From scratch - the birth of a new product

Some time ago, I was working on a self-built product project in a certain vertical field of the online travel industry. I was fortunate to be a product manager and personally experience the entire process of developing a product from scratch. Due to the particularity of the company's business, we have never done a self-built project for the market before and have no experience. Therefore, the whole process of product birth was bumpy and the team has been in a state of trying to cross the river by feeling for stones. However, after the experience, we found that we have gained a lot. rich. Now, combined with my thoughts on product design during this period and the articles related to the product design process I have read, I will make a staged sorting, summary and output of product design-related knowledge.

The birth of a product can be roughly summarized into the following three ways:

1. The leader comes up with an idea, forms a team to start the project, and starts building the product;

- Most of the methods are aborted during the product design and development process, or no one uses the product after it is launched, and finally nothing happens. This is also the reason why many small start-up companies fail. In the early stage, they did not invest enough resources to study users and market development conditions, nor did they understand the development trends of the industry. Just based on a sudden idea, they immediately started to build it behind closed doors, which is even more terrifying. What's more, the product design and development cycle may have lasted for several years. When it was finally launched, the product market feedback was mediocre and had to be declared a failure.

2. Business-driven type - the product manager will understand and analyze a certain business of the company, think from the aspects of optimizing processes and improving efficiency, produce demand documents, design, develop and test according to their respective processes. Work and build products;

- Due to the particularity of the company's business, the company's current mainstream product design and development method is the second method. The product manager provides demand documents, and the designer conducts user research, demand analysis, etc. work, and then convert the requirements into a user interface and hand it over to developers for development and testing, and the final product is launched. The birth of high-quality products in this way must rely on product managers with sufficient professional qualities.

3. Product-driven - product managers invest time and resources to analyze the business value of a certain industry, find an entry point to enter the market based on the company's own business advantages and industry development trends, and proceed in this direction Product construction;

- This method is to generate feasible product ideas through objective analysis of its own high-quality resources, industry development and users, so that the success rate of the products created in entering the market will be higher. .

This self-built project is special because the design team formed its own team to create a commercial product for the market, so we adopted method three. Next, we will talk about the basic process of product-driven products from scratch, from team formation to product concept output, and finally summarize two sets of process plans that can be followed for product design:

1. Traditional Internet product design process

2. Lean Internet product design process

1. Traditional Internet product design process

The following is a discussion of certain aspects involved in the above process. A brief explanation of some important links:

1. Brainstorming

Before starting the project, by collecting, sorting, analyzing and summarizing all the business direction information of your company, find out clearly The company's current business areas. That is to say, understand what business the company is doing, what are the company's advantages, and in which fields the company can provide high-quality resources in the later stage.

Convene a team to brainstorm and diversify creative ideas, but the ideas must be within the scope of the company's business area, or related ideas derived from this area. Finally, the ideas are summarized, analyzed, screened, and voted on to determine the product design direction.

2. Market and business value analysis

After confirming the main direction of the product, it is necessary to collect a large amount of relevant market information in that direction, mainly including: market background, market size, market development Trends, market development space, competitor products, etc. Analyze the main functions of the product, resources required to be invested, later returns, risks, etc. The final output is a market analysis document (MRD) and a product description based on business goals or value - a business requirements document (BRD).

3. Product project establishment and review

Analyzing the market and commercial value of the selected product direction is actually a pre-market analysis of the hypothesis resulting from the brainstorming output. Verify, if there are no problems, the project can be approved and reviewed. Establish project personnel, goals, plans and other project-related information.

4. User research

Collect user information through questionnaires, user interviews, user models, etc., and conduct quantitative and qualitative analysis of users. The product direction was verified again from the user perspective and another low-cost trial and error was conducted.

5. Requirements analysis

Analyze the user scenarios that target users will encounter to achieve their goals to determine product function points, formulate functional priorities, draw business processes, and connect functional modules.

6. Write requirements documents

Combined with the output related materials from the requirements analysis, convert the product from concept into designable and developable documents.

The product is a requirements document (PRD), which roughly includes: function point module description, functional structure, use case description, business process, function point description, special status description, etc.

