Businesses have their founding fathers and products have their life cycles. Not surprisingly, product design has its own set of handy analogies. In this scenario, you are the fiery explorer, design is a breakneck journey and Code & Pepper is your jovial guide. We’ll take you through the wild terrain of product development: where conversions flow like rapid currents and rugged benchmarks lurk in the shadows.
At the crossroads
Whether your digital business revolves around payments, P2P lending or hassle-free insurance: product discovery is where it all begins. As design is a great base for further development, be ready to discuss it during onboarding. Initial steps will depend on your prior progress:
- If our point of departure is just a high-level idea, we’ll have to learn to walk before we can fly. A comprehensive product discovery workshop should do the trick (see “Travel Log” below).
- If the idea is more advanced (with precise requirements readily available), you can jump right to the next next section. “Design in progress” will focus on UX/UI process and development-ready deliverables.
Travel Log: Product discovery
We make it our mission to avoid over-engineering or running in circles when defining project milestones. With this in mind, we have established a clear-cut agenda of that crucial first step. It’s based on the best practices in UX design and UI design and our experience in bringing dozens of digital products to life. This way, the whole team understands your vision and feels confident it can be delivered within the set time & budget.
Your own… personal… Journey planner
During product discovery workshop (in person or online), you can expect a pre-arranged and comprehensive itinerary. However, as each product and client calls for an exclusive and tailored approach, we steer clear of control-freak attitude. It could kill the potential (not to mention the fun) of product design. In theory, the list below is the best roadmap we’ve come up with so far. In reality, the sequence might change if needed or particular stages might overlap.
Target users groups
Meeting their expectations is everything. Ready or not, we’ll spare no effort to learn all there is to know:
- Types & definitions: Who will be using your product? We’ll try to distinguish various groups if their needs to use the product are significantly different.
- Delivered values: What are the benefits offered to the identified user groups? How are those values currently delivered?
- User persona: We’ll define at least one user persona per identified user group (name/ age/ gender/ job/ location), as well as include digital experiences and expectations that can be related to the product.
Benchmark products
These are the finest trademark products shaping the expectations of your users. We might include competitor products if user groups are aware of them.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
It’s a direct link to the point above, where we identify and highlight all the outstanding features and qualities that should help your product win over the competition hands down.
Key conversion flows
They define how to navigate users in the interface and make sure they don’t get lost along the way.
Non-digital alternatives
This can be a good point of departure into core product design. Your disruptive idea will be shaped in a way making the most of your business proposition and available technology.
Non-functional requirements
It’s a technical term for all criteria which examine the operation of a system, e.g. scalability, testability, security, data density, accessibility, languages, browser compatibility, etc.
Key conversion events (optional)
They are those magic moments when value is finally delivered to a user. Do they exist in the case of your product? If so, we will be UX-ing them to perfection.
Performance KPIs (optional)
These apply to any conversion, usage or retention metric monitoring if value is actually delivered to users.
Functional scope definition
Epics & User Stories offer a detailed breakdown of all available actions and paths a user can take when interacting with the product. See: example below.
UX/UI design concept
It’s the result of a thorough analysis of all the above aspects of the product. The finish line comes in the form of up to 4 screens presenting key features and examples of UI. They enable quick check and feedback for next steps.
Souvenirs & Sendoff
If you’ve made it this far with us, you can expect your idea to have rock-solid grounds. You’ll continue your product design journey equipped with a first-aid kit of deliverables:
- User groups definition
- User stories definition
- UX/UI concept sketches
Do you want your product design journey to be more like a stairway to heaven – not a highway to hell? Be ready to jump on board with a clear vision of destination and exploratory mindset. As your fellow companions, we’ll make sure to navigate you through the rush hour of time-to-market. Travel fatigue already kicking in? We feel you – but with so much work done, let’s not lose momentum. Brace yourself for the next stage of the product design journey.
Travel Log: Design in progress
Covered on all fronts requirements-wise? Let’s sketch away that next household name of a FinTech app! Whether it’s a reinvention of an already existing service or a spanking new business proposition, the subsequent design building blocks remain roughly similar. As a result, the process is both dynamic and coherent. The ultimate goal is a complete UX/UI design in the form of development-ready tasks.
General Look & Feel
Welcome to the base camp, where we incorporate references and brand book (if available). No boring moments at this stage: we’ll talk colours, textures, fonts & vibes as well as all aspects of data feed and intuitive navigation. Even if your idea is still vague in terms of colour schemes and branding, we can identify that cornerstone flow or feature and build design strategy around it.
Follow the river…
All distractions aside, we start with a precise design scope definition. On the way to the design backlog, sets of features are selected, grouped and prioritized. Next, every item from the backlog is designed, incorporated into the User Interface and optimised in terms of User Experience. At this stage, designers work hand in hand with the Product Owner. This product development skipper is vital in translating business requirements into actual tasks and can be supplied by C&P or recruited from your in-house team. We are open to an optional UX/UI design workshop if certain features require more research or brainstorming.
Special delivery
Product design deliverables is where the UX magic happens. With every item listed below, your feedback will ensure the design team doesn’t stray:
- Product layout visuals
- Clickable prototype
- User flow diagrams
- Process diagrams
Should we proceed to development, we’ll need at least 30% of designs ready so that designers and developers can work in parallel. In that case, a new travel mate in the rank of software architect will join our crew, now on the fast track to the launch bay. On that note, our designers are in accord with developers and understand the technological perspective.
What goes around comes around
Both product design & development are iterative processes, which ensures efficiency and helps maintain a sustainable pace of progress and performance. This also means that design is regularly checked and verified by the client. To keep the feedback pipeline wide open, we’ll give you access to our design tools (Zeplin, InVision, Marvel, Sketch).
Home run
Just a few finishing touches of deployment & integration and your newborn FinTech app can start making its own first steps on the market. Some product design jet lag is to be expected but it will hopefully fade away with every positive user review and referral. It is our sincere hope that after the design trip with us you’ll be able to say: “I came for the product, but stayed for the experience”.