Product Design conducts an analysis of the market, technology, and competition, in terms of the user experience and interface design, early in the product lifecycle to determine the user interface (UI) design direction. Partnering with Product Management, the Product Design group conducts surveys, focus groups, reviews, and other activities to better understand the market, customer, … Read more
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. … Read more
Product Management identifies problems in the marketplace, conducts analysis, and quantifies opportunities for solutions to the problems. Product Management develops a better understanding of the market, customers, and the customers’ end-users, to create Buyer and User Personas. Personas are a stand-in for a unique group of people who share common goals. They are fictional representatives—archetypes … Read more
I was recently asked by Good Experience to present a webinar on Product Design: Bridging the Gap between Product Management & Development, an article I wrote for Pragmatic Marketer magazine. Here it is (basically)… Product Design is the bridge between Product Management and Product Development. Product Management quantifies the problems, writes requirements, and validates the … Read more
Each perspective of the Balance Scorecard includes objectives, measures of those objectives, target values for those measures, and initiatives, as follows: objectives—the major objectives a company must achieve—for example, profitable growth measures—the observable parameters a company uses to measure its progress toward reaching its objectives. For example, a company might measure its progress toward the … Read more
Customers have experiences with an organization’s products and services regardless of whether the organization is consciously managing them. A good user experience delights customers—increasing adoption, retention, loyalty, and, most important, revenue. And a poor user experience discourages customers from using a product or service and drives them to the competition—eventually, making a product offering unviable. … Read more
It is essential to put your design solutions into the context of the market problems they solve, the business objectives they support, and the customer and user needs they meet. Using a “scorecard” helps organizations balance their strategic objectives across various perspectives such as Financial, Customer, Processes, etc. Each perspective of a scorecard can include … Read more
Once you’re confident you understand various customers’ workflow, activities, and tasks, it’s time to develop visual design—color scheme, fonts, iconography, branding, and all graphic elements. Visual designers develop the visual design elements that support the company’s brand and enhance the ease of task completion and efficiency. Medium-fidelity prototypes are developed based on wireframes and visual … Read more
Product designers have tools they use to define activities, tasks, actions, and operations such as activity diagrams, wireframes, and prototypes. Activity diagrams divide the activities into tasks needed to complete the user’s objective. A task is a unit of work. The task itself may be a single step in the process or multiple steps or … Read more
Dr. Donald Norman has suggested a hierarchical structure of activities, tasks, actions, and operations to better understand our customers’ interactions with solutions. In this model, activities are comprised of tasks, which are comprised of actions, and actions are made up of operations. This “activity centered” philosophy is focused on the activity—not the person. If a … Read more
Level 3: Integrated User Experience and Predictable Process When an organization integrates user experience into their corporate strategy then, using metrics, they can effectively control their customers’ user experience with their organization, products, and services. In particular, the organization can identify ways to adjust and adapt the process to particular projects and tailor it to … Read more
Level 0: Initial Stage We don’t know what we don’t know… Initially, your organization may not even be aware of the concept of user experience. Someone shares this knowledge and a grass root effort begins. Usually it is an ad hoc effort on a small project. If the effort is successful and the benefits are … Read more