Before we talk about digital product design, let’s dive into what a digital product is
A digital product is a software that solves a problem for a person or group of people. It is accessed via a computer, tablet or phone and is created to make the users’ life simpler. You cannot hold a digital product, otherwise, it would be classed as a physical product .
Here are a few examples
- Retail physical vs digital products – back in the day you bought a till to run your retail shop (a physical product) and now you pay for a POS system (a digital software solution, or digital product).
- Home computing physical vs digital products – in the past you would have bought a pen and paper to write letters, now you buy word processor software or an app.
- Business accounting physical vs digital products – where you would have bought a ledger and a calculator to do your taxes previously, now you own accountancy software.
Now you can argue digital products could include a photograph or a song and often they are called digital products online, but as a digital product design agency we see these as the result of using digital software (the digital product), so we prefer to call them “digital creations”, which is actually what they are.
Songs can be created using digital software like Ableton or Reaper. Photographs can be edited on software like Photoshop or Canva.
What is digital product design?
Digital product design is the process of creating software that eliminates or helps a user with a specific problem and set of tasks.
As an agency in this space, we design digital products with simple-to-use interfaces that, whilst powerful overall, ultimately solve the problem the user is having. We believe this is the foundation of digital product design.
A simplified look at designing digital products
If you’re asking the question “what is digital product design” well here’s a breakdown.
Let’s focus our take on the minimal viable product stage (MVP). An MVP is an initial version of your product, with enough features to validate it with early adopters and gain feedback for UX and UI design.
To create your MVP you will need to take your idea through several stages.
- The idea and investigation phase – How do you know if this idea is going to be a hit? Step one is to get out there and put your idea in front of people. What do they think and how does this compare with what they are looking for in a product like this?
- Research and planning – This is a much deeper dive into your idea and investigation phase and will help you understand competition, software development ideas, objection hunting, creating a user flow and your first wireframe.
- Design and initial user testing – The design and user testing of your digital product need to work hand in hand. The best approach to your design is to think in an agile approach, constantly designing, testing, tweaking and growing your product MVP idea.
- Basic build – This is your first-look MVP.
- Get proof – Feedback from your early adopters is crucial before you progress to a launch stage because it is your last user testing opportunity to make sure the software and its features do the job of answering your users’ needs.
We go into the design process much deeper in our guide, “How to create a SaaS product in 8 important steps“.
Need some help with your digital product design?
Getting your digital product off the ground can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. We understand that there is a lot to do and that’s why we pride ourselves on our expert team of UX designers who can undertake this project for you. Drop your details into the Project Planner below.
