From concept to creation: The 10 steps of product design

Devising new products and bringing them to market are vital parts of growing a business, but successful
new product development rarely happens by accident.

Product design is a complicated area, so we asked Chris Flynn, founder of product design consultancy
Flynn Product Design to take us through the key phases of product design. Successful product design is
not a single process but rather an iterative cyclical system, in which ideation, technical design, market
analysis, and testing all play their part in order to design, build and refine that perfect product / user
experience.

Into this mix creativity, problem-solving, design flair, engineering, production knowledge and market
research combine to perform Alchemy – we as industrial designers, think at least.

In this guide, I’ll take you through the ten stages of product design and how they can help small
businesses approach the development of any new product in a methodical and systematic way, ensuring
maximum success.

These stages need not be linear but they do form a structure that ensures a product comes to market
looking and behaving as it should do, with a recognised consumer base ready to purchase.

1. Collaborate

A journey is often better for sharing the experience. When it comes to development, it’s key to reach
out to specialists. Make it clear, what’s unclear, be guided by externals, they will be able to best help
you, when gaps in your knowledge are set out from inception.

Good product designers will expertly guide you through the following process, collaboratively. Your
established industry, Patent companies do not generally focus on efficacy of innovation or commercial
success of a venture. In short, you can spend money here prematurely.

Search for Product Designers at this stage, they will guide you and revisit IP anyway further downstream
when a commercial design is matured.

2. Research the market

Being entrepreneurial, taking something to market solo or via a startup is full of challenges, clearly or
everyone would be doing it. It can pay dividends to reduce risk as much as possible.

Gaining true market intelligence is not alway complex. It can certainly depend on the market. Most
often startups have a grounding in the sector they are entering. If you don’t then get industry expertise
within the sector.

Look to understand the nature of this sector. Look to take its pulse, figure out the consumer behaviour,
the trends. Developing a product takes time, so you need to be at least 18 months ahead of the curve.
You will benefit from truly understanding your problem statement and how then you can better the
competition.

3. Develop a brief

This is the single greatest influence on the ultimate product so we switched “create a brief” to “develop”
simply because its worth doing over until it’s refined.
Check the brief carefully for implicit assumptions that need to be examined more carefully, sometimes
you have to run with assumptions, but flag them from the get go.

For example in our workshops we will always emphasise the benefits of assessing the problem
statement, to spend some time digging down on this, review, then review again. Clear exploration here,
uncovers true opportunity.

By the end of this step, you should have a summary that clearly states what the product is for, who will
use it and how the design project will be structured. It’s important to remember that the end product
will only ever be as good as its brief.

4. Ideation – the creation of ideas and concept design

The research will have told you what’s different about your product and what the market wants.
Developing a safe place for thinking. Letting ideas live, creating concept sketches.

At this stage, product styling, identity, materials, form factor, mechanics and basic functionality should
become clearer. But don’t be too prescriptive. Look to birth ideas, we can see how they survive scrutiny
in the next step. Pitch them internally, live with them a little then move to step 5.

5. Evaluate the concept

Conceptualisation is the process of taking the ideas that came out of the brainstorming and ideation
phase and evaluating them more analytically. You don’t need to be restricted to a single concept; there
may be competing concepts and each may necessitate its own prototype to establish efficacy and
suitability.

Through further evaluation you will be able to settle on the one that is most likely to achieve the goals
laid out in your brief.

Create a decision matrix, whereby you lay up aspects such as your “must haves” and weight them. A
selection of concepts can be evaluated by placing this must have set of specifications in a matrix.

Each concept will be scored on how well it satisfies the respective specification. The weighting helps you
total up how a concept has fared overall. This can be a useful guide when evaluating ideas.

6. Use digital tools to produce the prototype

CAD will be used by your designers to produce concept CAD as well as Virtual Prototyping. This is where
the concept really starts to take shape and can be developed to allow its physical properties and
structures to be tested.

In addition, the CAD model will allow the client to further evaluate the design and give final approval for
production. CAD allows us to collaborate globally in teams to develop products effectively.

