Before you start building a product, you need to understand its context for existence. Every design project needs a product vision that sets the direction and captures the essence of the product. Vision helps build a common understanding of “what we are trying to build here and why.”

Once the product vision is defined, product research (which naturally includes user and market research) provides the other half of the foundation for great design. Well-conducted research provides information about current users and competitors. It also gives insight into the latest design trends, as well as steady and stable UX patterns which should be adhered to.The results of research done for one or more design solutions will give your project a competitive advantage and a far more developed understanding of long-term design strategy, significantly increasing your chance to create a successful product that users will love.

After research, the product team must make sense of the data it’s collected. The aim of the analysis phase is to draw insights from the data collected during the product research phase. Capturing, organizing and making inferences about what users want, think or need can help UX designers begin to understand why they want, think or need that.

The idea generation phase is when the product team members brainstorm on a range of creative ideas and new concepts to create a product. Ideation is the core of the creative process in Product Design. It’s where the concept of the product will be formulated based on the user’s needs and business model identified during Product Research.

After the idea generation phase, the product team should have a clear understanding of what approach to take for the product. During the design phase, the team will begin to create a product from the ideas generated - the physical representation of a concept/idea.

After product launch, user testing is conducted. User feedback is used to Identify problems in the design of the product or service, uncover opportunities to improve and learning about the target user’s behavior and preferences