Let’s work together to deliver meaningful products and services that create positive impact.

As the name indicates, it’s the process of creating a new product for sale to customers. A more elaborated definition would say that it’s actually a broad concept which encompasses
the systematic generation and development of ideas that eventually leads to the creation of new products. Design experts work on concepts and ideas, eventually turning them into tangible products and inventions.
The product design expert works with art, science and technology to create these products. This increasingly complex process is supported by rapidly evolving digital tools and techniques that help to visualise a product in great detail before its creation, while reducing the requirement for large teams at the same time.

Product design process
The process flows from problem identification to brainstorming ideas, prototype creation and eventually creating the product. This is followed up the formal manufacture of the product and a critical evaluation to identify any improvements that may be needed. No matter I work on physical or digital product design I trust in my 6-step strategic design process.

Factors affecting product design

• Cost
• Ergonomics
• Materials
• Customer requirements
• Company identity
• Aesthetics
• Fashion and trends
• Cultural acceptance
• Functions (problems the product is solving)
• Impact on the environment

Considerations in product design
Product design is a complex process, since all the relevant stakeholders have different requirements from the product. An example of conflicting needs that will require attention during product design are:

• Economic viability
• Price, appearance, and prestige value
• Functionality
• Maintenance

Methods:

• Ethnographic research
• In-depth interviews
• B2B In-depth interviews
• Contextual inquiry
• Focus groups
• User observation
• Shadowing
• Concept development
• Concept refinement
• Customer workshops
• Co-design workshops
• 3D CAD Modelling
• Model-making
• Prototyping
• Customer value proposition design
• Testing
• Photorealistic 3D Visualization
• Quality assurance
• Engineering support

Outputs:

• User journey map
• Use-flow analysis
• Value proposition map
• Value proposition canvas
• Lean canvas
• Business model canvas
• Prototypes
• 3D CAD models
• Models
• Photorealistic 3D Visualisations
• Product roadmap
• KPIs

Service design is crucial for all private and public organisations that want to innovate and improve their user experience, offerings and service strategies.
More than any other design discipline it emphasises the observation and understanding of people and how they interact with products and services.
Service design draws on many concepts, ranging from user experience to marketing and project management.
From a practical point of view, service design represents the activity of planning and organising people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between a service provider and their customers.
The purpose of this methodology is to design according to the needs of customers or participants, so that the service is user-friendly, competitive and relevant to its customers.
In every project, I follow these five guiding principles of service design thinking:

1. User-centred: The customer is at the heart of the service design approach.
2. Co-creative: Service design involves all key stakeholders of a product or service.
3. Sequencing: Key moments in a customer’s journey are segmented and visualised.
4. Evidencing: Customers are made aware of the elements of a service. Evidencing creates loyalty and helps customers understand the entire service experience.
5. Holistic: The entire experience of a service is taken into account. Context matters.

Well executed service design can fundamentally change the way businesses and industries operate, creating measurable value for our clients, end users and society. It has the potential to change your internal processes, the culture in your organisation and how you run your business.

Methods:

• Ethnographic research
• In-depth interviews
• Contextual inquiry
• B2B in-depth interviews
• Customer value proposition design
• Participant observation
• Service safari
• Customer workshops
• Co-design workshops
• Stakeholder workshops
• Cultural probes
• Prototyping
• Rehearsal room (role playing)
• Implementation support

Outputs:

• Personas
• User stories
• Empathy maps
• Mental models
• Value proposition map
• Value proposition canvas
• Business model canvas
• Competitive matrix
• Storyboards
• Video
• Prototypes
• Customer journey maps
• Service blueprints
• Roadmaps
• KPIs

User experience (UX) design is the process of creating products to provide users with a meaningful, relevant experience. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring, unboxing, setting-up, and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, on-boarding, usability, and function.

UX design focuses on everything to do with the experience of the product. The story begins before the product is even in the user’s hands.

