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ProductLab is a design consulting club that I founded to gain experience of working as a design strategist in a consulting environment. The objective of this club is to provide pro-bono design consulting services. ProductLab functions as a space to provide students an opportunity to gain design experience by working on real-world projects.
MY ROLE
As President of ProductLab, I operate the club as a formal design consultancy. I am presently managing a working team of 15 students.
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CLIENT MANAGEMENT
Playing the role of an engagement manager, I am responsible for managing the client relationship. This includes scoping the nature of engagement, mapping the project deliverables and timelines, and keeping the client engaged through the entire process to ensure the project is moving in the direction that the client desires.
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STRATEGY DESIGN
I develop a strategic approach for the project to achieve its goals in the determined time frame. I design strategies to conduct research, ideate, conceptualize and develop solutions. I am constantly developing new tools and techniques to balance creativity and pragmatism.
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DESIGN THINKING EDUCATION
Through the use of a variety of tools that I have picked up during my time in grad school and at Eaton, I teach and train our team on how to use and adapt design thinking to achieve real-world results.
FACILITATE WORKING SESSIONS
Through detailed and meticulous planning, I facilitate our team's weekly working sessions that involve the use of methods that I have developed to achieve project milestones. I take care to keep the atmosphere creative and lively in order to maximize the team's engagement.
OUR APPROACH
THE DESIRABILITY ANGLE
Traditional product development has been approached from the feasibility and viability angles i.e. technological capabilities and the ability to sell the product at a profit. True to the ethos of Human-Centered Design, we at ProductLab look to approach product development from the desirability angle i.e. understanding what users really want as an experience.
OUR CURRENT ENGAGEMENT
TOUCHWOOD
Our client has developed a new technology that enables a touch display to be embedded within any opaque surface.
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PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The goal of this project engagement is to design and develop a product offering that uses this technology.
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DEVELOP PRODUCT OFFERING
With a focus on addressing the desirability:​
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Identify gaps in the user experience of alternative products
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Identify the challenges that people face in their daily lives
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Identify people's needs (both real and latent)
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Develop a product that is not merely 'cool' but embeds itself into user's lives such that they cannot see their life function without it
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DEVELOP A BUSINESS STRATEGY
A product is only as successful as its business and go-to-market strategy. The nature of our engagement sees the development of a business model though:
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Mapping of relevant industries that our product would operate in/influence
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Market Analysis
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Industry Outlook
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Market Sizing
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Competitive Analysis
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Market Projections
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Regulations
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Manufacturing and Pricing​
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Market Entry Strategy
PROJECT STRATEGY
RESEARCH STRATEGY
I designed an approach that would start our research by investigating three discrete directions.
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Given that the technology developed can be embedded in an opaque surface that can then be used to provide information, I split my team into three with each group investigating a discrete area:
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Touch Surfaces: What are the various surfaces that we can come in contact with?
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Information: What information do people need/want in their daily lives?
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Inconvenient Experiences: When do users get annoyed at the process of accessing information?
Touch Surfaces
Information
Inconvenient Experiences
POSITION MAPS
Items collected in each category described above were then position mapped based on importance and frequency.
The definition of importance was to be different for each category, so each team member generated their own definition of the word "importance" in the context of touch surfaces, information, and experience. Dot Voting then determined the best definition for each category.
Touch Surfaces
Information
Inconvenient Experiences
This exercise enabled us to filter the most important and frequent items from each category. All items in the first quadrant were then selected to advance in the process.
CRAZY COMBOS
Having identified the most important and frequent items for each category, I designed an ideation exercise that would see the team generate a number of combinations. These combinations would then point at an inconvenient experience, the relevant piece of information and a surface that could be used to provide that information in a more exciting and engaging manner.
The entire team was divided into three subgroups for this exercise to promote richer discussion. Each subgroup would go through Round One and Two independent of the other subgroups. Finally, a collation followed by a final round of categorizing and voting to select the 10 most exciting combinations to take forward.
Meeting Planning
INDUSTRY & USER EXPLORATION
Now, that 10 potential product areas have been identified, we are going to use industry and user exploration to understand the state of the relevant industries and user groups related to each combination. This will be a surface level analysis to help downselect from 10 combinations to 2 combinations.
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I have split the entire team into 2 subgroups for this. Each group is being led by a domain expert, so a person with a background in business is leading the industry exploration team and a person with a background in design is leading the user exploration team. I have built a set of metrics for each category and I'm using the domain experts to fine-tune those metrics.
VALUE OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS
Once we have downselected to 2 product areas, we will build a set of values/metrics that our solution must offer. These values will then be ranked based on their importance through surveys conducted with the target user group.
PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS
The ranked values will then be used to build a set of product requirements that will be grouped into three categories:
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Must Have: These are values and features that are essential for the product
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Should Have: These are values and features that would be nice to have. The more of these features can be incorporated into the product, the better.
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Could Have: These are values and features that are bonus features but not essential.
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These Product requirements will then end up translating into our Unique Selling Point, which is the deliverable that was promised to the client at the end of this semester.
FUTURE STEPS
Since I will be graduating this semester and the project engagement is for the entire school year, I have laid out a plan for the new leadership team of ProductLab to take on to complete the project. The specifics of those plans will be determined by the new leadership group.
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