We can rapidly bring these designs into the physical realm in the next phase. CAD should never dictate
the way your product looks, great product designers will be at one with their software and free to sculpt
in this virtual environment. Our new Guide to CAD and CAM explains more about these tools.

7. Physical prototyping
You’re now in a position to produce physical models of the product. At this stage, check again that the
product is still aligned to the market research and feedback you received earlier in the project. Then
start testing the product with potential users and members of your team.

The prototyping is iterative. Feedback creates changes to the model which is then produced in a new
version and re-tested. You may encounter unexpected problems, which will need to be resolved before
you move to production.

8. User testing

This is generally dependant on budget and the status of the prototype work. It is more often than not,
feasible to create working presentation prototypes using simulation materials which look and feel like
the real thing.

Prior to that all important production sign off, it’s a vital opportunity to perform usability tests with
focus groups, even with prototype packaging.

One time-effective way in which to gather feedback is to run a focus group wherein people try out the
product and comment on whether it is easy to understand and use.

You can often integrate the emotional feedback into, colour ways, the pallets your intending to use. The
end use materials and finishes as well as the packaging. This serves to give you confidence before
making the manufacture infrastructure.

9. Design for Manufacture (DFM)

A more evolved set of prototypes designs signed off, will allow you to focus on Design for Manufacture
(DFM).

A reliable product design consultancy will always be mindful of design for manufacture throughout all
these 10 stages, however this is a phase conducted with manufacture teams.

In, for example, injection moulding or casting, software such as moldflow can help us assess and predict
how a product will mould.

Large chunks of time and cash can be saved by validating the design for manufacture. Cutting steel
injection moulding tool and other investments in the production process are likely one of the largest
costs in the process, correct analysis helps get this right first time.

This starts a liaison phase with manufacturer’s where by we gain sign off of parts for manufacture and
also finalise production costings. Which will be fed back to clients.

10. Launching the product

A well-designed product should essentially sell itself. If the correct actions have been taken at all stages
with the right team, with the appropriate budget and time constraints.

Good product designers will want your product to success just as much as you do. They will want your
product to win awards and set the web alight with praise. In a perfect world that’s how things work,
however, practically speaking in competitive markets you have to push hard to penetrate saturated
sectors.This may mark the end of the design phase, but the product development team will still need to
liaise with marketing and PR professionals to help create powerful promotional campaigns focused on
core benefits and functionality.

Final thoughts

These ten steps illustrate the multiple factors and players involved in a successful product design
project.

In reality this outlines a cycle of processes, that will be run over and over also many of these processes
will be happening in tandem, so it’s important that the design team doesn’t lose sight of the intentions
expressed in the brief.

New Product Design Process: 6 Major Steps Involved

Read this article to learn about the six steps involved in the process of new product design.

1. Idea Generation:

The design process begins with understanding the customers and their needs. Ideas for new products
can come from a variety of sources both within and outside the firm. Internal sources include
employees, research and development, market research sales force and reverse engineering.

The external sources include customers, legislation, environment, technology and strategic position of
the organisation. Competitors are also the source of ideas for new products or services. Perceptual
maps, bench marking and reverse engineering can help companies learn from their competitors.

Perceptual maps helps to compare customer perceptions of a company’s products with competitor’s
products. It is a visual method of comparing customer perceptions of different product or services:

1. Bench marking refers to finding the best in class product or process, measuring the performance of
your product or process against it and making recommendations for improvement based on the results.

2. Reverse engineering refers to carefully dismantling and inspecting competitors products to look for
design features that can be incorporated to improve one’s own products.

2. Screening Ideas:

The purpose of screening ideas is to eliminate those ideas that do not appear to have high potential and
so avoid the costs incurred at subsequent stages. Using group of people, proposals would be supported
by graphics, models and an outline specification and judged against a set of criteria such as necessity to
the firms survival, role in filling out an existing product/service, degree of overlap with existing products
and services, utilizing existing processes and capabilities, impact on overall sales and profits of the
company.

