Product concept and design

Comprehensive Guide to Product
Concepts & Design
Ella Quing
Elaijah Claireese Quing

Agenda
• The Significance of Product Design
• The process of Product Design
• JUUL & Product Design

It’s Not You. Bad Doors are Everywhere Source: Vox Youtube

Source: Puresolution (Shuttershock)

How do you start to design a product?
Source: Rodgers & Milton (2011) Julia Lohmann
“I usually start by identifying an area of
thought that intrigues me; a question I have
been asked or a fundamental one facing
our society.”
What problems do you commonly have
to address?
“Can it be made? What should it be made of?
How do I source materials? Who can help me
make it? What happens with it when
it breaks? Can it have another life or
function? How can I design out waste?
Empathy in design.”

Product Design
Source: Babich (2018)
The process of identifying a market opportunity, clearly
defining the problem, developing a proper solution for that
problem and validating the solution with real users.
“Design in its widest sense is about identifying problems
and addressing them. Product design concerns itself with
the three-dimensional world and our interaction with
objects.”
Source: Milton & Rodgers
(2011)
The design process is a series of steps that product teams follow
during the formulation of a product from start to finish. It helps
you to stay focused and helps you to stay on schedule.
Source: Babich (2018)

Design Thinking
human-centered approach to
innovation that draws from the
designer’s toolkit to integrate the
needs of people, the possibilities of
technology and the requirements for
business success.
Source: Babich (2018))

Source: Babich (2018))
Keeley Triangle

What is a Product
Concept?
Prerequisites
Organizational Goals
“Consumers will prefer products that have better
quality, performance, & features.”
The understanding of an opportunity that can be capitalized,
based on company’s resources + market need
To narrow down ideas for new products or
enhancements
Market Need
(Voice of the Customer)
Resources
(material, skill, tech)
Source: Bhasin (2018)
Source: Flight (2018)
Source: Haines (2014)
New concepts come from intensive market analysis,
observation, and even structured ideation activities.
“There will always be more ideas than
resources to commercialize them.”
Haines (2014)
Marketing
Myopia

Marketing Myopia
• When a business focuses on its own goals rather than
focusing on the needs & wants of the customers, ignoring the
possible opportunities for growth
• Companies should understand the basic needs of consumers
and conduct regular research to find out how to improve
product to retain consumer’s interest.
Examples: Kodak vs Sony, Nokia vs Android & iOS, Yahoo! Vs
Google
Theodore Levitt

Source: Haines (2014) & Babich (2018)
Research
Ideation
Design
Testing & Validation
Defining the Product Vision & StrategyMainStages
Post-launch Activities

Defining the Product Vision & Strategy
• Understand its context for existence
• Vision = guidelines & direction (why we’re doing this)
• Strategy = (how we’re doing this)
• Answers what you are not building
- Maps out the key aspects of the product: what it is, who it’s for,
and when and where it will be used.
- Have clear goals, objectives, key results (success criteria)
Input
Output
Value Proposition & Key Results

Research
• Conduct insightful research before making any product decisions
• User & Market research
• Saves time, money, & energy
- Allows you to better understand your customers’ needs and the current market.
Market research should also allow you to name your direct & indirect competitors.
- Identify and validate pain points
- Document: Product Innovation Charter
Input
Output
Voice of Customer

Source: Gorchels (2011)
Source: Flights (2018)
4 Basic Parts Source: Flights (2018)
Product Innovation
Charter
Define the new product’s objectives
Internal document that allows the product concept
robust and keep it forward through the development
process
Background:
How was the opportunity identified? Who will be involved? Who is the
product aimed at?
Focus:
What’s the market opportunity we’re looking for? What resource can
satisfy the need? How will it meet the ROI?
Goals:
How will the product concept meet the goals of the organizations?
(profit, growth)
Guidelines:
What are the constraints of the product?
AKA: Master Plan, Project Proposal, the
brief, Product Design Specification
“… mirror into the past, a bookmark for the product as it
is currently situated, and as a roadmap to the future.”
Touches on marketing, technical, sales

