PRODUCT
DESIGN

The heart of product design is solving problems. This class dives right into one of the most fundamental aspects of that process: understanding the users that you try to help, and their problem.

Assignment #01: Let’s kick off your product design process. Start by picking a product design project from the prepared list, or come up with your own. Analyze the problem and, if you can, observe how the problem unfolds in the user’s hands. The outcome of this phase should be a list of findings around your users that you’ll keep in mind during the entire process. Please explain which research methodology you employed, how many participants you had in your study, and their background.

The problem statement is your North Star for the entire design project. This class breaks down how to distill the user problem into a strong problem statement that can serve as your foundation moving forward.

Assignment #02: Now that you’ve identified who your users are and what their experience is, create a problem statement capable of aligning the entire team.

Once you have a handle on the problem, it’s time to define a set of principles that will serve as laws, guidelines, biases, and design considerations throughout the process. Simone will walk you through the different types of principles, from the universal all the way to product-specific principles.

Assignment #03: Use your problem statement and what you know about your users to define 2-5 product principles that will guide your product. You’ll refer to these principles many times during the process to address feedback, help choose solutions, and to prioritize in development.

Now, for the fun part — coming up with the solution! Simone will go through what creativity is, how our brain works during creative activities, and his favorite techniques for facilitating a productive ideation session.

Assignment #04: Come up with as many possible solutions as you can in one sitting. List them out with the pros and cons of each one, what they focus on, and how they map to the problem. Go broad, challenge conventions. Then, identify the one in which you feel more confident, and explain why.

How will a user move through your product? In this class, you'll learn how to create a user flow and explore the "happy" and "non-happy" paths.

Assignment #05: Create the user flow for a "happy path" of your product. Next, highlight where things could go wrong, aka the "non-happy" path.

Go Deeper: Create a user journey (optional).

In this class, you'll start to give a face to your product. Simone will teach you how to build your core user interface starting from the wireframe, and scale it up to a design system with reusable components and clear standards.

Assignment #06: Design the UI components for your core screens in all their states and create a functioning Figma library.

Unlike in other design fields, motion in UX is not about delighting the user. Today, you will learn how to improve the experience of a product through the strategic use of motion.

Assignment #07: Look at your flow and identify where UX motion should be applied. Create the storyboard of what you would like to prototype.

What are prototypes, and why do we need them? You'll get your hands dirty exploring the most common prototyping tools. Simone will demonstrate the fundamental techniques in class, which you will use to start creating a prototype (or prototypes) of the designs through the lens of UX motion.

Assignment #08: Refer to your component library and flow to pick the core flows that you plan to develop into prototypes. Create at least one prototype in Figma. If you have time, create different versions with different values and properties of the same prototype.

It’s time to put your hypothesis up to the test. Now that you have a high-fidelity design and prototype, the testing and validation phase will help you ensure that your hypothesis and design concept work as intended.

Assignment #09: Identify what you would like to test and prepare a set of questions and tasks for the users to perform.

Go Deeper: Test your prototypes with 3-5 "users", using suggested tools (optional).

Getting your product presentation right is critical for buy-in from decision-makers (i.e., your project will be in trouble if you don't). Simone will teach you how to win over your audience and share his template for a product design deck.

Assignment #10: Prepare the structure of your deck and start identifying the key slides and the content needed. Decide at which point of the presentation you’ll show the prototypes (the heroes of your presentation).You’ll keep working on it until the last day of the course, so don't worry about perfection at this stage.

All the work that you’ve done so far means nothing if the team that will build it (the engineering team) doesn’t have what they need to do their job effectively. In this class, Simone will show you how you can speed the entire production process — product, design, and engineering — by defining clear specs and milestones.

Assignment #11: Create the specs for one of your core designs so that a hypothetical development team would be able to pick them up and start building your product. Define the key features, flows, and screens for 3 hypothetical milestones.

You made it, you designed a product! This final class will simulate a presentation and feedback session as you would experience at a top company, with several students presenting their projects for critique.

Over the past 6 weeks, you've outlined the why, what, and how of your product in each of the take-home applications. These will serve as the basis of a pitch deck that you'll build for this cumulative project.

Drawing on what you've learned about the presentation in Classes 11 and 12, choose the pieces of your design process that you feel will be most effective for communicating your product to stakeholders. Create your final pitch deck in a Google Slides presentation (10-12 slides max).

This is your chance to walk through the process of creating high-fidelity video prototypes using Adobe After Effects. Simone will walk you through the key features of this software, share his tips and tricks, and demonstrate how to render a video prototype.