The Process Design for an Excellent Product

The magic equations for developing products people love

Published in

Bootcamp

14 min readOct 19, 2022

There are few products people love. Most products are just “ok”, and could be replaced by something else. An excellent product is hard to design, and it fascinates me to wonder about what are the ingredients and special sauces that make a product really excellent.

As a product designer, I’ve been working with great startups and big companies, and also keen on understanding what drives companies such as Apple or Google, to develop durable products that people love.

Divorce before marriage

The key to designing an excellent product is acting like a pragmatic before-marriage couple — Reasoning out what could go wrong and strategically operating in all if-possibilities. What could go wrong is what great companies focus on. All hypothetical worst-case scenarios are considered, and there is a strategy for the case that might happen.

Instead, small companies without excellent preparation are fantastic at delivering solutions the market needs now, but they fail to develop solutions that resist the course of time.

An Excellent Product

An excellent product is one that has the following characteristics:

Task-oriented — A product is a tool to reach a goal. A product is not a goal. You should be using a product without even not noticing you are using one. With the right product, you execute tasks with excellence.
Care— The experience is awesome, and signals that someone has been really caring about you. You feel you are in a great dimension where all work in a pleasant manner. You feel “wow, these guys really thought about this”. You feel that you are accomplishing the tasks you want in the way you love and that the tool really understands your feelings, in a long-term frontage. Great products are durable because they were conceptualized foreseeing what “could happen if”. “When you make something with care, even though you don’t know who the people using it will be, they will sense it” said Jony Ive, former principal designer at Apple.
Simple — Where complexity is distilled in a simple way. You don’t have to think, and it’s fun to use. Everything comes naturally.

The product is not the experience. The task is the experience. If you can do what you set out to do, easily, is what determines if a product works.

How to develop a great product?

Products are made by teams. Dolphins and monkeys don’t make iPhones, bicycles, or Balenciaga shoes. There’s nothing more important than the culture’s team. Nothing. You can have the best people in the world, the best technology, and the best of everything, but if your team is not geared toward success in our present time, it will never have success.

Nurturing, seeding, and making groups flourish is the first step toward a successful concept. You should be acting like a grandmother making sure everyone is in place, and well-fed. Once the culture is slowly established, the teams start to self-manage and decide who comes and leaves the group.

Great teams self-manage. They want to make great products by nature, and they will do great products despite anything across. With freedom and almost no bureaucracy, great teams thrive.

KPIs that matter in a great team

The KPIs you should invest in:

Engagement — Successful groups are engaged and passionate. They want to really make something awesome. Engagement is seen in people delivering, how are they obstinate, how they come to work and execute tasks. Sometimes discussions happen, and they lead to improvements. Apathy is a red-flag for group engagement.
Safety — You can say whatever you want, and do not really feel any sort of judgment. You are free to talk. You are free to think.
Solving problems together — Successful teams love to solve problems together. By together does not mean necessarily “being sitting together”, but by having great collaboration and responsibilities.
Purpose — Successful teams are purpose-driven. They see that what they are doing is somehow helping the lives of others. Sentences like “hey, imagine how people be happy and safe while using this” is a constant, and this sort of spirit is crisped in these small sentences.
The best ideas win — When everyone shares what they think, there’s space to debate and improve. Great teams talk fast. The most important is that the best ideas win, despite where they come from.
“I don’t know” — It’s completely ok to don’t know a lot. Most things we do not know. And it will be impossible to know. In successful groups the most important words from leaders are “I don’t know” or “I screwed up” because when it’s genuine, the others will gather and try to solve the problems together.
No patience for bad apples — No bozos. No cheap talk. No dick heads. No trivialities. No lack of quality. No “selling ice cream”. One bad apple contaminates the whole group, and successful groups spot quickly the “askholes”.

Bad KPIS in teams

These KPIs you should not invest in:

How superficially nice you are—The “I like your dress” kind of thing does not really matter, and the need to be superficially nice can be toxic to a group. Discussions MUST happen in engaged groups. “Apathy” and “niceness” is a red-flag of engagement. Design is not selling ice cream.
Methods — Methods are a tool to solve problems or understand contexts. They are simply ways. The most unsuccessful groups I know are the ones who are focused on what the methods say, and not what the context says. Be careful about getting fooled by methods. Methods are important but the most important is thinking from your head. No method will make you think well.
Authority — Good teams tend to not respect imposed authority. They will have the best results whether you are in sync with them or not. Good teams hate authority, especially imposed authority. Great teams work like a fish shoal. Authority is a red flag.
Consensus — As a team, you should avoid consensus. Consensus is the main enemy of good innovations. You want to spark different ideas and viewpoints, and this implies not agreeing on everything with each other. Consensus kills innovation and makes innovation mediocre and slow.
Bureaucracy — Bureaucracy is merely a construction in which a person is separated from their own actions. Great teams focus on the opposite — If you create a product, you are responsible for it.

