Contents

  • Why Design Thinking Works
  • What Do We Do at Magnetize Studio?
  • Our Process

How A Strong Design Process Can Help Your Business Succeed

Being a technology company following a design process is extremely important to the success of your product or service. If you have the budget, hiring designers who have the right mindset to follow a process to arrive at a result would be a good idea. And when it comes to independent design studios like us, “follow the process” is a mantra we chant everyday. 

Without a solid process in place, your business has a lower chance of succeeding. Technology or software is the business of people, and that’s where the power of design thinking is advantageous.

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Understanding consumer mentality is one of the most difficult tasks imaginable due to the unpredictability of consumer behaviour. Your approach has to be flexible enough to adapt to changes and robust enough to handle scaling. This is only possible if you fail fast and iterate.

Design thinking is one such tool that is non-linear, iteratively used to challenge assumptions, eliminate the wrong solutions and arrive at the right solutions to the right problems. The beauty of it lies specifically in the iterative nature, wherein you don’t stop designing even after the product is launched. 

Source: https://public-images.interaction-design.org/literature/articles/materials/

It involves 5 stages – Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. 

In the Empathize Stage, you research your users’ needs. Being empathetic and trying to pinpoint user problems – the right problems, more importantly – makes the process more human-centered. Considering that you’re building products for humans, this becomes all the more important. 
 
The Define stage is where you frame all your research into defined and structured problem statements. You analyze your observations and form hypotheses. 
 
In the Ideate stage, you and your team can start generating ideas for possible solutions to the problem statements – emphasis on “your team”, since it always fares well to have a number of inputs while brainstorming solutions. This allows for diversity of thought and supports inclusion. A sole designer may be biased towards their own solution. 
 
The Prototype stage is your experimental playground and one of the most important steps in the entire process. A scaled-down version of your intended product is produced at this stage that lets you analyze your solution in a more efficient and cheaper way.
 
Evaluation of your solutions in the Test stage is important to validate your solutions against your assumptions or hypotheses that you carry throughout your design process.
 
Now why exactly should you iterate? An iterative process lets you feel free to test solutions and fail without fear. The most innovative solutions have come from genius minds only when they dared to do the extraordinary. Design thinking tries to make all stakeholders be a part of the procedure, including the end user. With an iterative mindset, you have the freedom to improve your products or services according to conditions in which they operate.

What Do We Do At Magnetize Studio?

At Magnetize, our focus is on helping companies build digital products and experiences successfully following best practices. We have built and launched our own products to serve a wide variety of audiences while coming up with solutions to complex problems. 

A factor that sets us apart from other design groups is our process. We make use of data that is backed by behavioural science helping you decrease the entropy of consumer psychology.

Source: https://visme.co/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Marketing-Psychology-15-Tactics-to-Influence-Consumer-Behavior

Although we use the design thinking process at the core of our design approach, the way in which we tackle a problem depends on the product or service you’re designing. In the entire product development lifecycle, you might find that some techniques work for you and some don’t and that’s what we do – we employ the best methodologies by combining structure, content, data, design language and research in a way that enables you to accomplish your goals. 

At times, the design thinking process may be interchanged with the bottom-up approach of five elements of user experience: Strategy, Scope, Structure, Skeleton and Surface. Where the five steps of design thinking is how you do it, the five elements of user experience is what your design output looks like. The goal is still the same – designing delightful experiences for users.

Our Process

Step 1:

Discovery: The first thing we do when you come to us with a problem, is to learn about the user needs, learning about your business objectives and auditing your existing product if available. 

Understanding business goals: We gather knowledge from our clients and understand the company’s vision and project goals

Understanding user requirements: We then understand who the relevant users are, and gain clarity on their needs and motivations

Market research: Analysis of current market scenario and competitors in order to set a direction and roadmap for the project

Our expert UX consultants conduct a 1-2 week discovery workshop to gather knowledge from all stakeholders which helps us cater to varied requirements.

 

Step 2: 

Define: We turn all ideas and pain points into definitive problem statements, deeply involving all stakeholders to ensure that the output is always in sync with business goals. 
 

Brand and identity design: Our brand consultants craft a holistic brand identity for you that reflects your vision and connects with your target audience at an emotional level

Information architecture: We organize, structure and map content for the platform for easy discovery by users
 

Step 3:

Design: Our design team then starts with their magic and brings all our collaborative ideas to life. This involves creating mood boards, design assets, developing layouts and creating a workable solution to test with real end-users.
 
Wireframes: We create a blueprint to work with that provides an insight into what the final design may look like
 
Visual design: Next, we create beautifully designed, functional interfaces with visual elements that speak of your brand
 
Prototype and test: Prototyping is important for us to test the product in real time conditions and get valuable feedback
 
As we do at every step, we will include you here by sending mood boards and style guides for your review. The final prototype of the product is shown to the target audience that ensures that there are no stones left unturned.
 

Step 4:

Development: Time for our technical wizards to take charge. We translate designs into high quality, responsive and scalable products that can be launched into the market with light speed. Keeping up the spirit of design thinking, the more you iterate after launch, the better growth your product has over a period of time. 
 
Front-end development: Our tech stack includes, but is not limited to, MEAN stack, flutter, native OS, and other industry standard full-stack technologies. We implement the best combinations of these technologies to make your audience have a seamless experience
 
Back-end development: A strong back-end is crucial to the fluidity and smoothness with which your product runs. Our engineers build you a functional and adaptable product with a strong foundation
 
Quality Assurance: Not a single bug goes past our engineers during quality check and it is made sure that the best possible standards are met. 

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If all this seems overwhelming, we would love to talk to you over a cup of coffee and help you communicate the needs of your business properly. Design thinking truly supports growth at every step. The very iterative and human-centred focus of the approach facilitates constant knowledge accumulation throughout the product life cycle. 

 

It has been key to several huge organisations and we believe it will prove valuable to your business too. Contact us today for a free consultation. We’d love to build something amazing with you!

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