The Product Development Life Cycle
Every new product, whether it’s an app or a physical object, follows certain steps to go from just an idea to a full functioning product. This is called The Product Development Life Cycle. If you are a beginner and you have been working on conceptual products and didn’t know about this cycle then don’t worry because this is something that you will follow subconsciously as soon as you start working on your product.
The product development life cycle consists of 5 stages; Brainstorm, Define, Design, Test and Launch. This is consistent throughout any field of work but depending on where you work, the exact names of each stage might differ but the process remains the same.
In this reading, you will find out how UX fits into each of these steps. Most of us feel that UX comes into play only in the Design stage but nope! This entire process needs people from different backgrounds and teams in every step till the final product is ready for launch. This ensures inclusivity and you can also explore hundreds of ideas from different perspective of people coming from different walks of life.
Brainstorm
The first stage of product development cycle is Brainstorming. That’s when the team starts looking for an idea for a product. You might already have a user problem that you're looking to solve. If not then coming up with one could be a start to this stage.
It is very important to have diversity in your team across race, age, sex, religion, abilities, family structure etc. so that you can have perspectives from many lived experiences and this will lead to effective brainstorming.
Consider an example: If you are working on a food ordering app for food trucks in your area and your team starts listing down problems faced by the users then you need a student or a working professional’s perspective and experience because these are the two users who majorly eat from food trucks because of various factors like budget, fast food, easy availability as there are food trucks nearby lot of companies. Having people who can relate to this problem can be an add on bonus because not everybody in your team belongs to UX so not everybody knows how to put themselves in someone else's shoes and that’s where having a diverse team will help.
After brainstorming and coming up with number of user problems, your team will choose one user problem that they would like to take forward with and come up with ideas for solutions for the same.
You should also look into your competitors and conduct a competitive audit report so that you know what your competitors strengths and weaknesses are. You want your product to fill the gap in the market or a better solution to the existing problem.
Define
The second stage of product development is Define where UX designers, UX researchers, program managers and product lead defines the product. You have to define the specifications of the product by answering important questions like:
- Who is the product for?
- What will the product do?
- What features need to be included for the product to be successful?
During this stage you narrow the focus of your idea. Let’s consider the same example we took for brainstorming. Designing a food ordering app for food trucks; here we have to now focus on helping students and working professionals an easier way to pickup the order without wasting time trying to find the location of the truck as this is one of the main problems that they face as they are always on the go.
You have to have a strong user research ready in this stage where you know what exactly are the problems faced by the users. Your team can’t just assume they know what problems users are experiencing without asking the users directly.
Design
The third stage of the product development life cycle is Design and this is where UX designers will make ideas come to life (semi life). You can start drawing rough wireframes moving on to creating prototypes. The designer has to keep in mind of all the features and research so that you can accommodate all of it in your designs. You have to ensure that every part fits into each other in an intuitive way.
This is also where the UX designers make sure that there are correlating actions for every interaction. Finally, UX designers also make sure that each task a user needs to complete is clear and easy to understand, like navigating from the homepage to the checkout confirmation page in an app.
Test
The forth stage of the product development life cycle is Testing. UX designers work closely with the developers to make a prototype which resembles the original idea including the brand color, font and theme.
You can also test your designs using Figma or Adobe XD before you take it to the developer. At this stage, the designs go through at least three phases of testing: internal tests within your company, reviews with stakeholders, and external tests with potential users. Running these tests is typically the responsibility of the UX researcher on your team, if you have one.
- First stage is internal testing where the product is tested internally within your company for usability issues and technical glitches. This stage is also called alpha testing.
- Second stage is testing with the stakeholders where you check if the product in complying company guidelines and vision, meets legal guidelines and follows government regulations.
- Third stage is external testing where you test the product with potential users to check the accessibility, interaction, technical issues and ticks all the boxes of a “good design” i.e; enjoyable, equitable, usable and useful. This stage is also called beta testing.
Testing is conducted to make sure that your product has a good user flow and it is fulfilling the user’s needs among other things. So gather all the feedbacks that you are going to get from the testing, iterate by going back to the steps of product development cycle and conduct the testing after every iteration until your there’s little or no friction between product and the user.
Launch
You have reached the final stage of the product development life cycle i.e; Launch. This is where you list the app on play store/istore, make a website go live or if it’s a physical product then putting it up on the shelves.
Marketing professionals in your team will post about it on social media, hold a press conference and amplify the sound of your product. This is also the stage where the team and the team leads can reflect on what’s working and what's not. It is very important to get a first impression feedback from the users because it helps you to improve your product going forward.
For a physical product, launch is the end of product development cycle but for digital products this is where you try to reach a wider audience which always helps you to make better user experience solutions as your product is reaching people who are probably hearing about it for the first time and they might face problems that nobody would have even thought of. The team circles back and forth the product development cycle every now and then to improve their products after the launch.
Summary
Now that you have understood what the different stages are it’s important to call out that the product development life cycle isn’t a completely linear process. Your team might cycle between designing and testing a few times before you’re ready to launch the product!
