Design the Product Design Process
Product design entails figuring out what is actually needed. The dilemma is that users often do not know what they need, and so effective product design often involves a lot of brainstorming, prototyping, and simulation. Participatory design is the process of embedding volunteer users in the product design process, to stimulate their thinking and help them to conceptualize what product features would enable them to be effective and benefit them the most.
These ideas apply equally well to mission-driven context, such as machinery, aerospace, and defense. The mission is usually known, but the best way to achieve the mission often is not. Product design techniques can sometimes be very effective to help users conceptualize the features that would help them the most in their work.
When There Is a Product Visionary
Sometimes there is an individual who has deep experience in the environment of the intended user, and they are able to articulate the product requirements, or at least recognize the right requirements when they see them. Steve Jobs was like that for the domain of consumer electronics. For products that are internal to an organization, there is often someone who has so much experience with users that they know what is needed. They might even have a vision for what users cannot even imagine. As Henry Ford famously said, if he had asked people what they want, they would have said a faster horse: it took a visionary like Ford to realize that they needed something different than a horse.
But that is an outlier case. It is not so outlier that it should be dismissed: visionaries are not uncommon. But they are not the norm. It is usually necessary to involve real users to discover what they need. As Clayton Christensen said, one needs to discover what someone is actually trying to accomplish, rather than simply asking users what they need. They often cannot imagine what they need.
Consumer-Facing Products
Always give users early access to learn about usability, and be prepared to make significant changes.
Need to iterate with real users.
Need to include the marketing people.
Consider approaches such as (see the panel at the right):
Participatory Design - real users are coached in product design, and encouraged to envision ways in which new tools might empower them and amplify their abilities.
Dual-Track Design - a product design team works collaboratively with development teams, iterating on design concepts and their implementation.
Always involve users in the conceptualization.
The product is defined in terms of capabilities, as described in Step 5, but those capabilities include intangibles such as the ability to engage, impress, captivate, and enable users.
Mission-Centric Products
Usability might or might not be critical. If it is, then the methods for consumer-facing products all apply.
The product’s efficacy is evaluated based on the capabilities that it has, which are usually very concrete, mission-centric, and engineering-based.
The user of product design team might apply, but instead of being focused only on usability, the team needs to focus on mission effectiveness. Some approaches that are useful include:
Modeling and simulation - a team creates analytical models or simulation models of the system and runs a large number of randomized simulations in which a wide range of attacks are simulated to see if the system’s design is able to withstand the attacks.
Threat modeling - a team attempts to whiteboard ways to defeat the system.
Gamification - real users are challenged to defeat the system, either in a simulated scenario or an actual field test.
Related Topics
Participatory Design
Dual-Track Design
Read about the approach first advocated by Lynn Miller, former Director of User Interface Development Alias, here. Today known as “dual-track Agile” or “dual-track design”, she described it as, “interconnected parallel design and development tracks”.
Embedding User Experience Experts as Extended Team Members
Low-Code
Read about the ways in which a low-code approach might be beneficial here.
