Product Design Principles & Process

My principles and processes are based on all my years of experience in the industry and the research I have built up on design best practices.

Principles

I manage my designers using four product design principles.

My principles are intentionally simplistic at face value and highly practical for my designers to use.

My two main principles are inspired by a keynote by Jacob Nielsen about the immutable rules of UX. Nielsen presented his findings on key design principles that have been relevant for decades, such as early focus on users and tasks, empirical measurement, and iterative design.

I simplified Nielsen’s findings into two main principles that I placed in a continuous flow.

• Speak to real users. Why? You need to understand their actual problems.
• Make something for them. Why? You need to validate your possible solution.

My two additional principles come from my experience that designers need straightforward direction to improve their solutions. In contrast to typical design principles that are superficial and fluffy, these principles are practical and concise.

• Reduce users’ effort. Why? Reducing effort leads to better outcomes than delighting users.
• Increase the beauty. Why? Improving aesthetics increases perceived usability.

Process

I manage my designers using a three-phase process.

The best product designers, from my experience, take ownership of their solutions right from understanding a user’s problem to iterating on the solution after launch.

I have used this process to design, build and launch products at companies of 50 to 250 employees that serve thousands to tens-of-thousands of customers.

1. Design

Understand the user’s problems, their context, the market and your capabilities.

Scope a possible solution that could solve the user’s problems.

Prototype the solution because it’ll feel different when you interact with it.

Validate with the user to see if your solution could solve their problem.

2. Build

Spec the requirements that need to get built.

Code done by the engineers could bring unexpected opportunities or challenges.

Test to see if what you designed is effective once built.

Tweak your solution based on any new insights.

3. Launch

Release the solution to users.

Monitor your solution’s effectiveness in practice.

Feedback will inform whether you solved the problem or not.

Iterate where you see an opportunity to solve the problem better.