From Research to Release: How Digital Products Are Designed and Developed

In recent years, digital products such as mobile applications, websites, online educational platforms, etc. have become an integral part of our daily lives. Digital product designer Nikita Kolyadin talks about how they are created and what tools and methodologies are used in the design process to make them easy and convenient to use.

Digital products are everything a customer interacts with on a smartphone or laptop screen to solve their problem. It is necessary to strive to ensure that the user performs actions as quickly and easily as possible to obtain the desired result. If this happens, then they are your client; if not, then they are your competitor.

Flexibility of approach

The basic rule of design is that a digital product should be built around a user who solves his problem. At the same time, the design and functionality of the product should be developed only on the basis of objective data.

In modern companies, digital products are created using so-called flexible development methodologies, such as the Agile system. According to them, products are developed in small steps or iterations. For example, designing a huge “Swiss knife” that can do everything for several years is a very bad idea. You can spend a lot of resources on developing such a product, and either no one needed it initially, or it becomes obsolete during the process of creation. Flexible methodologies allow you to reduce the release time of new products so that they meet market needs as much as possible.

From hypothesis to product

This is what a product designer does, including conducting research, communicating with users, and analyzing data to design user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing interfaces.

It all starts with identifying the customer’s problem. One of the most popular ways to do this is to conduct in-depth interviews with potential users. Don’t ask them directly whether they will use the product and whether they are willing to pay for it. Respondents will most likely lie to you out of politeness, and you will receive false data. The reasons for this behavior are discussed in detail by Rob Fitzpatrick in his book “Ask Mom: How to Communicate with Customers and Validate Your Business Idea When Everyone Around You is Lying?”

After identifying the problem, the stage of building hypotheses of possible solutions begins. To test any hypothesis, you need to build an MVP - Minimum Viable Product. This is a whole product or a separate function created with the least effort, but solving the user's problem. You do not need to spend a lot of resources on developing an MVP, because during testing it may turn out that this is not a very good solution, and you will need to test some other hypothesis. A rough, unfinished, made-on-the-knee MVP is normal. If it turns out that this is exactly what you need, you can invest in refining it to an ideal state.

DesRel – what is it?

DesRel (designer relations, similar to DevRel – developer relations) is a system that allows you to build healthy relationships between design and business to solve user problems, create value for customers and ultimately generate profit. The introduction of this term into circulation can be considered the author's development of Nikita Kolyadin. How does it work?

For example, in small companies they do not always understand what digital product designers do, do not know how to work with these specialists, set tasks for them incorrectly and give irrelevant feedback. Some still believe that a designer simply draws pretty pictures that the management should like. Often, instead of setting a task through solving a user problem, the customer asks to “play with fonts”, enlarge the logo, add more corporate colors to the interface. These wishes are subjective and most likely do not reflect the needs of customers. In this case, it is necessary to explain what value good design represents for business.

Design step by step

In general terms, the process of working on product design is structured as follows.

Developing a rough layout. First, the designer thinks through user paths using User Flow diagrams. Then he makes rough low-fidelity layouts – low-detail interface prototypes. Nowadays, almost all designers work in the Figma online service, which can turn any static layouts into interactive prototypes that work like a real application. These interactive prototypes are tested according to a pre-planned scenario on real users. If we are talking about some small program or function, you can conduct “hallway testing” – offer it to colleagues in the office. Track the respondent’s reactions, note how easily he copes with the task and how the user’s path goes. If difficulties arise at some stages, these areas need to be improved.

Prototype detailing. After all the modifications and edits based on the testing results, you can start designing a more detailed prototype, closer to the expected product. In the process, testing is carried out on real users of your target audience. If the focus group participants have any difficulties, it is necessary to refine the problem areas and test the corrected version. When all the problems are eliminated, the final layouts are drawn for transfer to development. They should reflect all possible interface states, including borderline ones. The designer comments on the layouts in detail so that the programmers understand everything.

Creation and evaluation of a test version of the product. Developers create a test version of the product and submit it for design review. The designer checks the result for compliance with the layouts, correctness of the functionality implementation, etc. It is important that the product is not only understandable and useful, but also aesthetically pleasing. According to research, an aesthetically pleasing product is perceived by users as more convenient. Then the product is sent for release. The company's user reactions are assessed using data from various channels - primarily from analytical systems (for example, Yandex Metrica, Google Analytics, Amplitude). These services collect data on user behavior: how they interact with the interface, what buttons they press, what percentage of users go through each stage of the funnel, at what stage they get lost. There are a lot of indicators, they differ for each specific business or product. To identify key metrics, special methodologies are used, for example, one of the most popular is North Star metrics.

Implement or refine?

Iterative updating and improvement of the product, as well as the development and implementation of new functionality, is carried out based on analytical data and feedback from users.

At the stage of making changes to an already working product, one of the most effective ways to check the feasibility of a new product is A/B testing. This method shows how well the new solution solves users' problems. During A/B testing, the updated functionality is first offered to a small sample of customers (for example, 5%) and analytical data is collected. If the new solution has shown an improvement in metrics, then it is introduced for all users. If - and this also happens often! - the new product has worsened the indicators, then you will have to go back a few steps to rework it.

Creating digital products is a complex and responsible process that requires deep research and creativity. Mistakes may occur in the process - and this is normal. After all, the entire development process is based on putting forward hypotheses, testing them, rejecting non-working options and implementing effective solutions. And this must be taken into account.