As organizations continue to prioritize digital transformation—or the process of modernizing to retain and improve market position—product design is an increasingly critical piece of the product development puzzle.
Yet, the pressure to achieve a positive ROI in the shortest possible timeframe can place unrealistic expectations on product design teams who face numerous challenges that include:
- Insufficient resources and stakeholder support result in slow time-to-market and increased costs to design, integrate, and deploy modern tech solutions.
- Low user adoption is driven by improper product planning, lack of training, unrealistic expectations, or insufficient understanding of goals, leading to diminished returns.
- Poor customer experience creates an immediate impact on customer satisfaction and can damage your company’s reputation and lead to low team morale.
These are just the surface-level challenges; beneath them, many missed opportunities arise as the technology gap widens. We share this not to paint a picture of doom and gloom for digital modernization efforts but to illustrate why most digital transformation initiatives fail and highlight the importance of a framework for successful digital product design.
To help you circumvent these growing pains, we’ve developed 10 principles that outline an effective product design philosophy, creating a powerful customer experience while simultaneously driving successful, sustainable digital initiatives. It can deliver internal benefits— creating a shared understanding within your team about how and why you work, making you more effective and productive as a company.
Principle #1: Solve existing problems
Start every engagement by understanding what the business needs to be successful. Success shouldn’t be subjective. Instead, create a plan to measure progress toward solving existing problems. If the client wants to win new customers, talk about how many new customers they need. And at what point do they need them? To that end, also understand why they want or need new customers so you can truly create solutions that support those goals.
What do those outcomes look like?
For CTO and CIO stakeholders, it’s about aligning tech investments with existing business problems—whether that means faster deployment, reduced operational costs, or a better ability to adapt and iterate. For CPOs and Product Owners, it means linking product design decisions to customer satisfaction and retention.
“A simple yet mighty solution to product and technology team misalignment is ensuring they are on the same page from the beginning. Letting teams understand the purpose behind an initiative and how it plays into the organization’s larger business strategy creates more connectivity. Educating teams about the impact of goals and their participation in certain projects helps create more buy-in as well.” ~ Jill Antweiler, Modus Create’s VP Product Development Practice Lead, on bringing product and technology teams togehter
Ultimately, your job is to change behaviors and solve existing problems. Deliverables are just stepping stones to get there. In fact, pretty deliverables are useless unless they help achieve a business goal.
Consider this: Nearly two-thirds (64%) of organizations we surveyed planned to invest in IT modernization in 2024. Before your next initiative, take time to align on what success looks like and why those outcomes are priorities. What existing business problems or user behaviors are driving this project, and how will you know if those needs are being met?
Principle #2: Involve the user throughout the process
In the fast-paced world of software, demands are high and time is thin. As a result, product design companies often cut corners to meet deadlines. Unfortunately, crucial steps like user research and usability testing are often the first to get cut. We take a strong stance on this topic:
Failing to involve your users throughout the design process is the biggest mistake you can make.
By involving your users throughout the process from the start, you can avoid the costly pitfalls of deploying tech that doesn’t solve existing problems. In addition to reducing the risk of investing in unusable or unwanted solutions, you can be sure every product design decision directly contributes to customer satisfaction and retention.
As Sarah McCasland, Chief Strategy Officer at Modus Create, says, “User experience is as good as any reason for organizations to modernize their applications. User sensibilities and expectations evolve more quickly than ever before. What might have been considered intuitive UX even three years ago might look dated today. Therefore, modernizing your app for better UX isn’t a one-time project. It involves creating an architecture that allows for rapid UX iterations.”
That’s why it’s important to always fight the uphill battle to involve the user — and to help the users and your clients. You should value learning just as much as you value business growth. Delivering business outcomes is king, but you can’t do this without understanding your customers’ needs and motivations.