To have a better evaluation of ideas, each of the dimensions of the ideas is scored on a 0-10 scale and
each dimension is attached weights as per these dimensions. The resulting aggregate score helps in
deciding which idea to progress and which idea should be dropped.

3. Feasibility Study:

Initial screening of the ideas is designed to stop the ideas, which are unsuitable for further
considerations. Feasibility study consists of a market analysis, an economic analysis, and technical and
strategic analysis.Marketing takes the ideas that are generated and the customer needs that are
identified from the first stage of the design process and develops alternative product concepts. The
market analysis through customer analysis and market survey assesses whether there is an enough
demand for the proposed product to invest in developing further.

If the sufficient demand exists, then there is an economic analysis that aims at establishing the
production and development costs and compares them with estimated sales volume. The profit
potential of the product can be studied using quantitative techniques such as cost benefit analysis,
decision theory, net present value (NPV) or internal rate of return (IRR).

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The risk analysis is also carried out. Finally, technical and strategic analysis is concerned with technical
viability of the product with respect to technology, process of manufacture, availability of materials etc.
Performance specifications are written for product concepts that pass the feasibility study and are
approved for development. The details of feasibility are given in fig. 2.6.

4. Preliminary Design:

Design engineers take general performance specifications and translate them in to technical
specifications. The process of preliminary design involves building a prototype, testing the prototype,
revising the design, retesting and so on until a viable design is determined. Design incorporates both
form and function.

Form design refers to the physical appearance of a product, its shape, size, color, styling etc. Aesthetics
aspects such as image, market appeal, special identification, finish etc. will also form a part of the form
design.

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Production design is concerned with how the product will be made. Design, which are difficult to make
result in poor quality products. During the design stage itself the manufacturing aspects should be
considered. The production design or design for production include simplification, standardization and
modularity.

Design simplification attempts to reduce the number of parts, subassemblies and options into a product.
Standardization refers to use of commonly available and interchangeable parts and subassemblies.
Modular design consist of combining standardized building blocks or modules in a variety of ways to
create a unique finished product. Modular design is common in electronics and automobile industry.

5. Pilot Runs and Testing:

In the preliminary design stage, prototypes are built and tested after several iterations, pilot run of the
manufacturing process is conducted. Adjustments are made as needed before finalizing the design.
Apart from continuously testing the product for performance, market testing is also carried out to check
the acceptability of the product in the defined market and customer group. This helps to know in
advance, whether customer will accept and buy this product on launching in the market. Thus, test
marketing is a powerful tool.

Final Design and Process Plans:

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The final design consists of detailed drawings and specifications for the new product. The accompanying
process plans are workable instructions for manufacture including necessary equipment’s and tooling,
component sources job descriptions, work instructions and Programmes for computer-assisted
machines.

6. New Product Launch:

Launching a new product or service involves ramp up production. The process has been refined and
debugged, but it has yet to operate at a sustained level of production. In ramp up, production starts at a
relatively low level of volume as the organization develops confidence in its abilities to execute
production consistently and marketing’s abilities to sell the product, the volume increases. Launching
the new product or service involves co-coordinating the supply chain and rolling out marketing plans.
Marketing and production will work in a co-coordinated way during this phase.

Product Design Process: Ten Steps

What is Product Design?

Product Design Elements

Requirements for Product Design

Objectives of Product Design

What is the Process of Product Design?

Ten Steps of the Product Design Process

Brainstorming

Defining the Product

Conducting the User Research

Sketching

Prototyping

Compiling Specifications

Producing the Factory Samples

Sample Testing

Starting the Production/Development

Providing Quality Assurance

How to Evaluate Product Design?

Changing/Modifying Your Product Design

Mistakes to Avoid

How to Improve Your Design Process

Finding the Design Solution

Qubstudio Product Design

Case Study

Conclusion

Have you ever wondered, which principles do people abide when choosing a particular product? Seven
out of ten buyers agree that the product’s appearance often affects their choice. Thus, we can conclude
that the visual component is one of the defining parameters of its competitiveness. The thoughtful,
attractive design is especially necessary for such a highly competitive environment as a software market.
So, what is the product design and what does it assume?

