Product Management writes requirements that identify the problems in the marketplace and quantifies opportunities for their solutions. Product Design assists Product Management in validating the solutions. Information Architects or Usability Specialists develop, conduct, and analyze surveys, interviews, and/or observations. The data from these studies helps identify problems and opportunities that are realized in the requirements.
Product Design develops prototypes that Product Management uses to elicit feedback from customers to validate the solutions. Designers create wireframes to elicit feedback on conceptual user interface designs. Wireframes are a basic visual guide used to suggest the layout and placement of fundamental design elements in the interface design. They provide a visual reference for the structure of the screens, define the positioning of global and secondary levels of the information hierarchy, and maintain design consistency throughout the application.
Writing the requirements and validating the solutions is an iterative process. New insights in validating the solutions require the requirements to be updated. Updated requirements require more validation. This process continues until the requirements are adequately validated.
This iterative process overlaps with Product Design activities such as analyzing the requirements and designing the solution.