Product Conception or UX Design Consulting? How to choose?

Design is one of the fundamental pillars of our work as we understand the essential role of usability and user experience in digital products and services. UX/UI Design places the user at the center of the process of creating digital solutions, to humanize technology and understand the needs of people who use applications, platforms, and enterprise systems.

At SoftDesign, User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) Design are present in all services, but with different purposes. So what are the occasions when the ideal solution to the design issue is Product Conception? Which ones require UX Design Consulting?

Two services, two purposes

Product Conception aims at exploring ideas, better understanding users, identifying features, and choosing technologies. Through Product Conception, the digital product is designed, focusing on the issue it solves and on how it will generate value.

The Product Conception team is multidisciplinary, made up of product managers, product owners, architects, and designers. Together with the client, they apply Design Thinking techniques, carry out user research, determine Value Proposition, define personas and user journeys, and plan the construction of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

In UX Design Consulting, the designer dedicated to the project diagnoses usability problems in existing software to suggest improvements. Based on a heuristic analysis, the professional designs and presents new design suggestions.

Another possibility for the application of Consulting is in the creation of a new UI design for a digital product when the designer researches with potential users to understand the context of use. A design proposal is delivered to the client, who can develop the solution internally or continue the work with our team.

In both cases above, the designer holds frequent meetings with the other designers in the company to explore the problem and exchange knowledge. Thus, the client has access to our entire pool of UX/UI designers who can contribute, each with their own expertise, in a different way to the solution.

So Conception is only for startups, right?

No. Startups benefit from this service because it offers the development of new digital solutions and their business models, helping in the structuring necessary to effectively start software development.

However, established companies that are creating new solutions on existing platforms or systems may need Product Conception to think about this new part. For example, an internal software that manages sales needs to meet a new customer control need in the sales department.

Furthermore, Product Conception can be essential in a digital transformation strategy, since it requires the development of Product Thinking, that is, product-oriented thinking – which helps to transform needs into practical solutions to be prioritized and delivered. Here is an example.

One of our partners in the benefits card area (food vouchers, transport vouchers, etc.) had an internal management system that controlled the balance of each client (company) and its employees. This information was visible internally, but could not be accessed by clients: in other words, for each company to know its balance and confirm its transactions, it was necessary to call our partner. In short, the service’s end-user could not learn about their status and the status of their employees digitally.

Through Product Conception, our partner understood that it could not simply grant visibility to the system, as the user journeys and objectives of internal operating users were completely different from those of external users: our partner’s employee needs to control the balance of one hundred clients, while each of these clients only wants to know their own balance. In other words, the company already had the database, the structure, and the system – and was able to use this base. However, for this new audience/persona, it was necessary to think about how they would access the platform, understand it, their issues and needs, among others.

What about UX Design Consulting, is it only for existing products?

Mostly. This is because our Consulting services are always oriented to solve problems. The main objective of UX Design Consulting is to solve usability issues and those related to the experience of using a digital product or service.

Such problems can be: users do not understand the system; they complain that the platform is difficult to use; people delete the app because it is confusing, etc. Therefore, the client needs a study that analyzes how this usability and interface can be modified and improved.

However, in rare cases, UX and UI Consulting can be used to propose the usability and interface of a new product. If the entrepreneur has an idea already conceived, already knows the business model, has already designed the flows, and has his own development team, he may need a design specialist to think about the experience of use.

For example, we recently provided Product Conception services for a partner. His idea matured and it was already possible to develop the software, but he did not have all the necessary financial support – he was looking for investors. With the available value, however, he opted for UX Design Consulting to already create the interface, think about the product’s usability and develop high-fidelity navigable prototypes. Thus, it was possible to materialize his idea further to present it to potential investors, which facilitated its sale.

Other cases

In Product Conception, we think of a digital product or service under different aspects: value proposition, business model, design, functional structure, technical structure, software architecture, among others. In UX Design Consulting, we only look at Design, for journeys and experiences of using the solution.

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