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PRODUCT DESIGN TIPS: IDEATION


Product! Product! Product! It could actually be a service. But one may ask what the difference is between the two.
Okay! Briefly, a product is that thing designed and developed as tangible, homogenous and can be stored for later and can be owned. Service can only be used for the time you want to use it, intangible, heterogeneous and not owned by its user. Okay let’s use a vehicle analogy to understand it better. Look at a car as product and taxying as a service. Hope you got that?
This write up series is meant to guide to some little extent on some considerations when designing a product or a service for mass consumption. My advice before we go further is “always design to solve problem, money will come later”. You may not earn in the few early days which may run into months up to a year in some cases, rather you end up spending some resources during that period. However, designing the right product/service for the right consumer is the ultimate goal in designing a product.
Sometimes people rush into starting a company without clear view of what they are creating the company for. This often end up in failure from start. A lot of startups have wound up due to high resistance their product/service get in the market. Ideation helps you in setting out right and cutting off what is not needed in what you are doing. You then validate by feedbacks you get and implementing reviews.
In this episode, we will look at Ideation and Validation of product initiation. Perhaps a touch on user experience considerations, prototyping and deployment in subsequent episodes. This is not exhaustive on productive design as it is such a world of its own. So, do not think by reading this series, you’ll have it all.
Ideation is about conceiving an idea, discussing it, having reviews to be sure you are conceiving for the fit target. While Ideation is the stage of conceiving the idea, Validation is where you try to establish the acceptability to the target market. You could have some prototyping to get feedbacks all in a bid to validate your idea. This will also help you fail as fast as you can and right the wrongs as fast as you can. Imagine you having to sell fresh meat in an office environment. Weird right? How about some barbecue and selling only during lunch hours and towards close of work? I think that’s a better way of selling the meat product. Or you designing an app to tell farmers in a remote villages — where smart phones or internet are rarely seen — about fertilizer availability in the nearest market. An app to work with SMS might be more of a choice here than targeting internet/smartphone users. Don’t you think so?
When springing up an idea, you may like to consider the following:
Identifying a problem. You need to identify a problem that needs to be solved. Identify the pains of the potential customers and how best their problem can be solved. Often, solutions come up without a need for it or in a saturated environment.
Find a nitch. You need to identify the nitch you can penetrate which is unserved or inadequately served. A nitch here is a small but profitable segment of the suitable market to focus on with your product. Coming up with all force may lead to catastrophic failure and waste of resources.
Consider trend and leverage on your experience. You may need to do analysis to know the market trend where you intend to plug into, if the approach is completely new, you may likely not find your idea acceptable except it flows with the peoples’ thinking. Your experience in the industry will also give you an edge having understood what the sector is all about. Experience let’s you easily digest problems and proffer solutions.
Make it simple. If your concept is difficult to understand, it will be a difficult task getting people to understand what you are bringing to them. If you are techie and speak in jargons, get a help to break it down to general understanding. If complicated, you may end up getting confused yourself.
Discuss your idea. You may not know it all or even have the wrong perception of the solution you are trying to provide. Discussing your idea with others lets you know their opinion and pulls in more suggestions for you to review your idea.
It could actually be expensive building a product/service especially when you build for the wrong consumers or vice versa. It is always advisable you validate your idea before you commence design to save you huge stress and time. So, focus only on what you need, not more than that. You could also iterate as much as you can. Scalability would always help when the need arise for expansion.
In the next episode, we will touch on validating the idea.

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