What is Product Design?

Today, finding an unoccupied business niche is close to impossible. For this reason, even fairly
uncomplicated goods are created by teams of specialists with different fields of competence. In the case
of such complex product as application, the process of product design may involve dozens of
professionals – graphic designers, UX designers, animators, marketing specialists, business analysts, user
behavior researchers, etc. It is a complex multi-step process at the junction of engineering,
management, and graphics. Product design provides a comprehensive understanding of what the final
product would look like, feel like, what tasks and with what tools it will solve.

Product Design Elements

Formally, product design can be divided into three fundamental components:

Appearance;

Functionality;

Quality.

Of course, to create a successful, competitive product, you will need to carefully work out all these three
points: an attractive, modern appearance; a convenient functionality that allows users to cope with their
pain points (or achieve certain goals); maximum availability, high performance, and security.

Requirements for Product Design

As for the requirements for product design, it all depends on the chosen target audience. There are two
options: the first is when the product is designed for the widest possible audience, and it is almost
impossible to determine who exactly will use it. For this reason, the requirements are rather “blurry”.
For example, the product must be compatible with the latest versions of popular operating systems, be
compact, work quickly, solve user pain points (an obvious requirement), etc.

The second option implies the existence of clear customer requirements for product design (as a rule,
they are presented in the form of requirements specification). Usually, the development company needs
to submit several wireframes of the possible design that would correspond to all requirements, in order
for the customer to choose the option they like most.

Objectives of Product Design

Now, let’s discuss the goals that (in theory) should be pursued by the team developing the product
design.

Without underestimation, we can say that design determines the value (in the context of solving some
problems or achieving some goals), functionality and usefulness of the product itself. In turn, from the
point of view of the manufacturer, the product should be manufactured as quickly, cheaply, and
accurately as possible. As practice shows, providing a balanced compromise between the goals of
consumers and the manufacturer is not so easy, especially when it comes to a startup.

What is the Process of Product Design?

In general, there are 5 main product design phases:

Discussing plans for launching a new product within the team, brainstorming;

Defining pain points (desires) of the consumer and solutions for their elimination (achievement);

Developing strict product requirements (documenting technical specifications);

Splitting the product implementation process into iterations;

Testing and modifying the created solution on the basis of real usage and target user experience.

Ten Steps of the Product Design Process

In order to consistently implement all the above five phases, we have developed a universal list of steps
of the product design process and outlined them below. The steps in the product design process include:

1. Brainstorming

The first step to design a product is brainstorming, which appeared in 1953 in the United States. As a
rule, two groups are created for its implementation. The first group includes people who generate ideas
to solve the problem. The second group consists of a “commission” that deals with the processing of the
proposed ideas.

Brainstorming consists of three phases:

Definition of the problem. In particular, you must announce the problem (in this case, the need to create
the “right” product design) and select participants for both teams.

Idea generation. This stage involves the most creative approach. Participants of the brainstorming voice
every idea they can imagine, however crazy it may sound. Here, quantity is important, not quality.
Therefore it is necessary to be guided by the following rules:

generate as many ideas as possible, without any limitations;

even the most absurd and non-standard ideas should be considered;

ideas can and should be combined and improved;

no criticism is allowed – at this stage, ideas should not be evaluated in any way.

Selection of the most viable ideas among proposed. In this step, appreciation and criticism are welcome.
This stage is usually conducted by the second team

2. Defining the Product

After brainstorming, when all the viable ideas for the future product are chosen, you need to highlight a
certain number of general expectations (requirements) for its implementation. As a rule, the output is a
fairly abstract list, the task of which is not to form an exact guideline on the development, but rather to
determine the directions for the further team activities.

3. Conducting the User Research

Research implies several aspects: market research to define the presence of competitors, the definition
of trends, the assessment of the product’s prospective longevity, etc. As a rule, this task is solved by
marketers and business analysts. The results of this research provide grounds to build so-called
customer portraits. In turn, these portraits would give your team a better understanding of what the
final product should be. A properly-composed portrait includes such parameters as gender, age, marital
status, income level, place of residence (geography), employment, job position, typical problems, needs,
fears, and desires, and so on.

