Digital Product Conception: why choose SoftDesign?

Exploring ideas, better understanding users, identifying features and choosing technologies. These are some steps covered in SoftDesign’s Digital Product Conception: a service capable of helping startups and consolidated companies in the development of a digital product or service, understanding the problem it solves and how it generates value. Design Thinking and The Lean Startup are some of the approaches that help us think about these solutions, looking at the business model and applying knowledge of design, agility and technology. Over the past eight years, we have carried out more than 300 product conceptions for businesses in different markets, such as Financial, Health, Agribusiness, Insurance and Real Estate. With these partners, we conceived solutions for Platforms, SaaS (Software as a Service), Marketplaces, among others. But, after all, why did these partners choose to do Product Conception with SoftDesign? We know that each product conception process is unique. Therefore, we work through a multidisciplinary method, with teams composed of professionals who have academic and market experience. We work with the client thinking about the digital solution in a comprehensive way, considering methodologies, financial feasibility and users.

Organized Schedule

SoftDesign’s Product Conception is four weeks long. To keep the schedule organized, we suggest clients have weekly meetings at the same time and day of the week. It is not only the meetings that are previously planned but the topics that will be covered during the meetings are also shared with clients at the beginning of the process. Nonetheless, Karina Hartmann, Product Manager at SoftDesign, emphasizes that the work is flexible, as each client has different needs, availability and analysis times.

Product Conception is a creative process. Therefore, sometimes we need more time to mature ideas and prototypes. We carry out all the steps in a very calm and safe way so that the client understands that there is a certain logic, even if we are open to adjustments during the process when necessary.

Collaboration Culture

If you have already hired any service, you have certainly faced moments of doubts and questions: will the knowledge we have been considered by the company hired? What about the strategies we have already thought of? Is there room for our concerns? Will we really be heard throughout the process? At SoftDesign, we have a collaborative and co-creation culture. Therefore, our clients and partners do not hire specialists who will deliver a ready-made solution. What we provide is a facilitator who has techniques, methods, knowledge of the market, and of previous projects, capable of assisting in the creation of the product. “There is a lot of room for listening and speaking in SoftDesign’s Product Conception process. Our role as specialists is to present data and defend points of view and strategies, but the client has complete freedom to propose other solutions and paths. The decision will always be up to the entrepreneur”, Karina highlights. We currently organize four co-creation and debate meetings, each using different techniques. The first ones are inserted in the universe of Design Thinking and the others are part of the UX Design universe. In in-person meetings, we used a whiteboard and post-it notes in a Design and Co-creation Room. In virtual meetings, we use Miro – an online platform for building group ideas. “The co-creation process in Product Conception takes place in many ways and each person can collaborate in their own way, as the main objective is to open space for the exchange of opinions in a democratic environment, with the capacity to generate value for the business”.

Multidisciplinary Method

SoftDesign’s Digital Product Conception brings together qualified professionals from the product, design and programming areas. The team works through a multidisciplinary method that encompasses knowledge and techniques from various subjects: Design Thinking, User Research, UX Design, Prioritization, Product Strategy and Launch. “Our professionals are focused on answering questions holistically. We consider ourselves multidisciplinary because our method does not only look at the area of interface design, nor only at the areas of experience design, business, revenue model, or technology. The method used in SoftDesign’s Product Conception combines all these areas to build a solution that makes sense and has a reason to exist”, Karina emphasizes. During Product Conception, we often find that the client may already have a prototype, but that does not mean that he has an understanding of the business as a whole. Thus, this customized methodology helps the client to understand how he will make money with the product, who his target audience is and how the payment method of his business will work, for example. According to SoftDesign’s Product Manager, Design Sprint is considered an inspiration for SoftDesign’s Product Conception, but when tested it did not work as well as the one-week-spaced meeting model. “To create the Product Conception service, we tested several sources, references and methods, with the objective of adopting a methodology that would work well for startups and consolidated companies that want to innovate. We developed our own way of doing it, in an educational way and with more space to absorb knowledge and information”. In addition, Karina highlights that Design Sprint has a list of determined processes and activities. On the other hand, in SoftDesign’s Product Conception, the goal is to be more flexible: if a client has an idea that is still very immature, we invest more time in ideation; if the idea is more mature, but the client has little contact with the market, more time is spent on research or; if the client already has contact with the market, has a mature idea, but has no prior knowledge of technology, more time is invested in technological issues. “This flexibility in SoftDesign’s Product Conception is one of our differentiators. We act on the client’s issues in a personalized and customized way. We do not follow a standard sprint model”. step 1

The six main steps of SoftDesign’s Digital Product Conception.

Learning for Other Projects

SoftDesign’s Product Conception provides unique learning about the business, as it uses Agile Methods and Design Thinking to co-create. Thus, during the work meetings, clients learn in-depth about their own business, industry and competition, as everyone’s participation drives an environment for exchanging knowledge and experiences through collaborative Discovery processes. “For some people, this collaborative mindset can be considered a culture shock, but once these subjects come into practice, it becomes easier to absorb knowledge and new techniques”, Karina explains. Watch the video below to learn more about the lessons learned by an entrepreneur during Product Conception with SoftDesign:

Project Risk Reduction

We realized that it is increasingly necessary to understand the reason why to develop a product, without leaving the business vision aside. With this in mind, we started to practice even more empathy with clients who come to SoftDesign to create digital products and services. Reducing risks is an important objective, but we are dealing with a challenge that is not binary: there is a subjective universe that makes it difficult to point out closed “yes-or-no” answers. For Karina, this is one of the reasons why the research step is so important since through this step it is possible to discover whether the elaborated premises are true or false.

When we present data, we can help entrepreneurs choose the path that makes the most sense. We do not work on Product Conception as a way to sell software; our focus is on the design of the product or service. We are completely honest about the project’s risks and feasibility.

In SoftDesign’s Product Conception, what we do is a survey of data that will help the entrepreneur in his decision-making process. “We are very transparent and if we understand that there are risks and uncertainties, we emphasize this information to the client. We use the SWOT Analysis to check if the idea is strong enough to prosper in the market, or if the best option is to pivot and migrate to a new possibility”. Karina also highlights the importance of keeping in mind that to explore issues of Market Fit and for more in-depth risk reduction, it is necessary to test a real product, in the real market. “Our Product Conception is different from other solutions precisely because we are not only focused on developing software, but also on developing experiments and MVPs – able to help test the Product-Market Fit”, Karina concludes.

Expected Results of Product Conception

Value Proposition is essential to start software development, seek investment or align the solution with other areas. Furthermore, it is important as it clarifies the motivation for the solution. The definition of features is also part of this process, as drawing up a list of requirements helps to measure estimates so that the development team can start building the product or service. Another important result is the choice of technology, which must consider criteria such as business strategy and compatibility with technologies already in use. Finally, we have a construction strategy, which consists of prioritizing items and planning releases that allow the intelligent use of investments to gather feedback and improve time-to-market. ________________________________________ Do you want to learn more about SoftDesign’s Product Conception differentiators? Fill in the form below, we will contact you!