“No product is an island. A product is more than the product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences. Think through all of the stages of a product or service — from initial intentions through final reflections, from first usage to help, service, and maintenance. Make them all work together seamlessly.”
– Don Norman, inventor of the term “User Experience” –

Products that provide great user experience (e.g. the iPhone) are thus designed with not only the product’s consumption or use in mind but also the entire process of acquiring, owning, and even troubleshooting it.
Similarly, UX designers don’t just focus on creating products that are usable; we also concentrate on other aspects of the user experience, such as pleasure, efficiency, and fun. A good UX Designer strives to deliver products that meet a particular user’s needs in the specific context where he or she uses the product.

The Why, What, and How of product use
UX designers consider these questions in product use:

1. Why: Involves the users’ motivations for adopting a product, whether they relate to a task they wish to perform with it, or to the values and views associated with the ownership and use of the product.
2. What: Addresses the things that people can do with a product — its functionality.
3. How: Relates to the design of functionality in an accessible and aesthetically pleasing way.

When creating products that users can form meaningful experiences with, UX designers first start with the Why before determining the What and then finally, the How. In software design, designers must ensure the product’s “substance” comes through an existing device and offers a seamless, fluid experience.

User-centricity
Since UX design encompasses the entire user journey, it is a multidisciplinary field. Designing for human users demands broadening the scope regarding accessibility to accommodate many potential users’ physical limitations, such as reading small text.
A UX Designer’s typical tasks vary, but they often include user research, creating personas, designing wireframes, designing interactive prototypes, and testing designs. These tasks can vary greatly from one company to the next, but they always demand designers to be the users’ advocate and keep the users’ needs at the center of all design and development efforts.
User-Centered Design is an iterative process that takes an understanding of the users and their context as a starting point for all design and development.

Methods:

• User observation
• Shadowing
• User interviews
• Expert analysis
• Workflow analysis
• Scenario development
• Value proposition design
• User journey mapping
• Use-flow analysis
• Depth interviews
• Usability testing
• Customer workshops
• Co-design workshops
• Interaction design
• Prototyping
• User interface design
• Implementation support

Outputs:

• Personas
• User stories
• Sketches
• Wireframes
• Interactive prototypes
• Value proposition map
• Design system
• UI styleguide
• UI animations
• Implementation roadmaps
• KPI proposal

User research covers a wide range of methods. It can mean anything from ethnographic interviews with a product’s target group, to classical usability studies, to quantitative measurements of the return on investment (ROI) of user experience design. What all user research has in common is that it helps place people at the centre of the design process and products.

I use user research to inspire design, to evaluate solution ideas, and to measure the impact of these solutions. User research (and other kinds of research) is often divided into quantitative and qualitative methods.

• Surveys and formal experiments are examples of quantitative research tools. Quantitative user-research methods seek to measure user behaviour in a way that can be quantified and used for statistical analysis.
• Interviews and (to some degree) usability tests are examples of qualitative research tools. These are often more exploratory and seek to get an in-depth understanding of the experiences and everyday lives of individual users or user groups.

Each project requires its own unique mix of these methods, depending on what we want to achieve as well as a number of practical concerns, like the project type, the budget, and time constraints.

Reasons for conducting user research

“Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.”
– Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO –

Here are three excellent reasons for doing user research:

1. To create designs that are truly relevant to your users.
2. To create designs that are easy and fun to use.
3. To understand the return on investment (ROI) of your user experience (UX) design.

Methods:

• Card sorting
• Contextual interviews
• In-depth interviews
• User observation
• Shadowing
• First click testing
• Focus groups
• Expert review
• Surveys
• System Usability Scale (SUS)
• Task analysis
• Usability testing

Outputs:

• Research report
• Personas
• Opportunities
• Use cases
• Insights

Prototypes are prepared and used to explore, evaluate, and communicate product, feature, or service ideas during different activities within the design process. Using prototypes provides the opportunity to identify important aspects of a new concept, explore different alternative solutions, and then evaluate which one might work in everyday life.
Often, prototypes are used as a communication tool to enhance collaboration and to present, persuade, or inspire.

