Sketching Product Design

This post is a practical case on how to structure and discuss product ideas and sketches. It should give some perspective about general aspects of a product with a certain level of analysis on the value we are creating for a segment of users. I want to emphasize this is just a sketching methodology that might be useful for PM interviews, MVP ideation and planification or even just for fun and learning something new.

The case: ‘How would you design a digital product to find nightlife events in cities?’

The first thing you need to know about these kind of discussions or questions is that they are too broad to tackle a complete product design process during a single conversation. However, we can structure a general vision about the most important points of the product. We will be following the BUS methodology (Business — User — Solution), so you might need to ask or propose more context around the initial case. For example: is this a new product? What exactly do we consider a city? Are nightlife events just discos and pubs?

Business objective

This is a crucial starting point that’s sometimes omitted. We need to understand why are we building this product for. What’s the business objective with that app? Are we targeting any specific market? What are the KPIs for this company or business?

Let’s define this company top objective is growth. So they have KPIs linked to the total number of users and new users per month. Keeping it in mind is fundamental so that we can build and integrate features that match these objectives.

User segment

Next step of the discussion should be centered around the users. We need to find out and outline different user segments for the product we are designing. Finally, we will chose only one to focus on based on our business objective.

For our case, we could talk about these user segments:

1. People from 18–40 years old, or ‘youngsters’
2. People from 40–65 years old, or ‘seniors’

From my point of view, the event offering is radically different from one group to the other. Also, the filtering functionalities and categories we could offer should also be different. And finally, the disposable income is also different.

Based on our business objective, we are going to focus on the first segment, as it is a group that potentially goes out more, is willing to try new things out guided by recommendation and reviews and also spends more money on nightlife.

Next step is to think about the value proposition for these segment of users. Recently I published a post about the process of ideation to value creation, so I will use a reduced version of that framework for this matter.

For the study case, you will need to focus on user jobs (what does our user want to accomplish?), pains and gains, in that order. Note that in a real environment you would need to identify hypothesis based on them, so you can run experiments and tests to validate. However, we will skip that part and jump right to the prioritization.

To prioritize pains and gains, I would do a double order & filter process. The first one is about your users: what is relevant and important for them? The second round should be about the business: what matches our KPIs and objectives?

Value Proposition User prioritization:

1. Don’t know where to go
2. Meet people of my age
3. Limited budget
4. Don’t know what the event is about
5. Go to events that match my style
6. Unknown price
7. Buy tickets in advance

We will now focus on points 1 and 2, as it will narrow our product design perspective and they are fully aligned with our business strategy.

Solutions

Final step is to think about solutions that will fit our user needs. To do so, focus on the points we selected and start a brainstorming process with relevant ideas:

During this phase, you can be as creative and innovative as possible, but making sure you address the user needs completely. To continue, you need to perform a new prioritization. I personally recommend you to use a value/cost matrix, where you explore every idea and its implications, both for the user and the business.

Using this matrix you can quickly prioritize the solutions based on a double criteria, starting from the bottom right quadrant, following wit the upper right one and leaving the rest as “could have” and “will not have” points, following the MoSCoW framework.

Wrapping up

Finally, is essential that you compile all these ideas into proper product features and gain a clear picture around the path you are going to follow.

For this case, we will be creating a digital product to find nightlife events in cities targeting people from 18–40 years old (we will refer as the user).

1. As a user, I want to have a curated list of nightlife events in my city so that I can go out at night and have fun.
2. As a user, I want to see reviews and ratings of events and parties so that I know how it looks life in advance.
3. As a user I want to filter events based on target age so that I can meet people of my age.

With these features in mind, you can start building and aligning your product roadmap and share it with stakeholders, as you have a consistent summary based on analysis and prioritization.