The Basic Creative Process of Product Design

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What Is Product Design?

The process of designing, developing, and iterating goods that answer consumers' challenges or meet real requirements in a market is known as product design. Moreover, the creative process of finding a business opportunity, specifying the issue, designing a precise solution for that particular problem, and validating the solution with actual customers is also referred to as product design. Understanding the end-user, client or the individual with which the product is being made is essential to a good design. By incorporating empathy with an understanding of their prospective consumers' preferences, attitudes, frustrations, desires, and wishes, designers aim to address actual challenges for real people.

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What makes Product Design Important?

Although it is gradually becoming the object of significance, the function of product design is to efficiently convey its sense to the user. People's perceptions about goods are continually evolving due to social influences focused on fiscal, ecological, and technical preferences. 

Listening to and adapting to the needs and expectations of customers, as well as offering new and imaginative product design, is important for companies who wish to thrive. As Eric Eriksson, a German-American psychologist, argues, "product design is the whole process." And that includes problem validation, as well as crafting, designing, testing, and shipping the solution. This involves issue validation, as well as approach development, design, testing, and execution.

What is the Creative Process?

It's both straightforward and complicated to describe the creative process: Easy because it basically relates to how individuals come up with fresh concepts or answers to challenges, and complicated because each person's method is somewhat different. The creative process is the progression of thoughts and acts that lead to the final product of a concept. 

Based on Graham Wallas, a co-founder of the London School of Economics and an English cognitive psychologist, experience and what he had heard about popular inventors and philosophers, he described what he considered to be phases of the creative process. What we already know is that the artistic phase has seven distinct phases, according to Wallas and those who have observed it.

1. Vision 

One of the most important steps of creative process is actually the early steps before the product design process even begins to start. Before you begin developing a product design, you have to understand its purpose of the product. It's the time when the creative team must define the vision and the strategy.

Have you ever begin on a project which purpose was not clear? In which the people involved in the project development are only vaguely understand the function of the design? Frankly, this problem often happens quite sometimes. As the old Japanese proverb goes, "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare." A clear vision helps develop a common understanding of what and why we are trying to create. A vision also allows you to define what error you don't want it to happen. Being clear about the lines of purposes will help you to stay focused when developing your idea.

2. Product Research

Product Research (which encompasses consumer and business research) offers the other half of the framework for great design as soon as the product vision has been established. Conduct thorough testing before making some purchase choices to increase the odds of performance. Always keep in mind that time spent studying is never lost.

Strong testing advises the product, and doing it early in the creative process would save you tons of time and resources in the long term. Furthermore, once you perform a comprehensive analysis, marketing your proposals to stakeholders would be far simpler.

Market research is an important step in the development and launch of any product, and product research is one of its components. Market research entails gathering useful information about your target audience and buyer personas, such as their needs, wants, and preferred shopping locations. Product research, in particular, aids in the testing of product concepts, the evaluation of ideas, the examination of competitors, the pricing, and the avoidance of costly errors.

3. Consumer Analysis 

The targeted people who will use the products should be the first and foremost responsibilities of product creators. How can we create great products for our users if we don't know who they are? Good user research is essential for creating a fantastic user experience. You can learn what your users really want by conducting user research. When it comes to research, there are a few different approaches to consider.

Direct dialogue is a well-known user research technique that can provide the researcher with a wealth of information about the users. This method can be used to assess user needs and feelings before a product is designed as well as after it has been released. One interviewer typically speaks to one user at a time for 30 minutes to an hour. Following the interviews, it's critical to synthesize the data in order to uncover insights in the form of patterns.

4. Brainstorm Ideas 

This is when team members come up with various creative solutions for project goals. At this stage, it is important not only to generate ideas but also to carefully check whether the most important assumptions are correct.

The creative team has a variety of brainstorming techniques, from sketches (very useful for some aspects of visual design) to storyboards (used to visualize the overall interaction with the product). The simplest way to visualize ideas is to sketch them out. Drawing by hand is a quick way to visualize a concept, allowing the designer to consider various options before settling on one. Most of the time, your first ideas won't be good enough because you don't have a deep understanding of the issue you're trying to solve at this stage of brainstorming. Instead of focusing solely on your first solution, generate as many different ideas as possible.

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5. Design 

After brainstorming, the design team has a clear understanding of the product to be built. At product design process, you should lay the foundation and design solutions to solve the problems and issues.

To ensure a great user experience, prototyping should be part of the creative process. A prototype is an experimental model of an idea that allows you to test a complete solution before building it. Prototypes usually start small, by crafting certain core parts of the product (such as key user processes), and expand the width and depth through different iterations when creating the required areas. It should be sent to the production once the prototyping is finalised.

You'll need to choose a prototyping technique based on where you are in the creative process and what you want to achieve with the prototype. It's critical to pick a prototyping method that reduces work while increasing learning.

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6. Testing & Revise 

A product testing and validation phase ensure that the design concept works as proposed. In and of itself, product testing is really important. If you get it wrong, you won't learn anything. If done correctly, you may gain some amazing, unexpected insights that change your product strategy. After the high-fidelity design is completed, the validation phase usually begins.

The sooner the test is performed, the easier it is to make changes, and thus the greater the impact of the test on product quality. However, if users do not use the feedback loop in a short time, you may need to make major changes after the product is released to the market. Seeing yourself as the user and designing for yourself is a long-term process. If you can spend your energy on early learning and avoid problems, you will save a lot of time in the future projects.

7. Production Activities

Production is the creative process of combining different tangible and intangible resources to create something for consumption. Creating products, or services that have value will benefit society in a long-term. The field of economics that focuses on production is called production theory, which is very similar to the theory of consumption in economics.

The activities of production can be explained by two characteristics of production. Whether they increase the monetary value of goods and services, or to increase the revenue of the production itself.  

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Critical Things to Consider When Creating Product Design

THE PROCESS SHOULD MORPH TO FIT THE PROJECT

The most effective product design process is one that is tailored to the capabilities of both the business and the users. As a result, use what works best for your project, discard the rest, and refine your creative process as the product matures. The method used should be tailored to the project's specific requirements, both business and functional.

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PRODUCT DESIGN IS A NEVER-ENDING PROCESS

The product design process for digital products, unlike more traditional forms of design, isn't a one-time event, and designers should never assume they'll get everything right the first time. A frequent testing and revise should cover the overall product flaws.

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PRODUCT DESIGN IS BASED ON COMMUNICATION

As designers always says it's one thing to create a great design, but it's another thing to communicate great design. Even the best ideas will fail if they do not receive team and stakeholder approval. In other words, the best product design is the one which communicate the best.

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Created by Sohyun Jun | https://www.behance.net/gallery/114326527/thingy

Final Words

In order to create a successful product design, it's essential to go through this creative process. Most importantly, the product has to be designed according to its main purpose. And the main purpose has to solve the problem that is going on within the target consumer. If the product design doesn't meet consumer needs, the business will fail. Remember to follow through with the creative process, and don't forget to leave us a comment below. Cheers!