What to do in groups

Overcommunicate —Tell things several times. We live in the era of misinformation, and people have short-memory. Just overcommunicate.
Be nice whenever you can — Nice means solving problems. Not talk in a cute way. Sometimes you have to be bold, and alone. Sometimes not. What matters is that you did everything to overcome problems.
Small teams — Small teams work faster, and are brighter than bigger teams.
Community — Sit close to the people. Try to understand what they like and are focused on. Humans are mammals that form bonds based on complete instinct. What humans value the most is physical proximity. A sense of belonging is key.
Organize information as succinctly as possible — You will have seconds to tell things.
Avoid technicalities — Avoid any sort of consonant-forming abbreviations. No MVPS, No NDAs, no PWA, no nothing like that. Abbreviations kill communication and make something easy look robotic and inhuman. Communication should be easy to be understood by a 5-year-old kid.

So, what’s the secret to making a wonderful product?

Rules to keep in mind

Simplicity — Your job as a designer is to make the complex simple. Take into consideration accessibility and inclusivity today. Always remove the excess. As a designer, your main task is prioritization.
Simple vocabulary — People have to understand the idea in less than one second.
Collaboration — Just don’t be afraid of not knowing, and be keen on collaborating well with others.
Think well — Go beyond methods and methodologies. First, think. Then, think different.

Problem Discovery

Define the problem

0. Before starting

While getting the brief, you understand what is it about. Try to dissect everything, and really understand clearly what the brief is about.

Constant communication — Also always endeavor to maintain a relationship with:

Tech team (developers)
Different stakeholders (especially the main client)
(Potential) Users

Establish a strategy for how you want to do it. Every week? 15 minutes meeting by zoom?

Action: Schedule meetings via zoom.

1. Problem Statement

The key here is to discover the context of the challenge.

Problem statement
The goal, and deliverables expected
Who is struggling with the problem? (target group)
Why does this problem matter?

After this, return to your main client (and other stakeholders) to validate if you are on track.

2. Research & Analyse

The key here is to uncover the identified challenge.

User Journey / Customer Journey map — To understand what is the journey in terms of steps and the pain points. Also, you can do a user flow, if there is one.
Empathy map — How does the user feel through the current journey?
Use cases and scenarios —A comprehensive list of scenarios that happen when users are interacting with the product. The profile pattern of main users or potential users.
Task analysis — A breakdown of the required information and actions needed to achieve a task. Understand what are the priorities, and how can you group information, what are the hierarchies, what are the main needed features. What is extremely important, and key, and what is not, and what should be avoided;
Competitive Reviews — Understand what are the options available, and do a Competition Review or Competition audit. This can be made by talking with experts in the industry or searching what is out there on Google Scholar or Google itself. Always take into consideration prices and technical aspects.
Industry Research — Understand how that specific industry operates, and what are potentials users. What sort of vocabulary do they use, what sort of KPIs are important, and how a great company is seen in this industry?
Market and Marketing Analysis — Understand what people want, and what have experienced in similar products.
Interview real users — It’s better to test with real users (or potential users) than investigating randomly on Google, or even some research papers, in this phasis. If possible interview, because surveys can be tricky.
The Why — Understand the many whys and interests behind this problem, and what would be the interests of solving this problem. This can be done with stakeholders overviews or a “Why Map” to understand the deep whys underlying the project.
Value proposition and business model — Understand what distinguishes the different concepts available, what is the space of opportunity, and how to tackle it.
Ideal User flow — To understand what would be the ideal journey and how happy would be the users. What would really cool to make?
What can go wrong — You have to be extremely careful in Research. Most people lie in taking tests, and data is always about the past taking into consideration the options available.

3. Problem validation

The key here is to validate and complete the problem statement.

Problem statement #2— Knowing more about the problem, come back again to the problem statement, to see if it makes more sense, and add or remove something.
Your questions would be “does this all still make sense?” “Should I add something or delete it?” “how well do we think we can solve the problem?”
Business impact — Do a summary of what would be the business impact of a solution to this problem. How much money can you save? How much can you gain?
Validate all this information with key stakeholders and potential users — They do not have to agree with you. But you shouldn't be far away from their opinions.
What could go wrong — This is the main thing that you should focus on. Establish a journey where a potential solution can go wrong in terms of the user journey, in all sorts of ways.

Solution making

4. Ideation

The key here is to make a solution that helps solve the problem.

Design Criteria — In the sort of solution that you want what are the criteria? Do you want a mobile application? Do you want to have a good user experience or is not important? What are the design criteria of your solution in terms of everything?
Ideating — Brainstorm, or go for a walk, or whatever gives you ideas. You can use mood boards or cart sorting. Sketch. Some people have better ideas in different settings. And always know that you prefer quality over quantity. Many times with a great number of ideas, ideas get joined and form a whole new idea.
Pick 3 ideas and Research again — Do users want these solutions? Will they use this? Will they be able to use this? What could go wrong?
User personas — Build a user persona, to understand how some people would use these solutions, using analytical data available.
Validation — Again, before jumping into prototyping validate your information with key stakeholders and key (potential) users.
Storyboard — A story that illustrates the series of actions that consumers take while using the product. Try to create different stories for different people.
What could go wrong? — Prioritize the potential problems and tackle them in the story above.