In no case should you neglect this step in the hope of creating a universal product “for everyone”. With
a high probability, you simply will not please anyone and drain your entire budget “into the pipe”.

4. Sketching

Any large project with a significant budget will only benefit from the creation of sketches. Before time is
invested in finding solutions, the direction of the search must be coordinated with the client. Sketches
allow to somewhat narrow down this very direction when choosing the main concept, and only then
work with composition, layouts, edits, refinement of the concept, etc., would follow.

5. Prototyping

Creating a prototype is no less important and crucial task than developing a design itself. Note that the
obtained result is not a beautiful final appearance, but rather a “skeleton” of the future product’s look.
Nevertheless, it allows demonstrating the functionality, ways of user interaction with the product and its
basic appearance. The creation of the prototype allows to avoid many errors and corrections in the
future. This will help save time, money and nerves, both of the customer and performers.
6. Compiling Specifications

Creation of a list of specifications is, in fact, the process of the above-mentioned requirement
specification’s elaboration. It allows reviewing all the requirements for the finished product and possible
solutions in maximum detail. Also, these specifications should contain the final delimitation of
responsibilities, deadlines, and costs. These documents would be essential at the product development
stage.

7. Producing the Factory Samples

Manufacturing the pre-production samples will help you understand whether the core idea of the
product would be viable and attractive to the real users or if, perhaps, it’s worth to shift the activity
vector to other key points. In the case of a physical product, it also allows understanding how much the
varying manufacture departments/manufacturing contractor are ready to produce the developed goods
with required speed and quality.

8. Sample Testing

Testing samples allows you to timely identify the flaws of the product or inconsistencies with the
requirements. That is before you even begin an expensive (as a rule) procedure of its implementation.
Manufacturing and testing the samples can be iterated as much as needed until they correspond to all
the requirements and gain enough of the positive feedback from customers.

9. Starting the Production/Development

At the time of starting the manufacturing/developing the product, you will already have a full set of
technical specifications with clearly defined requirements, tasks, responsibilities, deadlines, and budget.
Your goal is to break the major tasks into smaller subtasks (so that the deadline for their implementation
does not exceed several weeks) and assign priorities. In the software industry today, Agile
methodologies are employed for this, such as Scrum or Kanban.

10. Providing Quality Assurance

In fact, quality assurance activities cover all stages of product development, including release and
further maintenance. Nevertheless, their main responsibilities lay in ensuring the quality of the finished
product. In case of app development, QA team is responsible for pre-release testing conducted to
ensure the quality of the released solution, its accordance with the requirements specification, and the
expectations of the target audience (they are determined at the stage of forming the customer
portraits).

How to Evaluate Product Design?

To obtain an objective assessment of the resulting product design, we recommend using a SWOT
analysis. It implies answers to questions in four directions, in particular:

What are the advantages of your product? (how valuable the implemented functions are for the target
audience, how easily can this value be conveyed to consumers, which of users’ problems does it solve,
with what indicators would you measure the success of your idea, how strictly were the deadlines
upheld, etc.).
What are the disadvantages of your product? (is there ways to somehow improve your idea, what your
team lacks for its implementation, what can serve as an obstacle for its successful promotion to the
target audience, what are the disadvantages of your idea from the point of view of the target audience,
etc.).

What are the possibilities for the promotion of your product? (how easy it will be to promote it on the
market, what are its competitive advantages, what promotion channels would be the most viable, how
successful will it be in the long term, etc.).

What are the possible threats to the successful promotion of your product? (would the disadvantages of
the product create notable risks for its promotion, what financial problems you may encounter, are
there any competing products that cannot be outperformed easily, etc.).

Changing/Modifying Your Product Design

In order to develop product design, you need to follow the above-described product design steps. But as
for the alteration of the finished design, you will need to add two important phases beforehand.