A prototype can focus on the holistic end-to-end customer experience, a single step within that journey, or it can zoom in on specific backstage processes, issues, or technologies. Prototyped can be almost anything.

(Inter)actions, service processes, and experiences
Service prototypes are staged experiences and processes that focus on a certain part of a service experience. These can have many different shapes such as:

1. Simple storytelling sessions
2. Quick step-by-step walkthroughs or talkthroughs
3. More in-depth theatrical rehearsal sessions
4. Complex service simulations involving many different people from all parts of your organisation, from frontstage to backstage.

Service prototypes contain other forms of more traditional physical or digital prototypes as important props or stages, such as physical mock-ups, scale models, wireframes, or click-models. The point is to explore how staff, customers, or other stakeholders do and experience things, and how they behave in new service situations. Specifically, they uncover how things should be done and experienced differently in the future.

Physical objects
In industrial or product design, a prototype means an early, often lower-fidelity version of the product itself. The most common prototypes of physical objects are:

1. “Looks-like” prototypes that give an impression of the shape and style of the product. This is exposed to the audience to get feedback.
2. “Works-like”, functional prototypes for people to use and test.

Physical prototypes are often embedded into a more holistic service prototype to explore or evaluate the role of the product in the life of its user.

Prototypes of environments, spaces, and architecture
These represent a special case of physical object prototypes. Architects use scale models of a space or a building to test and communicate their ideas. Virtual reality headsets used with digital 3D models allow customers to dive into new spaces.

Prototypes of digital artifacts and software
For software, mobile and web app prototypes can be used for anything from sketches of the interface, actors playing devices, static mock-ups, and interactive prototypes, to working pieces of experimental code running on target devices.
These digital prototypes are often embedded into a more holistic service prototype to explore or evaluate the role of the artifact or software in the life of its user.

Prototypes of ecosystems and (business) value
Since all services and products are part of a complex ecosystem and are exposed to various (market) forces, there’s a need for them to be validated with a set of different kinds of prototypes. Each prototype is specifically tailored to understand and explore a certain perspective on those complex networks and relationships.
Common tools include:

1. Service advertisements (prototypes of desirability and perceived value)
2. Desktop system maps (prototypes of the complex dynamics of holistic business systems)
3. Business Model Canvases (early prototypes of the core business model)
4. Business experiments
5. Fake door websites or Wizard of Oz prototypes (prototypes that follow a fake-it-before-you-make-it approach and help to explore and validate the core value proposition)

For many people, accepting prototyping methods means a temporary change of philosophy: from perfect to just enough, from long-term quality to temporary simulation. I call that the prototype mindset which is based on the four principles described in “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days” by Jake Knapp:

1. You can prototype anything. Believe or not, it’s true, there is always a way to prototype and test your product, feature, or service. We just need to figure it out.
2. Prototypes are disposable. There’s a rule — don’t prototype anything you aren’t willing to throw away. It’s important to prepare yourself to learn that the solution might not work. So don’t give in to the temptation of spending a few days or weeks getting your prototype ready, and avoid falling in love with it.
3. Build just enough to learn, but not more. The prototype is meant to answer questions, so keep it focused. Having a fully functional product  is unnecessary at this stage — something that feels complete and enables customers to react is just enough.
4. The prototype must appear real. To get trustworthy results, it is not recommended to ask customers to use their imaginations. It’s crucial to show them something realistic in order to receive genuine reactions. Figuring out what “real enough” means requires some experience with prototyping.

Methods:

• Storytelling sessions
• Step-by-step walkthroughs
• Step-by-step talkthroughs
• Rehearsal sessions
• Service simulations
• 3D models
• Scale models
• Functional prototypes
• Exterior design prototypes
• Paper prototypes
• Static mockups
• Interactive prototypes
• Experimental code
• Service advertisements
• Product advertisements
• System maps
• Value proposition canvases
• Business model canvases
• Business experiments
• Fake door websites
• Wizard of Oz prototypes

Design Strategy is the process of the initial framing of a project to clarify what to design and why, before considering how to design it.
Design strategy emphasises prototyping, collaboration, and rapid iteration; instead of waiting until every possible question has been answered before the design can begin.

