The Product Development Life Cycle | UI/UX Design Ep. 1

Any new product, whether it’s an app or a physical object, goes through a series of steps to get from the initial spark of an idea to the final product’s release. The product development life cycle has five stages: Brainstorming, Defining, Designing, Testing, and Launching. The exact names of each stage can vary depending on where you work, but the general concept remains the same.

Each step of the lifecycle is represented by an icon around the circle: Brainstorming, Defining, Designing, Testing, and Launching.

You’ll learn about the product development life cycle and how UX design fits into each stage in this article. As you would expect, UX designers are most involved throughout the design stage of the product development life cycle, but they collaborate closely with other team members during the process, including analysts, product managers, and engineers. As a product progresses through the production life cycle, the team can need to devote more time to one stage than to others, or repeat those stages in response to feedback.

Since the progress of each stage is dependent on the completion of the previous stage, it’s crucial to complete them in the correct order. Examine each of the product production life cycle’s five stages!

Brainstorming

The brainstorming stage of the product development life cycle begins when the team begins to consider a product idea. When you start the product development life cycle, the team can already know the user problem you want to solve. If you don’t know where to begin, making a list of user issues is a good place to start.

At this stage, it’s critical to pay attention to your team’s diversity. Since they put together a lot of different lived experiences, teams with substantive diversity around identifiers like race, gender, skills, family structure, and ethnicity are typically more successful at brainstorming.

Consider the following scenario: If you’re creating a new app to assist working parents, your team could begin brainstorming by identifying common issues that working parents face, such as a lack of accessible childcare, transportation issues, or difficulty managing schedules. To help direct your ideas, your team may look at user reviews on similar products or the results of user surveys. After you’ve brainstormed a number of user problems, the team picks one and begins brainstorming solutions for it.

During the brainstorming stage, it’s also a good idea to look at your product’s competitors and see if there are any similar products on the market. You want your product to fill a void in the market, not solve an issue that another business has already solved successfully.

Another factor to consider is that a large company’s UX designer might not be involved in the brainstorming stage. A UX designer at a startup or small business, on the other hand, might play a critical role!

Defining

The product is described in the second stage of the product development life cycle, which brings together UX designers, UX analysts, program managers, and product leads. The aim is to determine the product’s specifications by answering questions such as:

Who is the product for? What will the product’s purpose be? And, in order for the product to be good, what features must be included?

Your team narrows the focus of your concept during the defined stage. Every user problem cannot be solved by a single product. Continuing with the working parent app example, your idea should concentrate on either finding affordable childcare or managing their schedules, not both. A UX designer may be able to assist the team in narrowing the focus of the concept at this point, but the project’s reach will most likely be defined by a product lead.

During the define stage, research is also crucial. You need to figure out what problems your future customers are having, and your team can’t say they know what problems they’re having without asking them directly. User testing aids in determining the issues the product’s design should fix.

Designing

Design is the third stage of the product creation life cycle. This is the time when you, as a UX designer, will really shine! UX designers work on the product’s ideas at this point. UX designers usually begin by sketching wireframes, which are outlines or sketches of the product, before moving on to prototyping, which are early iterations of a product that show its functionality.

UX writers can contribute to the design stage by writing button labels or other copies within the product’s wireframes and prototypes.

UX designers make sure to incorporate all of the product requirements that were outlined in the defined stage at this point in the life cycle. You should also make sure that each aspect of the design works well together. UX designers, for example, should make sure that an app’s screens flow in a way that makes sense to the user. Or that each contact, such as pressing a button, is followed by an event, such as an object being added to a cart. In the case of a physical product, however, UX designers might double-check that one piece of the object matches up with the connecting piece.

Finally, UX designers ensure that each task a user must perform, such as moving from the homepage to the checkout confirmation page in an app, is transparent and easy to understand.

Testing

Your designs would then be put to the test. UX designers collaborate with engineers to create practical prototypes that complement the original designs, including brand-consistent details and functionality such as font and color choices. This often entails writing the code and finalizing the product’s overall structure.

Another choice is to test a working prototype of the product using a design tool like Figma or Adobe XD if you want to test the designs sooner. Later in the certificate program, you’ll learn how to make prototypes of your designs.

The designs are evaluated in at least three stages at this point: internal tests within your company, stakeholder feedback, and external tests with potential users. The UX researcher on your team, if you have one, is usually in charge of conducting these studies.

• First, the team conducts internal testing to check for software flaws and usability issues.
• After that, the product is put through a test with stakeholders to ensure that it is in line with the company’s vision, meets legal requirements for accessibility, and complies with regulatory legislation for privacy, for example.
• Finally, an external evaluation of prospective users is conducted. This is the time to decide if the product offers a positive user experience, that is, whether it is usable, equitable, enjoyable, and useful. Beta testing is a term used to describe this method.

At this point, gathering and implementing feedback is crucial. UX designers make modifications or even build new versions of the design if users are annoyed or confused by it. The prototypes are then put through another round of testing until there is little or no friction between the product and the customer.

Launching

Finally, you’ve reached the fifth and final stage of the product development cycle: the launch stage, when the product is made available to the general public! This could include releasing an app on Google Play or Apple’s App Store, launching a website, or having a physical product on store shelves.

The launch stage is a time to congratulate yourself on your hard work and begin marketing the product. Your team’s marketing professionals can use social media to promote the new product or issue a press release. The customer service team can prepare to assist new users in learning how to use the product.

Program managers also meet with the cross-functional team to focus on the whole product development life cycle, raising questions such as: What went well and what could be improved? Were the objectives met? Were any of the deadlines met? Making time for this contemplation is important since it will aid in the improvement of the process in the future.

The launch stage of a physical product can be the final stage of the product development life cycle. However, introducing a digital product, such as an app or website, to a larger audience offers another opportunity to enhance the user experience. New users can discover issues with the product’s functionality or features that no one else has noticed. As a result, teams often return to the design and testing stages after the launch stage to begin work on the next iteration of a digital product.

You’ll get closer to being a UX designer if you see the intention and consideration put into everyday items.

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