceptual prototyping premises had to do with creating an experience that would help users become aware of their finances and make better decisions.
We generally develop 2 instances of conceptual prototypes. The first ones represent the broad sketch of the product to validate it. The biggest challenge of this first stage is making key decisions that will be part of the core of the product. We usually validate the wireframes and the style guide separately (there aren’t high-fidelity prototypes yet).
In the second instance, we develop conceptual prototypes of key functionalities to the business model (the work of UX, UI, and functional analysis teams now has a sprint rhythm). Throughout this process, we create coherence regarding architecture, product personality, and the storytelling users will meet when interacting with the app. The most important thing is to give a purpose to the solution and ensure that our clients have solid high fidelity prototypes that will allow them to have a product with a well-thought-out user experience and a style guide, which, in turn, will be key to keep designing and also to allow the development team to implement the prototypes.
As in the Discovery and Ideation instances, this stage demands us to be ready to validate the work with different stakeholders. We meet so often that when two days go by without seeing or talking to each other, some clients even miss us!
Duration: four to eight weeks, depending on the size of the project. The work dynamic at this stage is similar to the one of an agile project.
The results of this service
>At the Discovery stage, we get input that allows us to improve the clients’ global service; so, besides focusing on a particular product, discoveries allow us to understand the overall context and give businesses a tool for the future.
>At short notice, we design a scalable product with a global perspective, so that it can continue growing consistently.
The value proposition
At this point, we could think that 2 or 3 months have gone by and nothing has been developed (and it’s true). But part of these radical transformation proposals have to do with creating and testing with users quickly to later implement. It’s not about designing a turnkey product or adding new functionalities to a product that already exists but about helping materialize a whole restructuring of the client’s strategy through ideas in a tangible way, connected to user needs.
The value of Strategic Product Design lies in the fact that, in a short period, conceptual prototypes that embody the product’s value proposition are built collaboratively. It combines business ideas with a human-centered approach.
Moreover, it lays the user experience foundations, which is key to scale the product so, once the project has finished, we only have to adjust, test, and implement!
All this is merely the result of other designers’ different techniques, methods, and experiences tailored over and over to meet our clients’ needs. Although there’s a process and a work plan, each project is a challenge that brings us new lessons to keep improving.
Let’s exchange views and experiences to see how you carry out your work and continue improving together. You can leave your comments below 👇 or contact me through Linkedin (link)
Here are some books, links, and concepts that have guided our work:
- Marc Stickdorn. (2018). This is Service Design Doing. O’Reilly Media
- Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur ( 2011). Business Model Generation. Deusto
- Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, Gregory Bernarda, Patricia Papadakos. ( 2015). Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want. Deusto
- Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz. (2016) Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. Simon & Schuster.
- Jeff Gothelf. Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams. O’Reilly Media
- Ryan Rumsey (2020) Business Thinking for Designers. Invision
- Herramientas para construir ideas. Thinkersco.
- Design Kit. IDEO