Design strategy:

• Has empathy for the customer and the end user,
• Strives for an understanding of the customer, their goals, behaviours, and motivations.

Once that understanding is built, the focus shifts to harnessing that empathy to discover opportunities that make the customer’s interaction with the product, service, or brand easier, more enjoyable, and ultimately, more profitable.

A typical project scenario from organisations looks like this:

1. There is clear list of business goals for a project in place.
2. As part of the Design strategy process, a list of user needs is identified.
3. The process of meshing the two lists together, ensuring that the organisation is serving its customers while ultimately taking steps towards achieving the goals set out for business is called Design strategy.

The biggest benefit of the process is uncovering previously undiscovered opportunities to meet both the business and user’s needs.

Design strategy also helps teams avoid analysis paralysis, a condition that occurs when one has so much information and so many things that need doing that they’re unable to begin doing anything.

More and more organisations in the world are becoming design-driven. They look for the underserved needs of customers first and later think of building a business model on top of it.

As the long-term path to success, I’m a firm believer in Google’s philosophy to “Focus on the user and all else will follow”.

When it comes to innovation and design, I firmly believe in insight-driven strategies. Developing a strategy entails exploring users’ worlds and discovering growth opportunities along the way.
By being strongly user-centric and agile, I help clients to innovate in a meaningful way. More specifically, I align strategies with user needs, brand identity, and market realities.

Why insights & strategy are important?
Creating wonderful experiences for people is only possible with a great understanding of real user needs. And creating the future starts by gaining an understanding of the present, and developing empathy through research.
I have a passion for exploring users’ expectations and motivations, analysing and optimising workflows, and integrating the results across a wide range of touchpoints, from physical to digital to services.

Methods:

• Ethnographic research
• Observations
• Shadowing
• User interviews
• Stakeholder interviews
• Concept validation test
• A/B testing
• Expert analysis
• Trend analysis
• Technology forecast
• Statistical analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Requirements analysis
• Opportunity mapping
• Customer segmentation
• Persona definition
• Co-creation workshops
• Ideation workshops
• Value proposition design
• Business model design
• Experience prototyping
• Qualitative testing
• Quantitative testing
• RITE method

Outputs:

• Customer segments
• Personas
• Value proposition canvas
• Business model canvas
• Prototypes
• Brand strategy
• Insights
• Opportunities
• Research reports

Entrepreneurship transforms businesses at any scale.
Most new ventures face the same core challenges, whether they are launched by a startup team or a multinational corporation. Resources are tight, time is of the essence, and everyone must be aligned as they step into unexplored areas.

Venture design is a lean approach to human-centered design, optimised for the creation of new businesses—building them rapidly and efficiently from zero to launch.
A key objective of venture design is to enable both young and mature companies to reduce complexity and increase the throughput of innovation activities.

I help both start-ups and multinational corporations discover the many advantages that this design approach brings to entrepreneurial efforts. I use it in a way to overcome the challenges and successfully launch standalone businesses for industry titans, as well as lifting early stage companies.

There are four mantras of how I work with new venture teams:

1. Build and go. I work side by side with teams to rapidly conceptualise, build and launch a new business. I prefer being co-located with the team to increase efficiency, foster ongoing alignment, and deepen relationships, ensuring no time is wasted on the path to launch.
2. Pass stage-gates. I drive intense development sprints that unite everyone around a common vision and strategy, and help secure support for the new venture’s next step.
3. Pivot and launch again. With business impact as our focus and our guide, we’ll evaluate and execute together alternate routes to success. We’ll test, assess and reorient a venture as needed to leverage assets, redirect momentum, and get a running start on growth.
4. Nurture innovation. I provide training and support throughout the venture design process so that teams can continue to build and sustain innovation from concept through launch and beyond.