The first step is understanding what you want and can achieve with the help of the changed design. For
example, if we are talking about a website, you need to review metrics attributed to its popularity:
traffic, conversion, user retention, etc. Thus, for a start, you will need to analyze the indicators of the
current version of the site and only then draw conclusions about the need for modifications. You can
also use the A/B testing to check the required scale of modifications. You can change some things in the
existing design, measure the user reaction, and check if it might be as or even more effective than
developing a new one.

The second step is to conduct end-to-end competitive analysis. It is very important to evaluate not only
the competing products themselves but also their budgets (it may be so that the budget of altering the
product design to overcome some competitors would significantly exceed the expected earnings). After
that, you can borrow those elements that have proven their attractiveness for target audiences similar
to yours.

Mistakes to Avoid

And now let us discuss typical mistakes people make when they are facing the problem of how to design
a new product:

Compromising between aesthetics and functionality. Ideal product design is one that combines useful
functions and positive aesthetics. If, at the planning stage, you understand that by paying tribute to
design trends, you risk making the product unnecessarily difficult/underperforming/too expensive for
the target audience, elect to use the proven solutions.

Breaking the deadlines. When setting the deadlines, try to take into account all the possible delays and
force majeure situations, which would entail breaking the timeframes. Otherwise, you put yourself at
risk of delivering a “raw” project with an unfinished design.

Operating upon inaccurate project documentation. Working on the basis of insufficiently scrupulous
technical specifications, performers often create products that do not meet customer expectations.
Keep in mind the saying: “It’s better to ask again a hundred times than to redo a hundred times”.
Infringing on intellectual property. This concerns mainly the visual component of your product. Carefully
ensure that your design team does not accidentally (or intentionally) borrows the easily discernible ideas
from another projects. Not only does it bear a threat of complete fail of your project on the market, but
also costly litigation.

Lacking ideas for future marketing efforts. Before going through all the stages in product design process,
you need to have a definite idea of what channels and tools you are going to use to promote it to the
public (usually, this is the responsibility of marketers, with whom you need to discuss this point in
advance). This will help you to come to a timely understanding of the ways of demonstrating the
product’s benefits to the customers.

Failing to follow today’s trends and innovations in your business niche. It is probably difficult to find a
consumer who would not want to get the most modern, most innovative product. Therefore, the
neglect of market trends in the future can turn into a complete failure of the product when it is
presented to the target audience. The main thing is that this tacit requirement does not contradict the
first point of the current list.

Reluctance to turn to outside experts. And, finally, the most common mistake: hoping to save money,
the teams often try to do with existing specialists by expanding their expertise and responsibilities even
if they had not previously had any experience. This is fundamentally wrong. In 9 out of 10 cases, it is
better to pay more but turn to contractors who can boast of impressive expertise in the field of activity
you need, rather than forcing your team members to study in “field conditions”.

How to Improve Your Design Process

And now – some simple recommendations for improving the new digital product design process:

Study your customers thoroughly. In order to determine the direction for the future design of the
product as accurately as possible, carefully study those for whom it is intended (do not neglect the user
research step, in particular, compiling the customer portraits). Think like your customer, behave in the
same way. This will bring you an accurate awareness of the correctness or incorrectness of your
projections.

Do not be afraid of problems. On the contrary, make it a kind of challenge for your team to discover and
solve them. If you constantly postpone problems or miss them completely, solving only the tasks you are
good at, you will most likely have to redo the result. The best way to cope with this is to do the most
difficult things from the very beginning when your team is the most motivated and enthusiastic.

Plan your budget to the maximum. Never underestimate the possible expenses – as a rule, they turn out
to be higher than planned. Otherwise, you risk to finish only some parts of the project and leave the rest
“until better times” when there will be money (and when, perhaps, your product will no longer be
relevant).

Finding the Design Solution

If you want to get a really cool, modern and unique design – then contact only the professionals.
Otherwise, even if your idea seems seemingly cool and visually attractive in theory, from a practical
point of view, it risks not meeting the expectations of the target audience (that is, you spend a lot of
time and money on a non-viable product).