Steph Mantis gives this advice on product design education: “Once you have a rough sketch and you’re starting to know the direction you’re moving in, you want to start thinking about materials. You want to start thinking about ‘How do I refine this?’ And ultimately, you want to think about ‘How am I going to communicate this to my fabricators, and my audience?'”

She goes on to explain, “If you can communicate it to your fabricators really clearly, you can use a number of tools. It can be auto-card; it can be solid works. I’ve designed stuff where I just put together a mood board. I say, ‘Like this, not like that.’ And I give that to a factory, and it communicates enough for them to get to the next sketch, which then comes back to me so I can critique that.”

Mantis makes it clear that at the end of the day, it’s about how you are communicating this idea of yours. You can use various tools for product design and product development. Pinterest, for example, is great for mood boarding. The Internet itself is a plethora of images that you can easily just start pulling out and organizing. It’s a source of online product design education. She personally likes things like Google Drive to organize concepts and uses spreadsheets to start her sourcing and pricing. Steph says she also likes Keynote.

“I think Keynote is really easy,” she continues. “It’s an Apple-based product. It comes on every Mac product basically. It’s cloud-driven, so it’s super easy to pull presentations together, share them, edit them, get them on your phone, get them on a tablet, get them on a desktop.”

Usability tests in online UX Design Education come in two broad categories: moderated and unmoderated.

A moderated UI usability test is when the researcher or you, as a designer, work with the user, either in the same space or online, to take them through the prototype. You ask the questions while the user completes the tasks answers the questions.

In an unmoderated test, the users work by themselves. There is no one there in the room, or in the virtual room, to help them, prompt them, or ask the question in a different way. This really tests the UI design. So, unmoderated tests can be challenging for users, but, equally, can give you really good insight into where those UX challenges are. If the users are struggling to complete the test, then that is a clear indication that something with your solution isn’t quite right, and may need some extra attention.

The double diamond ideation product design process starts as literally a drawing of two diamonds sort of placed next to each other. It’s a process diagram that explains the ideation methodology. It’s also known in product development as the design method.

Double Diamond Basics

We start with divergent thinking in the first diamond. We broaden ideas related to discovering insight into a problem and defining a focus area from one outside tip of the diamond to the other. In the second diamond, we develop and deliver potential solutions.

You’re not trying to think about the exact thing that you want to design but everything around it. No idea is a bad idea when you’re using this process. Your goal is to have ideas converge by taking all of the ones that you’ve written down and narrowing the list by placing them into groups of ideas that make sense together by category or theme.

The design process is really, really cool because you go through this a couple of times so that the ideas in the double diamond diagram are diverging, converging, diverging, and converging again. This process works because you’re really thinking out of the box. The diagram also promotes good discipline so that you can narrow down and focus on the things that you’re supposed to focus on.

Product Design Education

You can learn about the double diamond process and other ideation workshop tools with a formal online product design education. Formal training covers this and many other important product design and development processes that you need for a successful career.

Learn how live shopping and community building can provide you with the information and context needed to enhance your ecommerce shopping experience.

With live shopping, something that is incredibly valuable is understanding your communities on a deeper level. Communities are changing every hour, every minute, and every day.
I think one of the most beautiful things about live shopping events is that you’ll be able to understand what your audience is thinking, what they’re asking from you, and what they’re doing in real-time. In a way, that feels holistic and allows you to put context to the situation.

For example, we had one women’s health brand that used our solution a few months ago. We wanted to understand a little bit more about this customer. People think that live shopping events and live shopping are only for digital-first brands that are innovative and easy to sell. Such as a makeup or skincare company. However, what we’re noticing is that if you can build a community and engage, live shopping is for you.

This brand made use of a lot of our engagement modules. They asked a lot of questions and triggered a lot of polls within the live shopping experience. One of the great takeaways was they found out that 54% of their audience was first-time moms.

Now that not only is insightful information to target the rest of your live shopping event but is helpful for future events and to figure out what kind of products you want to launch later on.

Data is something that I think we’re all a little bit wary of. However, insights, context and information from your community, especially in real-time, really are priceless.

Exploration in product design and product development depends on the project or the product. Exploration is a part of the process that goes beyond what you learn to do in online product design education while sitting at a desk. You get to break away from that and explore.

For example, if you’re designing a telescope, you go look at all kinds of different telescopes. You look at big ones, and you look at little ones, and you also look at stuff that’s shaped like a tube. You look at things people put up to their eyes and how the image gets from space to you, to your brain.

You try to literally think outside of the box. You’re way out, and you don’t have to presuppose what you’re going to figure out. It’s really the most fun part of the project because you’re just looking around and finding anything you want.

