A great new product idea might start on a bar napkin or in the notes app on your phone, but it takes hard work and a trusted process to bring it to life. Here are seven key steps to take for successful product development.
The first step is to evaluate a potential product idea through market research, customer interviews, and user testing. This will help identify whether your product is feasible and desirable.
1. Ideation
A new product development project usually starts with an idea — be it a good old-fashioned brainstorming session or simply jotting down some ideas on the back of a bar napkin. Ideation is where a business comes up with ideas that solve specific problems, improve current products, or create new ones.
The goal during this stage is to produce as many worthy ideas as possible, focusing on the value they will deliver to customers. The key is ensuring that the ideas are not based on assumptions but on solid research and data.
This includes identifying potential market risk and opportunity, determining whether the product is feasible (e.g., technical or financial barriers), and evaluating other alternatives to the product being developed. It also involves sharing the concept with a selected group of potential buyers to see how they perceive it.
Ideas that make it through the screening and evaluation process are further developed into a product concept. This may be a low-fidelity prototype for an app or website or a rough mockup of a physical product. The goal is to develop a prototype that can be tested with users and provide insights on how the concept will perform and what improvements are required to meet customer expectations.
2. Discovery
The discovery stage is all about collecting ideas and analyzing potential market opportunities. This phase also includes creating user personas, a helpful way to filter out the noise and make sure that your new product is built for specific types of users rather than a general mass audience.
Once all the information has been gathered, the team will begin to identify patterns that should be addressed. For example, a common theme might be the need for a better mobile experience. This information can then be used to create a prototype of the new product and test it with users.
This is also the ideal time to create a list of requirements and to estimate the scope of a future minimum viable product. The business analyst and designer will work together to transform these requirements into well-structured documentation (Software Requirement Specification). This will be the basis for the project’s budget and timeline. This step is important to avoid making costly mistakes at a later stage. For instance, if an idea won’t positively affect the metrics or goals that your team is currently focusing on, it’s best to discard it. This will prevent your product from becoming an expensive, ineffective solution to a nonexistent need.
3. Concept Development
After the ideas have been generated in stage two, it’s time to take them further and create a product concept. This is a crucial step in new product development. It involves assessing your idea’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and your competitors’ ideas. It also includes identifying the needs of customers in your target market and determining how your new product will address those needs.
The goal of the concept development stage is to narrow down the options and select the best idea for further development. There are many criteria that go into making this decision, including marketing potential, technical feasibility, and cost-benefit analysis. A key consideration should always be whether the product can deliver real value to customers.
The concepts created in this phase are then tested with consumers to ensure that they will generate the benefits your company hopes to see. This is often done through user or buyer persona research. This helps shape the product so that it speaks directly to a particular group rather than an entire population. This focuses the development effort and ensures your new product meets your customer’s needs.
4. Design
This is the step where the product design team works on a final prototype and gathers feedback from consumers. This feedback will help the team determine whether their new product will be able to meet market needs, perform well, and be a success after launch.
This stage also helps identify risks and opportunities that must be addressed before the development process is complete. These may include resource demands, schedule risks, market uncertainty, or other concerns that will need to be addressed before a new product can be successfully developed and launched.
One common mistake in this phase is to focus solely on the technology involved in the new product. This can lead to a product that is great on paper but fails to connect with a consumer audience. Some big-name examples of this are Betamax and Google Glass.
It’s important to have a structured, collaborative new product development process in place. Having clear steps and processes for each of the different stages in the development cycle will allow teams to work together more effectively. There are many tools available to support this including visual design apps, instant messaging applications, and more. These tools allow teams to collaborate, share ideas, and discuss issues with ease.
5. Market Testing
This is where you take your product out to the market and see what people think. It’s the ultimate test to determine whether your new product idea is viable. To do this, businesses create prototypes to show to a selected group of customers and find out how they respond.
One of the most important aspects of this phase is identifying potential competitors and their products to ensure your product has a chance against them. This step also involves identifying a HOT/ICP to target and creating a development strategy that will help you achieve it.
Market testing can be done using a variety of methods, such as focus groups, interviews, and observations. It’s important to remember that market testing is a feedback loop, and therefore you should be ready to make changes based on your test results.
Other types of market tests can include assessing a new product’s price range and user accessibility. Another popular method is product enhancement, which involves adding new features to an existing product. This could be anything from improving performance to making the product easier to use. These enhancements greatly increase customer satisfaction and add value without investing more time into developing a whole new product.
6. Development
The development stage of the new product development process is where the ideas generated in the discovery and concept development stages are screened. This ensures that only the best ideas are considered for the final product. The idea that is deemed to have the greatest potential to succeed in the market is then developed into a prototype or minimum viable product (MVP). A variety of testing can be performed at this point to validate the design and user experience. For example, usability testing can be used to determine the desirability of a specific feature, while product viability and pricing studies are often conducted as well. DISHER may also perform a design or experiment during this time to understand some technical aspect of a particular design or test an assumption.
During this phase, it’s important to engage the entire product team. This includes people from marketing and sales to connect the work that is being done with the overall business strategy and provide context for what it means for customers. It’s also critical to involve senior management as they can help align the teams and set the direction for the project. This helps reduce the risk of expensive mistakes and rework.
7. Launch
After a lot of research, discussion, and planning, it’s finally time to put your product development plan into action. In this phase, engineers and designers transform your product idea into a prototype that customers can test.
A prototype is usually a minimum viable product (MVP), meaning it functions as intended but doesn’t have all the bells and whistles yet. Once you’ve gotten feedback on your initial design, you can revise it until you reach a final design that everyone is happy to develop and launch.
Market testing is also crucial to this stage, as is creating an effective marketing strategy to reach your target audience. A lot of new products are great, but if no one knows about them, they won’t be successful.
Some companies will carry out a soft launch, where they release their new product to a limited number of people before launching it to the public. Others will test it with a larger group of people before deciding whether to bring it to market. This can be an excellent way to get some early traction and start building a user base before the official launch. You can then use this data to help guide your next product development decisions.
