HOW TO IDEALIZE A DIGITAL PRODUCT THROUGH A LEAN INCEPTION AND DESIGN THINKING PRACTICES

If you want to understand more easily ‘how to idealize a digital product through Lean Inception and Design Thinking practices’, stay here!

I will bring the subject in a very didactic and simple way to make it easier to understand. And for that, I will separate the two concepts and talk about each of them first.

But first I will contextualize you about what a digital product is.

A digital product is one that has its development through technology – which can be used through computers, tablets, TVs, Smartwatches, Totems, Smartphones, etc. It must have as its main characteristic the delivery of value from the point of view of the end user.

Examples of digital products:

• software;
• Platforms;
• Systems;
• applications;
• portals
• E-commerce and etc.

Now that you have understood the concept of a digital product, let’s go to the concepts of Lean Inception and Design Thinking to support us in the idealization of a digital product. Let’s see:

Lean Inception and Design Thinking

The Lean Inception method was created by Paulo Caroli, author of the book Lean Inception, in order to obtain the MVP ( Minimum Viable Product ).

In short, it has the answer to a fundamental question for the development of a product: ‘How to get a consistent project in the shortest possible time?’

Simply put: Lean Inception is a method developed thinking about how to align people in the process of building the right product, which can help in the production of a lean product.

Design Thinking, also speaking in a summarized way, is an innovation and optimization tool widely used in various development formats, allowing you to create projects, solve problems and develop products from a creative process and/or structuring of ideas.

Did you understand the two concepts? Very good! So now it’s time to understand:

How to idealize a digital product through Lean Inception and Design Thinking practices

When creating a product, there are countless possibilities for ideas and suggestions, and Design Thinking is ideal for separating the good ones, while Lean Inception is ideal for aligning people in the process of building the right product through these good ideas.

So, joining Lean Inception and Design Thinking: it’s like “joining hunger with the desire to eat”. Does he understand?

During the development of a product, when these two are aligned, one uses:

1st The Lean Inception to define the functionalities that determine the product as a viable product, in order to work only on the one that manages to generate business and value for its users, reducing the loss of time and resources.

2° Design Thinking to optimize the entire development process.

Emphasizing that the Lean Inception method should be applied at the beginning of the project when there is only the outline of a product in mind. That is when points are being defined such as:

• Who will the users be?
• What will be the user journey to the product?
• What should be the features of the product?
• And the delivery schedule?

Bearing in mind that this is a method that can be applied both to large and smaller projects, as well as to large companies and startups, as it is a way of aligning everyone involved around the same business vision, which is very important!

In addition to this method (Lean Inception), you can use the Design Thinking tool that, as we already know, will help in the development of the project, allowing the optimization of the development process, by dividing it into phases, as follows:

• Immersion: where the recognition and analysis of the scenario are carried out to better understand the difficulties, opportunities, and limits that exist. In this phase, all existing data are collected, which will be very useful for the next step.
• Ideation: Phase where the data obtained previously are analyzed, whereas many ideas are gathered from them. This must be done collectively and collaboratively, in order to increase the chances of good proposals.
• Prototyping: this is the time when the two previous phases are studied to select the ideas and proposals that make the most sense for the project and those that will have the best chance of success. After all, you should create prototypes based on the best-evaluated ideas.
• Test: This is a crucial time. It is time to carry out tests and lists all the problems observed during the process, proposing solutions in order to improve or implement whatever is necessary to reach the final product, the one that must be placed on the market.

Conclusion:

These two practices add up and when followed in their bases and philosophy can generate better results, generating innovative products that deliver value from the end user’s point of view, in addition to bringing greater organization and optimization to processes and teams.

And for those of you who have read this far and still want to know more about how to idealize a digital product through Lean Inception and Design Thinking practices, I suggest 3 other contents of mine, very easy to understand that will work for you as a complement for that theme.