New Product Design
Duration
1 Quarter
Why
For use when a product is ill-defined, unsure of market fit, or complete product redesign.
Goal
Identifies market fit. Aligns organization. Illuminates places to investigate further, and where to invest.
How
Start with mapping the end-to-end user journey, involving representatives from different business units. Then break the journey down step-by-step on boards, using words, sketches, screenshots - whatever illustrates that moment. Slowly build up each step over weeks of ideating and iterating as a team. Next transpose into a prototype that illustrates important workflows or scenarios.
Share prototype with internal stakeholder and users for feedback.
- Are these the right features?
- What are the feasibility issues?
- What did we miss?
- What are the most critical usability issues?
Remember to emphasize this is a concept and exploratory, not a promise to be built. The goal is to outline the overarching vision.
Schedule
- User journey mapping: 2 hours across different business units (dev, marketing, outreach).
- Journey breakdown: 2 weeks.
- Transpose into prototype: 1 week (recruit users for next week).
- User testing: 1 Week.
- Refine based on user feedback: 1 Week.
- Present learnings to org and gather further feedback.
Outcome
An artifact that illustrates an entire end-to-end experience that a target user goes through in order to accomplish a goal that aligns with the needs of that audience. The output can be used to identify work for multiple quarters.
Key points
- Collaboration and alignment across the organization.
- Multiple iterations and artifacts.
- User feedback loop.
- Highlights future work, not commitments.
Example
Publishing to JSTOR: An ambitious new user experience for JSTOR Forum.