This episode of the The Business Conversation Podcast features Nick Wellner, Principal Product Designer at When I Work. Product designers help founders at every phase of determining whether the solution they have in mind is viable or not. During the discovery phase and once there is enough data, product designers bring these products to life, listen for customer feedback and experience, and identify new problems to solve to refine the product further. In the growth phase, product designers help with the consistency of the product. They make sure that the growing team implements decisions that are in the line with intended solutions to the end users. Product designers are also advocates for the product itself and helps inform teams on creating a product that is consistent with client needs and company goals. And when all teams are aligned with the product's goals, starting with the organization's leadership, then customers can expect a product that ultimately provides solutions to their problems.
HIGHLIGHTS
01:45 What exactly is a product designer?
06:14 Important questions to answer in the discovery phase
12:49 The cupcake analogy
14:50 Product designer roles in the growth phase
22:36 Advocacy to empower users and ethical design
26:01 Working together with sales and marketing
33:16 Creating a customer-centric product begins with leadership vision
37:45 Books your should be reading about product design
QUOTES
02:20 "It's important that they help make those products look good. Make them beautiful. But they're thinking about it on a much deeper level. They also know how to make something intuitive, easy to use, familiar and, more importantly, make it useful."
04:39 "After you have a great understanding of the problem through research, you can iterate quickly, you can prototype quickly, and you can validate the solutions with customers to find that product market fit."
07:18 "We either have a market here that has a problem that we can solve and they're willing to pay us for a solution, or maybe it's not exactly what we thought, it's something related, or there's actually not a problem here that's worth solving."
12:51 "If you wanted to eventually build a wedding cake, you won't start by giving everyone a pile of frosting, you would first assemble all the key ingredients on a much smaller scale, requiring less time, requiring less money."
22:12 "More isn't always better. I would say more of what each user needs right at their fingertips is better. And that comes through constant curation."
32:17 "The product team should be creating value by solving customer problems, which makes sales and marketing's job really easy because then they just have to talk about the value that's already been created."
Follow the links below to learn more about Nick.
This series is being put together in collaboration with AIGA Minnesota - one of the largest chapters of AIGA, that works to enhance the value and deepen the impact of design across all disciplines of business, society, and our collective future.
&
Curious, a group of B2B marketers helping their clients define a conversation that is unique, relevant, and honest with their ideal customers. They then help their clients find their ideal audience to start the conversation by pushing content through the most efficient channels, whether that be traditional or digital.