Very often, a great Product (Website, Mobile App or any User Interface) concept or idea dies a slow, painful death after it is executed and it is extremely disheartening to watch the ship sink. As someone who has been on both sides of the process of designing a Digital product- as a Product owner and as the Design Service provider, I have seen Product owners make the same mistakes repeatedly. And these bad decisions often result in a Website or Mobile Application that is a far cry from what it could’ve been. Not to mention, the extra costs the client has to later incur to clean up the mess!
Here are the top 5 mistakes I have come across multiple times:
1. Not being able to provide a clear, focussed Product brief to your Designer
As the owner of the product, it is natural to feel that every feature or information about your product is vital. In some cases, there is a lack of clarity of what is to be communicated to the users. This leads to a confused brief that is modified or changed multiple times during the design process. In the end, the Website or Mobile App, has information crammed into it in a haphazard manner, with no clear end-goal. This eventually leads to negligible recurring users, and high bounce rates.
Instead, think through your product brief, identify one end-goal and communicate this clearly to your designer. This requires unbiased and focused customer research. The entire website should revolve around that end-goal. Pen your ideas down in a thoughtful and structured manner and have detailed discussions with your designer. Although, this might appear like a tedious process, it will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.
2. Not providing meaningful content to your designer
Very often, Product owners are so consumed by how the finished product should ‘look and feel’ that they neglect one crucial element that will make or break the design – The content.
This is a major problem area in the UX Design process. Content includes the text and visual media (images, videos, etc.) that goes on your Website or Mobile App. Placeholder text like ‘Lorem Ipsum’ just won’t do! Providing your designer with actual, real-time content will enable them to do come up with a meaningful User journey that is specific to your Business goals. Once the design is done using place-holder text, replacing the text at the last minute with real content often breaks the layout and leads to a lot of re-work. This is a big deterrent while designing for multiple devices (Responsive Design), considering 80-90% traffic comes through Mobile devices, these days.
Instead, spend considerable time working on the content and finalise it in the UX Design stage itself, before you begin the Visual Design.
3. When personal tastes overtake what’s best for the customer’s experience
The major difference between Art and Design is that Art is a representation of self, and Design keeps end-user in mind. It is natural for a Product owner to be in love with their product and have certain design ideas that reflect their personalities. However, they sometimes overlook factors such as the end-user’s behavioural patterns, their needs and the industry the product belongs to. Decisions made based on personal preferences and assumptions are often detrimental to the finished product. In their quest to design a product that represents their tastes, the journey of the user is compromised and leads to a bad User Experience, which in turn, will affect conversion.
Instead, invest in User research, get out onto the field and find out what is best for your customer. Step into their shoes, welcome constructive criticism, and create a prototype that can be tested and iterated upon, before moving on to the final UI (Visual) Design.
4. Prioritizing aesthetics over User Experience
“If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.” – Ralf Speth
I have come across multiple instances where UX design is neglected or entirely skipped and the client only wants the Visual Design (UI). What the Product owner needs to understand is that designing the User Experience, which involves Information Hierarchy, User Personas, User Journeys and Wireframes is the foundation upon which you build your User Interface. Neglecting this often leads to digital products that lack substance and have a flawed User Journey. Trust your designer, when they insist upon spending time on UX before moving to the UI design. They are professionals, who are trained in the subject and know the importance of a strong UX foundation.
‘Prototype-test-iterate’ should be the approach you follow. Investing in a low fidelity prototype at the very beginning of the design process will save a lot of time, efforts and money that will go into re-working on your product after the UI phase.
5. Asking for major changes in design flow in the Visual Design phase, after the UX is locked
When you are building a new product or adding a new feature to your existing product, ad hoc changes are possible, because you want to constantly come up with better ways to execute it. But if major changes are done after your Visual Design is built over the UX wireframe, it leads to a lot of re-work and increases the timelines considerably, not to mention, the coding efforts. Last minute increments often break the flow of a product and a significant change on one page, would mean that you have to change other pages that are dependent on the page being changed. I have witnessed a lot of Startups being struck by ‘analysis paralysis’ and not releasing even a Minimum Viable Product for long periods of time, because of these constant design changes. Instead, release an MVP as soon as you can and evaluate the performance of your product after you see some traction. These will be informed decisions based on Website or App analytics and not just based on your whim and assumptions!
To conclude, I’d like to underline what I always recommend to my clients –
- Invest in creating meaningful content and UX
- Release an MVP
- Test it out and make decisions based on data gathered from real users
Have you made these mistakes or have witnessed product owners make these mistakes? Let me know in the comments below, or reach out to me via DM on Twitter.
Designfully yours,
Surya Pillai