The three areas of product design development are experience, form and utility. The client – the party with an idea for a product they’d like to produce – generally only has an idea of one of these areas of product design development, utility, so the other two areas, experience and form, are the areas in which they request assistance from a product design consultancy.
In this short article we take a look at the steps to developing a product with the assistance of a product design consultancy.
Understand the user and the Market
If you don’t have a product that will appeal to a particular user and market then you don’t have a product at all. As you’ll quickly realise, the process of developing a product isn’t something that takes place overnight – it’s something that takes time and lots of it – so be prepared to put the days, weeks, months and even years that are required into your product.
Think of the users and market you’re aiming your product at – why would they have need of your product, what alternatives are there, what alternatives could there be and what are the benefits afforded to them by using your product over another, are all questions you’ll need to ask yourself and come up with fitting answers for.
‘Who will use your product and why’ should be your aim when seeking to understand the user and market for your product. If you can’t answer such questions yourself perhaps you need to work even more closely with a product design consultancy because exploratory research – involving methods such as contextual enquiry and digital ethnography which are used to understand people and how they live, work and play – could be the digital consultancy service that you require to comprehensively understand the intended users and market for your product.
Design your Product
Once you understand the users and market your product is aimed at you can then start designing your product with the assistance of the product design consultancy team. You’ll find that over the course of designing the product that the services of product design consultancy firms prove indispensable, for example participatory research – which engages people in the design process through concept and idea contributions and story building around experiences – and concept testing – which is used to discover how people feel about product concepts and prototypes right through to the completed products – are essential and integral parts of the product design process.
Refine and Enhance it
The use of participatory research and concept testing will give you and your product design team plenty of food for thought and the outcome of this research and testing can be used to help you refine and enhance the product that you’re working hard, and around the clock, to develop. The result of your endeavours here, by working with a product development consultancy team like PDD, should be a cognisant and crafted product experience that will set the bar for all products of the same vein to follow.
Make it Further Appealing
What’s going to set your product apart from the rest and make it more appealing than any other product of the same nature? Have you ever wondered how colossal corporations like Apple have been able to consistently release market dominating and defining products one after another, year after year, in the face of immense competition? You’re not alone there, and in order to render your product even more appealing to your intended users and market you’ll also need a means of succeeding in this regard – so work closely with talented consultants to make it happen.
Lenny Wilkerson writes for PDD, an innovation and design consultancy firm that works for various sectors in London and in Hong Kong. Using human-based designs for their projects, the company’s aim is to feature effective and efficient styles for commercial innovation.