Data Driven Product Design Process

While finding growth solutions fast is crucial in today’s ever-more-competitive and rapidly changing business landscape, one of most effective ways is to make good use of the mountains of customer data that today’s new tech tools make it easier than ever to gather. Data driven design process is for collecting data from customers or other stakeholders in an integrated way to find every last bit of growth potential through user-centered design practices. Data driven design provides a method for more effectively tapping into data, and using it to extract specific, relevant, real-time insights into user behavior that can be used to inform strategy and craft more effective design that focuses on usability improvement and growth initiatives.

Research

Any successful innovation begins with an accurate assessment of the present, of current reality. The goal is to identify real problems and opportunities.

When working on different types of products (B2B, B2C, for example), the focus of research process could be different. For B2B product, the focus is solving business challenges. In terms of B2C product, the focus is to analyze the business model, market, user groups in order to discover opportunities to help the company’s business model to be landed, accepted, and grow. For B2B2C product, it will be the same as B2C product.

• Brain Dump

• Stakeholder Interviews

• Competitive Products Research

• Contextual Research

• Quantitative Research, includes questionnaire (physical or digital), A/B testing, event tracking history analysis

• Qualitative Research, includes focus group, heatmap analysis, usability testing, journey mapping

Define

When the teams are working in their own silos, the company will be either acting on the wrong data, relying on surface level, vanity metrics, for example, page views, or have internal fragmentation that the most powerful growth ideas and opportunities are missed because dots are not connected.

The value of this practice is to tap into real data, and use it to extract specific and relevant insights into user behavior that can be used to inform strategy and craft more effective and targeted growth initiatives.

• Archetype Map

• Persona

• Mood Board

• Affinity Diagram

• Mind Mapping

Design

In order to design for the real world, it is required to design based on real data. By relying on the right insights that extracted from Research and Define stages, a “good design” is already on its way.

The essence of design process is to piecing things together into something creative yet coherent, and then evaluate these pieces using both customer and business criteria. There might be multiple concepts for a choice to the stakeholders or customers, however, only one perhaps will be deployed eventually after testings.

• Business Process Mapping

• Site Mapping

• Wireframe

• User Flow

• Low Fidelity Prototype

• Usability Testing Plan

Refine

Test early and test often. Design validation is crucial. It is more than just a checkbox on a product design to-do list — it is the most reliable way to see the bottom line of whether the design works or doesn’t.

After improving design based on testing, validation, and even internal design defense process, the final design deliverables will be handed over engineer team for development.

• Usability Testing

• High Fidelity Prototype

• Event Tracking Requirement Report

• Design Documentation / Memo