As a product manager, what are the steps to do product design after receiving a job assignment?

Now in the market to learn the skills of product management, will be required to do a product design at least through the following steps

Invited task – demand survey – competitive product analysis – prototype design – prototype design review – revised first draft – development review – final draft

Through the above 8 steps, you can basically complete a function, the needs of the page.

But now the Internet team requires speed as the priority of life, with small steps to achieve the product online, the traditional product design method mentioned above has a series of steps seem very standard, to meet the requirements will be very precise, but is it really necessary to such a detailed requirements?

What problems do we have when we actually use these 8 steps?

Of course, the biggest cost problem is that the above steps require time to think and invest, but they will not actually become the main path of the product, nor will they add their own reusable experience.

** Standardization capability of the unit component **

In 2015, if you are going to be a good product manager, you should at least write a detailed PRD (requirements document) that describes the rules for unit controls on the page: input character length, display rules, and interactions that require a product manager from start to finish.

  • Character length: Maximum length of text supported by the input box

  • Display rule: Input error, input correct

  • Interactive operation: before input, during input, after input

There are so many open source utility components out there that developers can implement the above rules with paste copy. At the same time, developers with some work experience can ensure that pages and functions can be used even if the content above is not read or viewed.

For example, for a login page, it would take a product manager 2 days to go through the above 8 steps, while the alternative would take about 10 minutes.

This is called simple design.

The simple design is based on standardized unit components and is suitable for use by Internet teams with small steps. In fact, today’s big factory is also composed of several small teams, not hundreds of people on a product team, so the students of big factory also need to learn simple design.

Simple design is a case in point for managing the PMTalk product development team in my startup. If you don’t have more than 10 product developers, it actually works.

Compared with traditional product design methods, simple design focuses on the core path, key conditions, pre-logic, page elements, page copywriting, but reduces the user interaction, component control rule description.

▲ Standardized unit components

Above I have listed the unit components commonly used by product managers. The rule description on the component can be omitted. At the same time, it does not affect the user’s use and development progress.

In simple design we focus on the fields, actions, preconditions, and logic of each page, but not on the style and size of the product design.

Here are two wireframes of IM input boxes. With simple design you can generate quick prototyping, but only if there is some documentation and specification. For example, the following 2 images are pretty confusing for developers to read.

** Simple design is a required course for product managers **

In the context of limited time and resources, it is important for a product manager to launch or incubate the product. So we can say that in the current version of ** “the details don’t matter.” **

Traditional product design emphasizes secondary and primary functions, but in fact an Internet product is the product of continuous iteration and optimization.

There is a strange phenomenon, a good Internet product will be mocked by users again and again, but users still do not uninstall.

This is actually related to the primary value requirements that the product provides. For example, the details and capabilities and styles provided by wechat in the early stage were very backward, but in essence, users could send text messages and make language calls for free, and opened the mobile terminal and LBS social network in the later stage, which enabled wechat to quickly sweep countless users.

From a development perspective, you will find that details are not the most important thing in product design. Find out why it is done and what new data is added after it is done

▲ Simple design steps

The collection task is the starting point for every product manager, and the one marked green is the modular design, which is composed based on common controls. Here are the assignments submitted by my students in the 21-day mini Program Product Manager training camp.

In simple design, focus on buttons, fields, colors (black, gray, white), and fixed form navigation.

Learning simple design is a must for product managers from novice to veteran. This is part of a new book I’m writing, Simple Design, which I believe will contain a methodology you’ll meet in the future

Today’s share is here. My personal wechat account: 574319420, welcome to add wechat to communicate with me