Consider this: 47% of decision-makers we surveyed identified improved customer experience as the most significant benefit of their latest digital product overhaul. How can you test product ideas with user research and incorporate usability testing throughout your process to avoid costly mistakes?
Principle #3: Own the product
Design specs are useless if the end product looks and functions nothing like the design. We take pride in our deliverables, but we take more pride in shipping awesome products. That’s why we advise structuring your client engagements around ensuring the product reflects both the design and business goals. If you don’t plan formal product reviews, the chance of failing skyrockets. Likewise, without early collaboration between designers and engineers, you risk delays and churn.
CTOs and CIOs must ensure seamless collaboration between design and engineering. Both stakeholders should own the product from day one to reduce deployment failures and avoid costly delays.
Antweiler says, “Just as important as hiring the right engineers is including them in the planning process as early as possible. Rifts are caused when product teams set a timeline for epics and features without getting input from engineering to understand the dependencies or technical constraints that should be considered.”
Consider this: 78% of organizations we surveyed in growth mode expect a significant increase in their budget dedicated to implementing, executing, and managing customer-facing digital products in the coming year, making success increasingly important. Take time to evaluate your collaboration processes and discuss if every team member is playing their part in owning the product.
Principle #4: Designers = facilitators
This principle actually came from a talented designer at one of our clients. Digital product teams experience natural tension. As designers, always go to bat for the customer’s best interests. Engineers will fight for reusable and minimal code, security, and performance. Product owners may prioritize business goals over all else. With so many competing interests, compromises are necessary but hard to come by.
As product designers, it is our job to balance these conversations, drive decisions, and focus the team on a common goal:
- Reducing friction between tech and business teams.
- Aligning product development with customer needs and business outcomes.
- Balancing competing priorities for smoother deployments and faster iteration.
Consider this: 90% of product development decision-makers see finding and hiring as a critical challenge, and 83% of those we surveyed outsource product design and development most or at least part of the time. Does your internal team have the right capabilities, or could tapping into external expertise aid your success?
Principle #5: Spend time wisely
User experience work has a stigma of taking too long — especially user research. You must fight to win the time needed to design a quality product. If you don’t get enough time, make the best of the time you have. That means there is no place for early perfectionism in your work. Good software is never done; so continually move towards perfection through iteration.
With that in mind, it’s critical to balance speed and communication with quality—but skipping critical research or design steps is never a good idea because it leads to costly redos or fixes down the road. Similarly, prioritizing efforts to best meet user needs is important at every stage, from initial design to backlog.
At the same time, emphasize simplicity rather than overcomplicate—don’t create a fifty-page deliverable when a napkin sketch and a quick conversation will get the job done. Lastly, remember that recreating the wheel does not qualify as innovation. If an existing design solution solves a problem well, reuse and reappropriate it to your specific context.
Consider this: There’s often a disconnect between executives and non-executives in expectations about time to ROI, so it’s wise to evaluate timelines, existing solutions, and goals as a team to get everyone on the same page moving forward. In that same vein, before rushing to meet deadlines, take a step back and evaluate how well your product design process balances speed and quality.
Principle #6: Be a collaborator, not a hero
The age of the rockstar/ninja/unicorn designer is over. Product design is an ever-growing umbrella of disciplines. While we form our team with designers who can take a project from end to end, we encourage designers to gain deep skills within a specialty. As Patrick Sheridan, CEO of Modus Create, puts it, “Over the years, I’ve learned that the best and most innovative ideas spring from the collective efforts of everyone in an organization. Because at the end of the day, the responsibility for driving innovation doesn’t just fall onto one person. We all have our roles to play.”
This is why collaboration is key. As a majority remote-working company, it can be tempting for us to crawl into a design hole because it’s comfortable — no annoying differences of opinion or critique. But we must accept that team members will have different opinions. We must embrace critique. Give these perspectives their due diligence and explore how they might transform your own ideas.
Truly integrate into the client team — make it hard for your clients to tell where their team ends and yours begins.
