Starting a new project can often feel overwhelming. Business stakeholders, developers, and SEO analysts each bring a unique perspective and a set of expectations for what a product should deliver and how the project should unfold. As Product Designers, we are uniquely positioned to lead stakeholders through the requirement-gathering process.

I've compiled a list of key skills needed to create dynamic products that truly work for your users.

User Research

When beginning a project, it's important to understand your user-base. Who are your end users? What are their goals, needs, motivations etc. when using your product? Keeping your end user in mind is the key to creating high-functioning, intuitive products. My preferred methods of user research include:

1. User Interviews. When applicable, user interviews are the most informative way to do research. Talking one-on-one with actual end users allows you to not only understand their needs for the future product, but also how you can incorporate existing functionality into new designs

   • Tip #1: When creating a new product, ask users to show you the existing product or process they're utilizing, and ask them questions throughout the demo.

   • Tip #2: Ask what users currently like about the product or site that they'd like to keep, and pain points that we can improve with our new designs. We not only want to solve problems but also keep functionality that is already working for users.

   • Tip #3: If this is a redesign of an existing service, make sure that essential functionality makes it to the final product. We want to make sure that nothing is cut out of the final product that would prevent users from doing their jobs, accessing the information they need, etc.

2. User Surveys. When user interviews are not possible, I find sending out quick, easy-to-understand surveys are also helpful to get information about pain points, ideas to improve, etc.

3. User Testing. User interviews or user surveys aren't always applicable, especially when you move away from B2B, B2C applications. There are many services where you can hire user testers to browse through your site and record live reactions that will help you improve the user experience.

4. User Personas. If you must, a user persona helps the team creatively think about the type of users that may visit your site or use your application. For a user persona, the team can come up with a name & demographic information about an imaginary user. This will help designers grasp the user-base and what those users might want or need to see.

Below is an example of a user survey I sent out when building a mobile app for kids aging out of foster care who needed an easy way to access their documents.

Requirements Gathering

In the past, I've found requirements gathering workshops extremely effective. In these workshops, we're able to convene as a product team and decide together what the product should look like and how it should function. Developers, stakeholders, PM's, QA's, etc. all bring specialized talents and ideas to the table to create the perfect product vision. One particular workshop I've had luck leading in the past is the Design Sprint 2.0.

Design Sprint 2.0 is a multi-day workshop pioneered by the Google Ventures Team to tackle significant challenges and validate ideas rapidly. During the sprint, a dedicated team collaboratively explores a challenge, brainstorms potential solutions, and concludes with a wireframe designed collectively. What begins as a vague concept is transformed into something concrete and actionable in just a few days.

Below are examples of sections in this sprint workshop. The first example are what we decided were the major questions we needed answered in this session. The second example is competitor examples each participant pulled to show how the user experience could function. For more info, you can check out this site: The Design Sprint 2.0

User Journey Maps

User Journey maps are a way to identify user roles and decide how each user may flow through the app. For example, let's say you're designing a dashboard for student attendance. Your users may be: School Admins, Teachers, and Parents. One user (teacher) may need to enter attendance into a dashboard while the other (parents) may just need to view the attendance of their child.

Having all user journeys planned and designed allows for a seamless user experience.