User Research
Interviews
Literature review
Questionnaires & Surveys
Focus Group Discussions
Camera Journals
Shadowing
Personas
• series of questions that
are posed directly to the
participants
• structured, unstructured,
& semi-structured
interviews
• good way for users to
comment their relationship
with product
• effective evaluation of
selected documents on a
particular topic
• include a review of
published articles and
papers, patent searches, a
survey of competitors’
products, and an analysis
of historical trends
and anthropometric data.
• Effective way to gather data
from a large number of
people
• Possibility of low responses,
unable to probe responses,
gestures and other visual
cues are potentially lost
- Interview that capitalize on
the communication between
participants in order to
generate information.
- Uses group interaction as
part of the method.
- Effective way to generate
ideas and develop
understanding on particular
themes without having to
reach consensus.
- recording users’ daily
activities via a written and
photographic diary.
- Method for getting users
to reveal real insights into
their daily patterns of
behavior.
- Highly effective method for
recording visual evidence
of how people interact
with products, spaces, and
systems.
- tagging along with people
to observe and gain a good
understanding of their day-
to-day routines;
- useful method for
identifying potential design
opportunities & learning
first-hand how users
interact with designed
products, systems, and
services.
- Types: fly on the wall,
guided tours, a day in the
life
- archetypal users with
specific objectives and
needs based on real
research
- Includes: name, age,
gender, interests &
hobbies, experience &
education, photograph,
demographic
characteristics, personality
details, barrier/challenged,
specific goals, needs, &
motivation

Source: Milton & Rodgers (2011)
Identify customer
needs, wants, &
demands
Translate customer statements into design objectives
Rank the customers’ needs into a hierarchy
“Recognizing the need is the primary
condition for design.” - Charles Eames Establish the relative importance of the customers’ needs
Reflect on the results and the process
1
2
3
4

Activity via Chat:
What do you think are the
challenges of smoking?

Pax Labs
Goal: Create a better substitute
for cigarettes / vaping
Strategy: Use to tech design to
create a product that will make
smokers switch

User Research
“I’ve been trying to quit smoking using alternatives but I miss
the nicotine hit from a cigarette”
“Vaping is alright but it so inconvenient to use”
“I’m afraid to use vaping products, they don’t look easy to
use”

Customer Needs to Design Objective
Adam Bowen & James Monsees
A revolutionary
way of smoking
(major enhancement)
Portable
Could compare to
smoking a cigarette
No bulky
design/buttons
Easy to use
User Research
No foul smellFunctional
Accessible
Functional
Accessible
Aesthetics

Writing a PIC for JUUL
What is the CM’s problem/s?
Describe customer type
How would opportunity solve CM’s
problem?
How is opportunity aligned w/ company’s
strategy?
Who are the competitors?
1

Ideation
• Team brainstorm creative ideas that address the project goals.Input
Output
Viable Solution/s
• Sketching, which is very helpful for visualizing what some aspects of the design
will look like, to storyboarding, which is used to visualize the overall interactions
with a product.

Source: Rodgers & Milton (2011)
Concept Generation Methods
Scenarios
&
Storyboards
A scenario is a narrative describing a day in the life of a persona,
including how a product fits into their life.
A user story is a simple description of something that the user wants to
accomplish by using a product; helps prevent user creep.

Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a technique used by design teams to generate ideas
more rapidly and effectively.
1. State the problem or scenario to be discussed clearly and concisely.
2. Be visual—draw ideas or represent them with whatever is to hand.
3. Number your ideas, and set a target of ideas to be generated.
4. Stay focused on the task.
5. Keep the ideas flowing.
6. Approach the problem from different viewpoints.
7. Defer judgment.
8. Have one conversation at a time.
9. Go for quantity, the more ideas the better.
10. Every idea is valid.

Attribute Listing
Breaking a problem into smaller and smaller parts & looking at
alternative solutions
1. Identify the key characteristics, or attributes, of the product or
process in question.
2. Think up ways to change, modify, or improve each attribute.
3. Draw these changes and then compare and contrast them with the
initial product or process.

Analogical Thinking
The transfer of an idea from one context to another context.
• What else is like this?
• What have others done?
• Where can I find an idea?
• What ideas can I modify to fit my problem?
Example: Georges de Menstral invented Velcro after noticing plant
burrs on his dog’s fur.