5. Prototyping

The key here is to build a prototype solution that helps solve the problem.

Wireframing and Low-fidelity prototype — Just make something that works and solves the problem
What could go wrong? — Prioritize the potential problems and tackle them
User Flow — Understand again how you are solving the problem, and how far is your product in the journey.
User Experience — How can users have an even more seamless experience?
Testing — Have a lot of user testing with low-fidelity version, with key people that are relevant for this project. The key is understanding how this solution helps solving the problem.

6. Making it sexy

The key here is to have a workable solution that has a strategy and uniqueness

A detailed walkthrough of the proposed solution — What is it about in terms of core features and value proposition? What is the desired look and feel? This is the most important part of your solution. Every feature you add is aligned with the value proposition.
UI — Choose the design system. What type of UI do you want? What type of illustrations? Research about what sort of solutions are there in the market. Try to stand out but not too much.
User flow —A visual representation of the user’s flow to complete tasks within the product. Improve the user flows, and reduce as many steps as possible
Motion (interactions) — What sort of elements can you add? What type of illustrations? What kind of movements do you want?
Check if the experience is all consistent from the web, desktop, and mobile, iPad — Not only responsive but also smart responsive
Talk to developers — Understand what developers want, and say about the interactions you’ve made.
Usability test — The key here is to make the solution as simple and appealing as possible. Test with the target group. Analyze what they do, and what they say, before and after the test. Think “How can you make this product interesting?”.
Cut all excess — simply remove all is not deeply important. Have the least features as possible.

7. Launch

The key here is to launch the designed solution in the best possible way

Deliver to developers — Have a time estimate, and understand what is feasible and what is not.
Summarize and Present — Summarize your solution in 5 sentences. Try to frame what your solution is really about and what sort of problems you help solving.
Service Blueprint — To understand your whole solution, and how the client might perceive it;
Market analysis and Marketing analysis — Understand what the market wants, and how to launch the solution.
Launch — Launch your solution in the market. Start small.

“If the launch of your product did not have anyone, launch it again”

8. Feedback and analytics

The key here is to improve according to the feedback and have metrics that really track the performance of your innovation

Feedback — Be keen on understanding users that are the most potential users, and really can love this product;
Analyze— Analyse the performance in terms of market and sales KPIs. The metrics of success (These should be useful business metrics and not metrics pulled out of the air)
Failures — If there are any major failures, act fast. Create a new version fast.

9. Pattern Libraries & Design Systems

The key here is to give consistency to the work

Create a design system — Design systems can improve the performance of the products.
Integrate — Think about how can you integrate this innovation together with others
Create a new version — Upon the analytics and performance of the design, you can improve and launch a new innovation

10. Do it again and again

Innovation requires constant change and improvement.

The for a great product as seen in any of the steps is to think “what can go wrong”, and overcome the main problems from the bottom.

Also consider

A Design Process

A design process is a process, which by default implies that is not wrong or right, but just a path to a goal. There are several types of designs processes, and as a designer, you do not have to any, however, having a sort of a basis than “figuring out” would help you a lot to know which stage are you, and what’s coming next.

A rigid defined can make you neglect to think critically about what we are doing. Design is not to be “told what to do”, actually the opposite, design is vivid, dynamic, and “you have to think”, many times not by the book.

“All processes are wrong but some are useful”.

All processes are right if they work out well. Having a process basis will make you more solid, and will make you design better products in less time.

Remember that your job as a designer is to solve design problems, and not knowing methods published on Medium. You don’t even have to a method, or know that what you do is actually following any method.

I know designers who do things organically, and it works well for them.

I also know the opposite — Designers who know all methods, but don’t do anything of value. They get lost in methods, and do not know how to interpret information if it does know tick all boxes.

As a designer, your job is to understand and group information quickly, and this implies, thinking on your own without being told what to do. Which also implies that a constant interpretation of the context is needed.

Who Makes Great Products

In my experience, the people who make great products are not the most technical, the ones who know the most methods or the ones who appear and create a lot of concepts.

The people who make great products are just the ones who think “All products like this are crap, and I do not see anyone else better than me, so yes, I have to do it myself”. It is more an “I have to” by exclusion, than the drive to make products just to make products or to show off.

The drive of the people that really create awesome products is a goal of an amazing experience. They feel the urge to have a superb experience that still is non-existing.

Download

Download all methods

Download the journey

Tick all boxes sheet

Product Design Software

As a Product Designer, noticing that so many designers were struggling and getting fooled by methods and random guys from Medium, I decided to create software to guide you in making awesome products.

It’s called “Belpasso Software”.

Just use this software, and let me know what you think.

Thank you.