In the past week, I had quite the experience. From having to work with someone whose personality is on the farther end of my own spectrum, to telling myself I will own a corporation and then realising corporations are like mini countries where the politics is more often than not, the order of the day. The work being done is for everyone who hasn’t stepped into management yet. I kid you not, these people play ball very differently. Speaking of ball, I was there with a colleague to build a digital product for this said corporation and it got me thinking: I am in the position to write about this since I function as a brand and product strategist for this project and for my employer, Check DC.
What is a digital product?
I believe to understand this, we must first understand what a product is:
Couldn’t have said it better myself—though I can. A product is ANYTHING that satisfies a need, or solves a problem. It becomes a valuable product when there is constant demand for it; and as this demand now becomes categorised into regular and premium, the monetary commitments to get it increases.
A digital product is all of this but built as a software or built with software. So take away that concept of “digital” meaning internet alone.
Now building a digital product requires a lot but since this is a “for dummies” article, let us get a brief rundown incase this piece inspires someone to start a startup. *please offer me equity if i inspired you*
Discovery sessions
To begin with, a discovery session must be had. This is of course to understand what problem you have identified to solve; how your idea solves that, where you want to start, why you are building a solution and what you want people to think of it.
Usually people hate these sessions because its long meetings and coffee breaks with many sticky notes. But let’s be honest the only way out is through, so sit your *ss down.
After the discovery session has been done, it is believed you have now defined what problems your product is solving; who it is for and how it will serve them.
Benchmarking
Up next is the benchmark. I love this part because the more top tier examples you pick, the harder it is to build. It’s the best reality check for everyone looking to build audacious stuff—
if it’s simple to use/read/consume, then it was difficult to create and difficult costs time & money.
The benchmark lets you see similar businesses and products like yours, aggregate what you need to be as good as that or better, then compare what it took to do that with what you have in your arsenal. Now after this, everyone often believes you go straight to designing and code…
Content and comms
You need to build content! What will you say; how will you say it; what do you want people to see; how will they see it; what do you want your users to feel; what words will trigger those feelings?
Honestly, it’s sad when you build great products but your communication gives your user the feeling like they are interfacing with a robot. That brings us to an easy way to go around this: data.
It is so easy to setup a SEMrush account or use Google trends to see the words that are getting numbers in your product’s category. Just use similar words to write your product’s copy. Nobody says you have to be perfect, but nobody also says you shouldn’t communicate.
Implementation
So your content and product has been defined, what you will now notice is how these two sessions done before any design, influences how design is done. It becomes more human; concerns about accessibility, usability, functionality and purpose will be at the forefront of your UI/UX and evidently that will be reflected in your code.
To make your work better, create a mood board of other digital products whose content, solutions, interface and functionality inspires you. Take those as your benchmark for:
what your user sees
what your user says
what they feel and
how the experience your product
If you have all these covered, you are well on your way to building yourself a reasonable MVP (minimum viable product). Something you can say is good enough to test with a small group of users and maybe showing to your investors as well.
Cheers to building great brand and products. E no easy my gee.
With love,
Kalu.