Idea Checklists
Guidelines that can encourage you
to innovate
S – Substitute
C – Combine
A – Adapt
M – Modify
P – Put to another use
E – Eliminate
R – Reverse
A – Add something
C – Change color
T – Try new materials
N – New design
O – Odd shapes
W – Winning sizes

Lateral Thinking
Popularized by leading design thinker Edward De Bono, attempts to
change concepts and perceptions by rejecting traditional step-by-step
logic.
Challenge—Here you challenge the status quo to enable you to explore
concepts beyond those parameters.
Focus—observe the inadequacies in existing products with the aim of
creating better end results. For example, combining notebooks and
desktops led to Personal Data Assistants (PDAs).
Provocation—In this technique you make some provocative statements
using exaggeration, reversal, wishful thinking, and distortion to any given
product.

Design
• Product team should have a clear understanding of what they want to build
• Will begin to create the solution to solve the client’s problem and implement
concepts.
An experimental model of an idea that enables you to test it before building the full
solution.
Input
Output
Prototype

1.Prototyping
Creating a solution that can be reviewed and tested.
2.Reviewing
Giving your prototype to users and stakeholders and
gathering feedback that helps you understand what’s
working well and what isn’t.
3.Refining
Based on feedback, identify areas that need to be refined
or clarified. The list of refinements will form the scope of
work for your next design iteration.
Prototype

Paper Prototyping

Source: juul.com
PLOOM
Adam Bowen & James Monsees’ thesis in Stanford University

Testing & Validation
• helps a product team ensure the design concept works as intended
• “Eating your own dog food” is a popular technique of testing.
• Usability testing, guerrilla testing, dairy study
• Do it wrong and you’ll learn nothing. Do it right and you might get incredible,
unexpected insights that might even change your product strategy.
Input
Output
Feedback & Insight

“Good design is actually a lot
harder to notice […] in part
because good designs fit our
needs so well that the design is
invisible, serving us without
drawing attention to itself.
Bad design, on the other hand,
screams out its inadequacies,
making itself very noticeable.”
Don Norman
The Design of Everyday Things

Post-launch Activities
• a product launch doesn’t mean the product design is over
• product design is an ongoing process that continues for as long as a
product’s in use. The team will learn and improve the product.Input
Output UNDERSTAND HOW USERS INTERACT WITH THE PRODUCT

Next steps for JUUL
Source:
Different Flavors
5% or 3% Nicotine Salts
a Bluetooth e-cigarette that tracks how much you vape

Conclusion
1. THE PROCESS SHOULD MORPH TO FIT THE PROJECT
2. PRODUCT DESIGN IS NOT A LINEAR PROCESS
3. PRODUCT DESIGN IS A NEVER-ENDING PROCESS
4. PRODUCT DESIGN IS BASED ON COMMUNICATION
design is for people

Source: Vox YoutubeHow JUUL made nicotine viral

Babich, A. N. (2018). A Comprehensive Guide To Product Design. Retrieved
from https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/01/comprehensive-
guide-product-design/
Bhasin, H., Infoshelter, Danesi, I., Wmmalith, Zaina, Ola, A. A., & Badhon.
(2019, June 21). What is Marketing Myopia and what does the theory
suggest? Retrieved from https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-
myopia/
Gorchels, L. (2011). The Product Manager’s Handbook 4E. Ch 6. Retrieved
from https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/the-product-
managers/9780071772983/ch06.html#ch06
Haines, S. (2014). The Product Managers Desk Reference 2E. Ch 11.
Retrieved from https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/the-product-
managers/9780071824507/ch11.html#ch11
Norman, D. A. (2013). The design of everyday things. Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press.
Rodgers, P., & Milton, A. (2011). Product design. London: Laurence King
Pub. Retrieved from https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/product-
design/9781856697514/fm01-h1-004.html
References

Flight, R. (2018). Product Concept Part 1. Retrieved
from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNu_FSF6Ph4
Vox Media. (2016). It’s not you. Bad doors are
everywhere. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY96hTb8WgI
Vox Media. How JUUL made nicotine viral. Retrieved
from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFOpoKBUyok&t
=78s
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