An important part of my services is guidance for how to operate within your team, interoperate with others, and accelerate and prioritize your efforts.
There are four principles to guide and optimise design and strategy work within the entrepreneurial context, let’s look at them briefly:

1. Autonomy has to be granted and defended. New ventures need to be provided with the freedom and agency to continually shape their own best practices unencumbered by organisational history, politics, legacy systems and other hurdles.
2. Continuous engagement realised by deep collaboration, transparent workflows, and flat teams to gain efficiency, continuity, and capability across all contributors. This altogether enables the founder’s mindset of co-ownership and emphasis on impact.
3. Progress over process. It’s important to free up the team from rigid processes, and rather seek and exploit opportunities to move further faster. New venture teams should jump ahead whenever possible.
4. Design the impact, not the product. Define, plan and work toward clear objectives, focusing on what is necessary for success, having a clear sense what success means. The required impact remains the same, and how you achieve it is the variable.

Methods:

• Customer interviews
• Workshops
• Sprints
• Prototyping
• Testing
• Value proposition design
• Business model design
• Competition analysis

Outputs:

• Personas
• Scenarios
• Value propositions
• Business model
• User stories
• Prototypes
• Financial models

Inclusivity has become one of the of the biggest buzzwords inside corporations right now. But at the same time it’s getting misinterpreted in many different ways.

Let me shed some light on the meaning of inclusive design first. The simplest definition would be:
Inclusive design is a process, not a result. It’s about including previously excluded communities in the design process and addressing their needs. The best possible outcome of a well practiced inclusive design will be real design for all — meaning something that works for everyone in all scenarios, with every contingency.

I support companies to create added value and open up new target groups, rather than exclude consumers because of any reason. I help them develop user-oriented solutions for all which are comfortable, attractive, and accessible.

Design for All (also Universal Design)
Products, architecture, and services should be user-friendly so that all people can interact with them — regardless of their age or life situation. With the concept Design for All, I strive for solutions which are particularly comfortable and attractive thanks to a variety of features. Businesses can thus appeal successfully to large target groups, instead of focusing on solutions for a few.

The curb cut is a great example of inclusive design. The early version of curb cuts weren’t designed for everybody. There never used to be an indicator for blind people to know that they were about to walk out into the street. And it caused really horrible situations! Later on, this was fixed by using a roughened surface around the curb, so that it became designed for all. If blind people were invited to the table in the very beginning, the early version of the curb cut would not have been as dangerous.

How I help companies to create attractive solutions for diverse users:

1. Advising businesses so that they better understand the needs arising from old age or disability, and are able to turn them into positives.
2. Supporting the development of Design for All (Universal Design) solutions that work for all genera­tions, and are both accessible and attractive.
3. Uncovering potential for improvement, and adapting products and services for future target groups.
4. Crafting new solutions which are attractive and convenient for all.
5. Extending awareness, using practical examples, and bringing customers to workshops.

Methods:

• User research
• User tests
• Needs analysis
• Workshops
• Training
• Product concepts
• Product design
• Standards analysis
• Market analysis

Outputs:

• Studies
• User requirements
• Product concepts
• Opportunity map

What I determine as meaningful metrics for your design and products will be unique to your business.

“Your metrics will be as unique as your business.”
~ Joshua Porter

This is why the out-of-the-box analytics solutions fall short. They are too general and solely focused on numbers. How can numbers like “Average time on site is 22 minutes!” or “+450 conversions this week!” help us know that our product is working for our users? The same situation comes when looking at DAU, MAU, CPA, NPS, and other common metrics. If you want to track meaningful metrics, you have to find them first.

A good UX metric measures the usage of your product by a person. It needs to be specific. You have to know what behaviours and interactions that metric represents, and what the desired behaviours are.

The way I approach UX metrics is based on the identification of specific interactions in the interface that will help measure desired behaviours, and then find the numbers to track them.
The techniques I use are pretty universal, they can be used in any context, including product, service, feature, or even a single interactions.