The Startup Design Process
When starting a new venture or product, it's easy to start thinking about the ideal solution. A million ideas start racing through our heads, and we ask ourselves, "Where should we start?"
Has this ever happened to you? It happened to me all the time.
In order to achieve fast results, it is common to see teams going directly to the wireframing and prototyping phase. But, this direction can make us miss one of our product’s most critical parts — customer understanding.
"One of the most common reasons why companies fail is — Ignoring customer needs" — CB Insights Report
What is the Startup Design Process?
In the last years of my career, I’ve been creating and testing new products, failing, and starting back at the creation phase. During that cycle, I began to see some patterns of when an idea was successful or not in combination with the methodologies and processes used on the project.
I will share my experience with those methodologies and how you can achieve better results by combining them and the right/best moment to use them. The Design Process is a combination of methodologies and tools that will help you be more confident that you’re building the right solution for the right users.
Of course, there are many unknowns, and it sometimes seems like a mystery why some startups succeed, and others don’t. But I’m trying my best to get closer to an answer.
With that thought in my head, I went after different studies on the topic. I studied Design Thinking, Design Sprint, JTBD, Lean UX, and other non-UX topics. I realized that all of them were terrific methodologies and tools trying to helping us with the same thing. Build the right product for the right users. But should I use only one method or tool per project? Or would the combination of all of them be even more powerful?
- When should I run the Design Sprint workshop?
- Should I run a Jobs to be done workshop after or before the Design Sprint?
- How can I convince my company to try some of those methodologies?
- Is it possible to convince my team to block five days in a row for a Design Sprint?
- When should I create my hypotheses? And How can I validate them?
Over the past years, I made it my mission to finally answer those questions. Working in a venture builder company, I had the opportunity to learn more about business, products, and growth and test those tools in different orders, moments, and combinations. I've focused on running multiple design sprints, JTBD, and other workshops. Understanding the pros and cons of each one of those tools, and even better, the best moment to use them.
The Process
Here are the 10 Startup Design Processes that I'll write about and share my experience in the next articles:
- Understanding your company business model
- Understanding your competitors and alternatives
- The Importance of the product lifecycle and the diffusion of innovation
- Use of the research funnel — UX research
- Deep understanding of your personas and customer segment
- Creating your hypotheses
- Testing and validating your hypotheses
- Growing your product
- Improve and measure your user satisfaction
- Find new opportunities
How can the process help you?
- Having more influence and design power/ having more influence and a stronger voice inside your company
- Gaining a better understanding of business
- Connecting design hypotheses/goals and measures to business outcomes
- Forecasting the needs of your company and teams more effectively
- How and when to use the best UX design tools and methodologies
- How to launch successful products from scratch
Thank you!
I hope you enjoy this journey with me.