9. Usability testing

After completing the visual design and review, and receiving the visual design draft, you need to recruit users, formulate test tasks and scripts, and conduct usability testing on the core functional processes of the product. Test, record user behaviors, thoughts, and questions, and organize and analyze them. Based on the analysis results, product improvement suggestions for different people are put forward with pictures, texts, and evidence-based evidence. Conducting usability testing on products before product development can identify product problems at the lowest cost.

2. Lean product design process

The Internet is developing too fast and opportunities are fleeting. Many startups have ideas. In order to enter the market faster, they are the first to seize the opportunity. market share. But at the same time, it cannot be separated from the three essential elements of a successful product: user pain points, rigid needs, and market. Therefore, the lean product design process is a good solution to ensure speed without abandoning the essence of the product. Let real users experience the product as early as possible to verify whether the product idea meets user needs.

1. Product idea

For product ideas, you can use this method: propose hypotheses, verify hypotheses, and product design.

1) Build a PSPS model

Make assumptions about the innovative points brainstormed by the team, and then build a model based on Persona, Scenario, Pain, and Solution The solution model analyzes and fills in innovation points based on these four dimensions.

2) User research

Conduct user interviews and questionnaire surveys on the target users defined in the PSPS model, and verify the user scenarios in the above model through the results obtained from the research. Combined with the scenario, analyze whether the user's pain points really exist and whether the solution is feasible.

3) Product design

Carry out product design based on the verification results and produce high-fidelity prototypes.

2. Product creation

Create MVP (Minimum Viable Product) – the simplest feasible product.

The function of MVP is to allow you to contact customers and improve your product based on customer feedback from an early stage. A typical mistake is to stay at home and make products that no one wants, but think that you are making progress. Everyone’s experience is that what users want is often very easy to do, but it is also the easiest thing to ignore. If you don’t get in touch with users from the beginning, it will be difficult to know these inside stories.

At this stage, the product is built based on the interactive prototype and visual design plan obtained from the product design. In the creation stage of MVP products, you don’t need to implement all functions. You only need to make the product have core product value so that users can perceive the core value of the product when they start using it.

3. Product testing

After creating the MVP product, the next thing is to recruit the target users of the product to conduct small-scale user testing, analyze based on the test results, and continuously evaluate the product. Optimize until it can be released to the public and launched online. After all, the sooner a problem is discovered, the sooner it can be solved.

4. Product iteration

After the product is launched, analysis and summary will be conducted based on various data feedback from the market and user usage, and product iteration will be carried out on functions and versions. The iterative process is actually a process of continuous learning, improvement, growth, and maturity.

The brief description of the design process in this article may not be high enough, the structure may not be clear, and the writing may not be smooth. After all, the work and writing experience are limited. But I use my thinking to write my articles, and you can use your judgment to read them, and you will gain something. Hope it helps, thank you!

Problems:

1. Salary is too low;

2. Other rewards are too small and unattractive;

3. Except for the coordinator, it is possible that some other members of the project team have no sense of ownership, are not product goal-oriented, think too little from the perspective of the product or project, and only care about how much time and energy they will invest, and how many resources they will get in the end;

4. There are too few tracking and iterations after the product is launched (most products are basically ignored after being launched). A normal product should have many problems when the first version is launched, and subsequent iterations and optimizations must continue.

The result is that project members lack a sense of accomplishment and their enthusiasm decreases;

5. Insufficient development capabilities lead to a large difference between the final online product and the visual draft, resulting in a lack of sense of accomplishment and a lack of ambition;

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6. The project coordinator is not a product manager, but he does some things that the product manager has to do, which leads to some scattered energy. He must do a good job in both project management and interaction design. In fact, he must only do a good job in it. Interaction design (proficiency) is also very difficult. I personally think it can be split and the position of product manager established;

7. In the absence of market feedback data, just based on the product’s It doesn’t feel right to judge a person’s professional abilities by the quality and integrity of their processes. For example, innovation may bring some hidden contributions to the team, but in what dimension can it be measured and reflected?

In addition to projects, whether positive contributions to the team (not those in press releases ==, such as offering advice and suggestions to solve problems in the team, improving external influence, etc.) can be taken into consideration. For team contributions, whether they can be result-oriented is more important. Process-oriented, regardless of the process, only look at the results;