Consider this: Modus Create’s Chief Strategy Officer Sarah McCasland asserts “People are the most critical factor in successful digital transformation initiatives.” What are your biggest opportunities to improve cross-functional collaboration to reduce bottlenecks and smooth out your workflows?
Principle #7: Balance usability & visual aesthetics
With the rise of AI, it has become increasingly easy to fall victim to employing sexy product design trends. It happens to the best of us. But always remember that you are not designing for yourself.
As product designers, notice the details — the intricacies of typography, the complexity of a layered gradient. The average user doesn’t care about your space-age UI. They do, however, care if they can’t read that low-contrast text you just put on the screen (ooh it hurts my soul how good it looks and how bad it works!)
Usability and Retention
Usability—and therefore customer experience and marketplace reputation—is intrinsically related to retention. When your product is easy to use, people will stick around, which increases your ROI. While this speaks to the interface, it also relates to performance issues and scalability.
Consider this: 69% of organizations we surveyed implemented or overhauled a customer-facing product or application in the last two years, meaning that competition for delivering top-notch user experiences is fiercer than ever. Are you prioritizing usability to stay competitive in a market where both visual aesthetics and function are becoming non-negotiable?
Principle #8: Play the baby genius
People are naturally bad at explaining why things are the way they are. This sucks for product designers because that’s what we consistently need to uncover to design insightful experiences. But don’t give up; be persistent. Ask why and then ask why again. Ask why five times if you have to, just like a baby. Then do genius things with the information you uncover.
As product owners, persistence is critical to understanding what people want so you can prioritize which features can deliver the most value based on real information, not assumptions or a guessing game.
At the leadership level, these insights go beyond features and help you align product decisions with big-picture goals so you can make better-informed investments.
Consider this: 79% of organizations we surveyed reported that following through on strategic elements of developing and launching new products is a barrier to success. Are you digging deep enough into the “why” to help your teams make informed decisions?
Principle #9: Create with intent
Always be able to justify your product design decisions, because it’s inevitable that people will challenge them. While it’s okay to be wrong, it’s not okay to just design things with no thought or purpose. After all, our company name, Modus Create, literally translates to “Create with Intent.” Every purpose must be obvious.
Whether you’re making design or tech decisions, always map your decisions back to customer anecdotes, analytics, or business goals. Realize that rules of thumb are often actually subjective and not very convincing. “That’s the way Apple does it” is not a compelling sell either.
“In such exciting times, it might be tempting to assume that shiny new technologies will dominate digital transformation trends. While every technology leader is excited about AI, most of our digital transformation challenges, initiatives, and priorities actually remain unchanged from the last several years. Regardless of the latest technology, business leaders are still asking: How can we execute a successful strategy to engage our customers, improve efficiencies, and future-proof the business?” Pat Sheridan, Modus Create’s Co-founder and CEO, on developing a digital transformation strategy
Consider This: With 90% of executive teams and 89% of IT departments holding decision-making authority over customer-facing products, are your decisions grounded in the right data and intent?
Principle #10: Teach a client to fish
Some studios want to make clients ever dependent on their services. It makes sense, right? This means more cash for longer periods of time. But we take a different approach. The best gift we can give a client is the ability to never need us again. That means putting just as much emphasis on teaching as we do on delivery.
An effective product design and development process helps you create scalable, sustainable operations so you can focus on what matters most—your customers.
Consider This: 94% of decision-makers we surveyed feel that finding an experienced and adequate partner for new product development is important. Are you building internal capabilities while bringing in external expertise when you need support or guidance?
Putting design principles to work
These 10 product design principles are a framework for our internal teams, and you can use them as a blueprint to make your digital transformation one of the success stories. Whether you’re a CTO, CIO, CPO, or another stakeholder in the design process, aligning your product development process with these principles can help you reach your goals—whatever they are.
Learn more about product development at Modus Create.
