Decisively map out what you should do, not what you 能做的.
With more than 20 years of experience, our in-house design strategy 和 UX firm, 其他Left, has helped Fortune 500 companies 和 startups launch innovative 数字 产品. Our user-centric, research-driven design process ensures that we uncover 和 validate the actual needs of the user. We always start by asking, "What problem are we trying to solve?". We employ user research, journey mapping, 和 prototyping to validate our assumptions 和 clearly define the 解决方案 in terms of what you should do, not what you 能做的. This approach significantly reduces project risk around budget 和 timeline 和 ensures that the product solves the right problem 和 truly meets the business's needs.
Product development is 硬.
Product development can fail for several reasons. It could be 从 lack of stakeholder alignment, underestimating the total effort needed, lack of a clear product decision-maker, or failure to identify proven versus assumed user needs appropriately. Failure could mean a delay in launching your product, wasting massive time 和 capital, or even the loss of your startup.
According to the PMI,
Align all your stakeholders
Our product strategy specialists will help you identify who all of your stakeholders are — 从 the principles in your company, sales staff, customer service, the 结束-user, 和 even your 供应商. We'll help you bring all of their expectations into alignment.
Scope the project accurately
We'll help you properly estimate the total effort that building a new product will actually take. Most companies t结束 to underestimate, which could throw off the timing of your product launch 和 marketing campaign.
Identify the project owner
Without a decision-maker, it will become very difficult to meet your team's initially targeted development timeline. To prevent getting stuck in an approval loop, we'll help you clearly define roles before the project start.
Prove the user needs
Don't risk the entire success of your project by assuming what your customers need. Our product strategy experts will adequately research your stakeholders' proven needs to ensure the return of investment 和 efficiency gains you expected.
Human-centered design approach.
Starting with a great idea 和 immediately rushing to production will almost always 结束 up with a difficult-to-use product. Without the proper due diligence 和 research to identify the market problem, create a 解决方案 design, 和 build a list of requirements 和 user stories, your product will most likely fail to reach its goals. Our human-centered design approach is a left-to-right process that works to bring clarity 和 untangle all of the confusion before development begins.
Market Problem
We start by defining the market problem, which begins by identifying who the stakeholders are 和 reconciling their vision of how to solve the problem to what the 结束-users actually need. 我们所做的 this by creating a problem statement to really underst和 the problem we're trying to solve.
Solution 设计
Now it's time to get into the 解决方案 design by doing design research to underst和 their real needs 和 their perspectives. This involves creating wireframes, product architecture, 和 design research so that everyone can walk away in agreement with a well-documented concrete 解决方案.
Requirements / User Stories
最后, we look at a list of beneficial requirements 和 user stories that clearly tell the developers what to do 和 what the acceptance criteria are. At this point, we get to start development. It's not a perfectly straight line, but we're nowhere near the tangled confusion at the beginning.
Development
With almost all of the confusion cleared up, we can begin development. There's always something that has to change at this point, but now you can get into smooth configuration testing 和 tweaking as you go. Before long, you have a smooth launch with an easy-to-use product at the 结束.
Moving 从 could to should.
We help businesses every day take all they 能做的 和 figure out what they should do. 我们的工作 is to research 和 document how your users think 和 then create visuals 和 产品 that help them in their daily lives. We work with startups 和 large organizations to help them think through what problem they're trying to solve 和 make sure the answer aligns with their stakeholders' 和 users' needs 和 interests to 结束 up with an easy-to-use product. We get 从 could to should by clearly defining 和 designing the product before it gets developed.
Start with the problem
设计 based on what's known at the start, 和 you could 结束 up with a product that doesn't solve the user's needs.
设计 based on what you discover with a clearly defined problem statement, stakeholder interviews, 和 user research.
Our first steps at 其他Left are several versions of discovery that culminates in a clearly defined problem statement. If you're a leader or an entrepreneur whose primary responsibility is to determine if it will be worth developing your idea into software, it is critical to be very clear on the problem. It's a specific problem that's only solved by asking, who is that person? What is his or her pain point? Whatever the problem is, with stakeholder interviews 和 user research, we'll successfully define the 结束-user.
Underst和 the humans
设计 for the hypothetical user/human using the product could be solving the leaders' underst和ing of the users, not the actual user's problems.
设计 for exactly who will use the product by building personas 和 journey maps.
The next step is underst和ing the humans you're trying to serve. Even if you're clear on the problem 和 already done your cost model, you may be making the mistake of designing for a hypothetical human. Often the user's problems are different 从 the leaders' underst和ing of them. It's very easy to lack empathy until we try to bring a very specific human to life. It's a critical mistake to avoid this step, which is why we create personas 和 journey maps of your 结束-users to build empathy for a real person.
What you'll get in the 结束
Get "buy-in" to an idea to build a technology product, but then stakeholders may be imagining different 解决方案s 从 that product.
Clearly design the product to lay eyes before development begins by creating wireframes, design comps, 和 prototypes.
To ensure your product is the right one 和 there's a market for it, we clearly design the product using wireframes 和 design comps so that everyone can lay eyes on it before development even exists. With these wireframes 和 design comps, we can make a clickable prototype that starts to feel like the app itself. It's very fast to fix something like this. Now you have a really good sense of what the product itself is going to do, 和 you can make pivots without costing your company a costly rebuild.
Development 和 implementation
Set a budget for a product, h和 it off to development with the information available, 和 hope for the best. But there's no way to know if the investment will solve the problem at h和 or have the anticipated impact. You won't even know if you're going to get the product your or your users have in mind.
Have defined what problem you're trying to solve, what all stakeholders need in a 解决方案, whom you're building for, 和 precisely what will be built with user stories, prioritized product roadmap, 和 a tech strategy.
Often user experience design 和 product design silo themselves away 从 forming a technical partnership. That 结束s up being one of the most expensive mistakes because the process of content aggregation has not been adequately considered. It's vital to determine where every piece of information is coming 从, what the process of aggregating it is, 和 whose responsible for gathering it. Only by going through the process can you properly estimate how much time it will take.