When you buy a product, what do you expect from it? What is your objective in buying it? Whether it’s out of necessity or to make our lives easier, we generally seek to solve a problem when we choose a product.
If you’re interested in food delivery, you’ll probably turn to IFood, UberEats or another app for this purpose. Similarly, if you need a ride, you can use Uber or 99taxi.
In these examples, you can clearly see what the user wants. In the first, he wants to have his food order delivered; in the second, he’s trying to find a way to get around. It may seem obvious, but it isn’t always! And it was to better understand the needs and solutions required by the user that the concept of product thinking was born.
What is product thinking?
Product thinking means thinking about a product. It is the development process based on answering the question: what is the real use of the product? What problem is it intended to solve? The main objective is to identify this problem and understand how the product can solve it.
It’s common to focus on features and visuals, but there’s no point in a beautiful, feature-packed product if it doesn’t serve the purpose for which it was made. Nobody will buy a product that doesn’t fulfill its main function. For example, would you buy a cell phone with lots of apps, but which doesn’t make calls? Or would you buy from a website that offers points and benefits for purchases, but doesn’t deliver the product?
Having identified the problem, the next step is to assess the target audience. UX design is about putting the user at the center of the creative project and has everything to do with product thinking. It is this user who will help answer what they want from the product. That’s why it’s important to talk to and seek out the opinion of potential consumers – and you can only reach your target audience if you know who you’re talking to.
From there, it’s time to draw up a strategy to define how the product will be created. With this, the developer? will think about and establish the goals that will help him bring his vision to life.
And then there are the features and other details – if you understand why the product exists, it will be much easier to find out which features make sense and add value to the user experience.
So let’s recap what questions need to be asked:
What use is this product? What problem will it solve?
What is the target audience and what does it expect from the product?
What is the strategy for creating the product?
What are the goals to be achieved? How will this be done?
What functionalities and interface can contribute to a better product for the user?
Product thinking is not just a task for the product manager, but for everyone involved in its development. Meeting user expectations and providing a good experience must be a central concern of the project at all stages, and product thinking is the way to ensure that this is not lost.
The result will be a product with meaning, value and importance, because it has a well-defined purpose. Aesthetics and functionalities will only be complements that further enhance its use.
You can see how the product thinking system guides UX designers towards the right questions so that they can create useful and efficient products! So if you’re going to develop a product, make sure you take the time to think about every little detail!
