Have a product idea? You may need to define a product next

We know it already – nowadays, we are practically hooked on what we like to call brilliant ideas. We read, see and hear it all the time: “this idea is amazing”, “this guy has such a genius idea” and other similar expressions. This is called genius bias. Unfortunately, this bias applies to digital products as well.

However, the strongest and most “disruptive” businesses of the last 20 years, have not started necessarily as original ideas. For instance, about Airbnb, Brian Chesky once said: “If you can convince people to buy a $4 cereal box for $40 maybe you convince them to stay in other’s people rooms. And so he led us in the Y Combinator”.

Here’s the catch: no idea is good or bad until you get some consistent feedback. Not on the idea itself, but on the product that results from having the idea.

But, for that, you have to actually build a product. In order to make sure it can be built, you have to define your product, first thing first.

A quick guide to product definition

You see, when innovating products or businesses were launched on the market, people actually took time to get a hold of the whole idea. Defining a digital product is not very different from defining a physical product. Might be a bit more complicated, especially nowadays. In a nutshell, it’s an entire, lengthy process, that starts from the original concept and along the way, everything seems to become clearer. How can you do this? By asking questions.

To name a few, here are some of the questions you must address yourself when you are starting the “define your product” process:

• What is the real need, problem, or struggle you want to solve it through your product?
• Does anybody have any of that? Who are they?
• Can you pinpoint an approximate number of people to whom this solution would solve their need?
• What are the current alternatives that solve the need?
• How will the product create value for its users?
• How will the product stand out and be better than the current alternatives?

Before we go further, we reach the big question: how can you transform your brilliant, yet possibly useless idea into an actual product that will deliver value to its users?

Taking into account how many good ideas might go to waste, here at Tapptitude, aside from actually building top-notch products, we thought: “what if we help startups define their product?” And we did so, in a process that we’ve tested a few dozens of times and which delivers clarity and solid results. 

It’s dubbed as “Product Definition Phase” and its objective is to help you get from an idea generator, or a future-maybe-wannabe startup founder,  to a proper product creator. In other words, a product creator that might have a future in a growing business.

What is the Product Definition Phase?

In a nutshell, the Product Definition Phase is a process that takes early stage startups or idea stage products to a point where it’s utterly clear what needs to be coded as a product.

During this process, we work directly with the founders and help them both clarify and decide all the core elements of their products, up to a point where a development team would be able to estimate the amount of work needed to launch the product and the major tech implications of such a product. In other words, we take an idea that is suffocated with possibilities to a point where a single product is decided, it’s easy to understand and shows you what kind of experience it will create for the user.

There are three steps to this process:

We like to keep our workflow lean, therefore we work iteratively. Here, the founders will be involved in the whole process, having a product owner role. But, our senior product team of UX, strategy, and tech will challenge their hypotheses – it’s really ‘guesses’ most of the times – every moment. In this way, we push them towards better-researched decisions.

The main purpose of the workshop is to define all the major aspects of your product before entering in development, especially since in the idea stage, changes and decisions are faster and cheaper. In short, it’s a smarter way to build products altogether.

Step 1: Discovery Workshop

Nothing can be done without a bit of research first, especially when the product is just in the aforementioned “idea stage”. This is why the first step of “define your product” is the discovery workshop. Here, we work directly with the startup founders to understand their vision, the business model they have imagined around the solution and eventually, what the solution will be.

To make sure we have all these covered, we do intensive workshops with the founders, for one or two days. These can take place in our office, or in several sessions in a remote format. During this time, we deconstruct biases, brainstorm new possible solutions, create validation experiments and narrow all the possibilities to reach a clear product, that can be easily expressed visually.

This first step of the process is critical, because it does not only give us the opportunity to take actual decisions about the product, but it also brings everyone on the same page. Nonetheless, it gives the founder a much clearer perspective about the product, about what can be done and what can’t, and what is needed in the product.

For this workshop, we bring three main capabilities from Tapptitude into the room. A Senior Product Strategist, who usually moderates the workshop and advises on the business model details and facilitates the decisions in the product as a user’s advocate. A UX Designer, who creates the first wireframes draft, based on the discussions and taken decisions during the workshop. And a Senior Tech Lead, who advises on everything regarding technology, from platform choices, frameworks to the implications of business decisions into the tech solutions.

These are the main topics we approach during the workshop:

• Getting to know each other
• Defining failure and success
• Describing the problem you want to solve with the product
• Sketch out User Personas
• Draft the Product Architecture
• Shape the Business Model using the Lean Canvas

When the workshop is over, the deliverables the founders get are

• All the research docs
• A visual document with core User Flows
• User Personas
• Lean Canvas 
• Product Specs documents

Step 2: Wireframing

After the Discovery Workshop is over, we are going to the stage of the Define Your Product process. This one is the wireframing. Here, our UX team will create a first sketch or a wireframe, where all the product mapping is done and the user flows are defined. Together with the client, they work on refining it and adding some of the last touches on the flows. Usually, wireframing can take up to 3 or 4 weeks, varying on the product size and the speed of the feedback.

This step is highly important since here we will finally have an idea of how the product will look after we built it together. Then, based on the wireframes, we are going to decide how the final product will look like in the end – whether it is about the colour spectrum, user flow or all the designs.

Step 3: UI Design & Prototyping

Once we have agreed on how the wireframe should look like, in terms of design and user flow, our UI designers will start working for the final touch-up. Or, in other words, here’s where your brilliant idea comes to life – the screen applications.

The first step of this process is to create a visual styling proposal, which will be agreed upon with the client. This contains the colour palette, proposed fonts, style of design and visual logic of the interface. And then, we jump right into the creation of it.

When the designs are officially done, we add them together to make a prototype. This will be used to validate your idea, by sharing it with your team or for market research or to increase your chances for investment raising.

Your product-market fit is like that needle: it’s extremely hard to find, and only asking the right questions can shine some lights on the path.”

When our client decides this is what he wants, we enter the final development stage. And, yes, we can say by now that the “Define your product” process is over.

To sum it up, defining a product takes time and effort. Probably not all products will be the next Airbnb or Facebook, but you cannot know unless you take the leap of faith. No one can guarantee that your product will become a successful online business, but if decide to go the startup way, properly defining your product is one of the core initial steps you need to take.