Software Product Design at Amplified
Amplified’s design studio produces software designs, digital animations, and brand identities. This blog post describes our methodology as it relates to software product design. For insight on Amplified’s approach towards brand formation, read this blog post instead.
When it comes to designing software products, Amplified’s methodology is highly collaborative and iterative. Every client has different needs, of course. Sometimes they already have a mature view of what they want their software to do, and how to do it. In those cases, we can take a relatively straightforward path towards producing software designs: internalize the requirements, produce wireframes and other design files, iterate with the client as necessary.
However, there are other cases in which Amplified is tasked with a larger mandate: end-to-end design of a new software product. The Amplified design studio loves these types of projects because they afford us the opportunity to fully exercise our methodology and show off our design skills.
When starting from scratch on new designs for a software product, Amplified first incorporates design thinking techniques to help our partners explore user needs and uncover deep market insights. Second, Amplified engages in a series of prototyping exercises to iteratively design product and, when helpful, to co-create with the end customers. Third, Amplified implements these insights into high-fidelity, pixel-perfect design specifications and art assets that are consumable by software engineers. The end result is the design of a simple, useful, and engaging software product that shows off a unique and beautiful visual aesthetic. This blog post details these three phases of end-to-end product design: exploration, prototyping, and implementation.
Design Exploration
Great products don’t just “look pretty” — they solve a real problem in an elegant way. But how do you uncover those magical insights that inform the specifics of your product? We prefer not to over-complicate the design exploration phase. We also embrace it as an inherently messy workflow. We work with clients to design surveys and interview guides. Oftentimes, the work isn’t linear. We’ll do a round of surveying / interviewing, review the results, and then iterate the questions and do another round. As we gather insights, we write stakeholder personas and user stories. We will also capture user behaviors and attitudes in an empathy map. This work helps orient our product team on the key needs and drivers of the users; wonderfully helpful insights that guide our thinking as we explore various solutions.
Now that we have a sense of the core needs of the various stakeholders, we embrace an iterative prototyping process to uncover the best solution. We engage in a series of brainstorming exercises and games to explore a range of creative solutions. “To have a great idea, you need lots of ideas,” we remind ourselves. We then narrow those solutions down to focus on the most feasible and impactful implementations. To test these solutions, we develop low-fidelity prototypes and put them in front. What is working? What isn’t? Oh, that’s interesting! We study their behavior and listen to what they say. Then we iterate the prototypes and replay the loop once again. This is called rapid prototyping with customers. Eventually, a solution comes into focus; we now know what to anchor the product experience on.
Product Prototyping
The process that we just outlined is highly exploratory. In many cases, clients already have done similar work themselves and come into the engagement with a structured idea of what needs to be built. If so, we can skip much of the design exploration and jump straight into visual design production. Irrespective of Amplified’s involvement in the initial design exploration, we always take an iterative and collaborative approach towards producing design assets.
We start by organizing written documentation that captures product insights and the behaviors of intended features. Once we have gathered the initial requirements, we then build user experience diagrams — boxes and arrows that outline the user journey through a product. We iterate these UX diagrams with customers. Once the diagrams feel on-point, we then produce low-fidelity user interface wireframes, and iterate those as necessary, as well. Once the UI wireframes look good, we create clickable prototypes in Figma or Invision. With these prototypes, the client can put a simulated, low-fidelity version of the product in front of users to gauge reactions. We continue iterating with the clickable prototypes until we believe that we have landed on a winning user experience and user interface.
Design Implementation
At this point, we know what we want to build and why. We also have some level of validation for the product’s overall UX/UI. Now, we need to convert these insights into fully implemented design files that can be consumed by the software team. For us, this means two things. First, we want to produce high-fidelity UI wireframes. By “high-fidelity” we mean pixel-perfect; these designs are nearly exactly what we expect to see as the functional version of the application. We will also deliver ancillary design assets, like special icons or graphics, that engineers can drop into the app interface.
The second file that we produce is a design specification guide. This file will detail the specifics of the interface. What is the exact color coordinate of the background? How many pixels wide is this button? What is the font and type treatment on this page? With these specifics, software developers have the exact specification they need to build the frontend of the application.
Wrapping it up
Product design is inherently messy and non-linear. Because the creative process is oftentimes stubborn, it’s hard to sequentially map out our design work on a Gantt chart. Additionally, because every client has different design needs, each engagement ends up being a bit different. At Amplified, we don’t impose a rigid formula and declare with the steely conviction of a Mandalorian, “this is the way.”
Instead, we think of our design methodology as a broad toolkit. We pull out different tools, at different times, depending on the needs of our client and the circumstances of our engagement. If you want someone to download your product requirements, produce wireframes, adjust as necessary, and then up-level the designs so engineers can build the front-end of a feature — then great! We can do that. But also, if you want to do deep investigatory work, embrace design thinking techniques to explore creative solutions for user problems, prototype with customers, iterate, iterate, and then iterate — then we can do that too!
Typically, software product engagements last anywhere from two to sixteen weeks. It all depends on the scope of the product and how much research and testing we need to incorporate into the process. If clients have a straightforward view of what they want to build, we can deliver finalized designs within a few weeks. But if we take a more exploratory approach and frequently iterate and test different solutions, then the process can take several months. Either way, we work closely with our clients to design a design process that is right for their budget, timeline and objectives. To that end, this blog post is simply a high-level introduction to our design practice, but we are always open to try new things. In the process, perhaps you can teach us a thing or two, too.
To get in touch with the Amplified Design Studio, drop us a line at hello@amplified.com.
