Digital Product Development Process
Published on 28 Apr 2022 inKey Takeaways:
Involve clients in the design process from the start and provide a simple way for them to provide feedback.
Utilise data and analytics to make decisions wherever possible to avoid complications along the development process.
For better functionality and compatibility, keep product designs at the prototype stage and keep iterating until it’s ready to employ development resources.
As the digital economy grows, most companies have invested their business in digital products and customers demand the best possible experiences and integrated solutions that are always up to date from companies and their products.
In order to deliver a great customer experience, you have to position the customer at the forefront of the design process.
Although when creating a digital product, be it an app or a website, a clear process must be followed to create a product that is consistently efficient.
Stages of the digital product development process
Let’s explore how the process works; so how can you turn your idea into a fantastic digital product? We’ve got you! Here are the steps of a digital product development process.
1. Analysis and preparation
Firstly, cultivating digital products always starts by taking a step back. This part of the project includes having discussions with the client or product owners, conducting business research as well as the competitive market, and understanding the company’s requirements and goals.
When it comes to creating a digital product, like a website, it is important to understand why users use the product and the types of technology they are comfortable using, as it helps the UX team identify the right solution to the different challenges.
The analysis and preparation period can also provide the ability to evaluate the project demands and your team’s capability.
As you work with a digital product development agency, they will not only guide you in the right direction by carrying out coding and conception audits on your current systems, but also offer support in order to help guide you down the right path.
This process usually takes into account both the company’s and your users’ specific needs and is necessary in order to create a digital product that you want and that your customers won’t stop using.
2. Ideate the solution
After the assessment process, you need to think about the product or features and understand the “what and how”. This stage actively involves you and your users to answer the following questions first:
How do you see the app working effectively?
What problems will you solve during the process?
What do your users expect from your product?
This step saves time and resources in the long run since any problems or needs that occur can be tackled from the beginning, so you can avoid building a product and then discover you didn’t solve customers issues.
Prototyping
You can request for a scaled-down version of a “prototype” before starting the development of the first version of your product.
This method includes the testing and development of comprehensive models until the prototype aligns with the highest usability and utility requirements.
Also, developing an MVP (Minimum viable product) helps to validate the bare elements of the solution on which layers of features can be applied later.
The method can be iterated before the desired product balance is achieved, through that, the customer will prioritise only the functionality needed or desired.
3. Product development
Now that your prototype is ready, you need to design it. This is the stage in which designers start the work of designing and producing your product.
You may need to consult with designers to provide the design requirements necessary for the development of your final product, depending on the type of product you choose to create and launch to the market.
The unique interaction design, as well as any transition or loading animations, will also be introduced during the production period to give the digital product some life and will be tested for consumer satisfaction.
Using the data obtained from the first two stages, a good company can follow the transformation process driven by experience or have the end-user strongly in mind when creating.
Agile implementation
Working within an agile development framework, with software support like JIRA (from Atlassian) during the digital products development goes a long way.
It helps the team to be versatile and able to respond to unpredictability through incremental and iterative sprints.
Using an Agile project management methodology greatly improves the efficiency of production productivity, allows greater control and results in a final product that gives the customers value.
Testing
Testing of the final product accesses the functionality and compatibility operating system if it meets the intended performance and customer’s requirements.
Questions like, Is that app working as it should? On all devices? Is this speed sufficient?
All should be tackled with and all corrections are to be made during this time, all errors, bugs and more can be eliminated. To guarantee you don’t run into problems, the test should be included in the production phase.
4. Product launch
Product launch is the culmination of the development process. Your final project is ready to be released to potential users who will be aware of its existence. Though a lot of time has already been spent at this point, you may still face a few other hurdles.
You will need to start with a schedule that might include previews or landing pages, email ads, social media promotions, pre-release ratings or a series of promotional campaigns.
Seeing the actual launch of the business wouldn’t be so easy, your launch activities should be planned to appeal to the people you identified in your market analysis.
5. Maintenance and support
Maintenance and support are frequently neglected and not the most interesting aspect of digital product development.
Though this would be the longest step if the product succeeds and if you don’t prepare or secure resources for it, it will cost much more than the original development and launch.
Through the guidance of the digital product development team during this process will help the product and team to handle future extensions.
This extension is also carried out by continuous research, customer reviews and data analysis.
A good digital product development process would ensure that all future changes are minor adjustments, which prevent major bugs through smart design and development.
Creating a digital product is a commitment
Developing a digital product that stands out in the competitive market today requires speed and agility. Besides the money invested, a long-term commitment is needed. Note that if the app is live, the project is not over, rather, the hard work has just begun.
At Morphosis, we are skilled in UX research, product design and development services. Our experts in design, research and strategy development team work together to create the best product for our clients’ business. To learn more about how we can help you, contact us today to get a free consultation session.
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