Or you go to the store, and you look at things in that category. Or if it’s a medical product, you go visit the hospital and see how all the other things in the operating room are being used.

It’s one of the most fun parts of the project and something that product design education has a harder time explaining than most technical concepts because, at this stage, everything is open. You can Google anything, and it’s part of the project. So, this is a fun kind of thing.

Thinking about inspiration is interesting because, in truth, inspiration is everywhere. Inspiration isn’t a cookie-cutter concept, where you can simply define it as one thing and be done with it. It’s really about being open-minded and being receptive to things that are coming your way. You might have this idea of a design or product, and then, you see chewing gum while you’re walking down the street, and suddenly, inspiration hits you, just like that. Maybe the shape of the chewing gum becomes a doorknob, or at the grocery store, you see a strange looking red carrot, and that suddenly becomes the base of a lamp.

This is to say that inspiration and influence can show up everywhere. It’s about you being open to it and not filtering as many things out because, as you walk around in your life, you’ll realize that even the most highly ridiculous idea can actually trigger a really positive reaction. It’s not like you can simply count to three, and suddenly, you’ll have the key and code for unlocking inspiration. It’s really about being open-minded and being brave enough to take ideas that you see and process them, using your mind to turn them into new thinking and new ideas.

This can come from a wide range of things whether it be colors, shapes, sounds, or details; it’s endless. You just have to start walking. Start allowing yourself to see and to be receptive. The great thing about inspiration is that it truly comes from everywhere, and as you walk through life, you’re going to realize that. Inspiration for me was completely different at age 20 than it is today.

Today, I find inspiration in sound; I translate sounds that I hear into shapes. I find inspiration in food; I taste something, and the flavor suddenly becomes something new. I ask myself if color has a shape or if different colors like green and blue have a different vocabulary. Ultimately, you have to figure out what inspires you because inspiration is just as personal as people think it is. Again, you have to be very open. There’s no right or wrong; there’s only moving forward. Just allow yourself to be surprised.

To learn more about finding inspiration and harnessing creativity, as well as product design and product development, think about starting on a path with product design education. If you’re interested in learning about these things from the comfort of your own home, online product design education might be perfect for you.

How do we move through 3D ideation, especially today, with so many digital tools available? I find in my classroom quite often (in fact, it happened today), when people hear the words “3D sketching”, they think it means in the computer. It’s not so in my classes or in my studio. Because what I want to do is to free up the sketching as quickly as possible and make it as free as possible.

Starting Product Development Off Screen

By working with cardboard and non-precious materials, you can sketch quite quickly. In the physical realm, on the desktop, as opposed to on the screen, you happen upon happy accidents all the time. You see relationships very differently. I believe it maps in the brain differently from looking at a screen.

Product Design Should Be Done Quickly But Not Preciously

Even if you’re looking at a three-dimensional object on the screen, you’re still having a 2D experience. It’s the richest when you start by working with simple materials, and quickly but not preciously, to frame out the basic structure of the design.

Online Product Design Education Still Necessary for Presentations

If you’re comfortable in the computer and you want to go back in, by all means, go back in. Ultimately, in this day and age, we need to do so for presentation and production methods. But during the ideation phase, if we only remain on the screen, I don’t think we involve our full artistic self.

Online UX design education will teach you to always consider your user’s journey and what your user is using this app for. As designers, we can go a little bit off on a tangent and want to create something for ourselves, but that’s not what UI design is about. So you really need to consider the final outcome and who is using and engaging with this product.

Before you even start working on design, it’s really important to have a good background knowledge of who the person interacting with your product is. We will always try and engage with our readers’ feedback. We get people who contact us and tell us the difficulties they might be having with the app. I think UX is an important thing to consider and try and make those changes where you can. But it’s also a good thing to consider early on when you’re designing the UI and creating the code, that these problems might arise.

So you need to go back and be able to adjust things. Some things can be really easy fixes, and some things could be more difficult. But you’ve got to constantly be considering feedback, comments, and your readers to keep adjusting and refreshing your product to make sure it’s right for them, it’s what they want, and it’s something with which they can engage.

You can get a mix of feedback about your app, and I think you just have to be really sensible and consider what the information is. Some people will be unhappy with what you’re creating, or their comments just have value for them. It might not be something you can fix. There are limitations in what you might be capable of doing in your UX design. If you can go away and consider it, and think, “Yes, this is something I think is going to make it easier,” and it’s easy to implement, then just go on and do it.

It’s those sorts of little changes that can make a world of difference to someone interacting with your product. It’s not always easy to make changes. It depends on your company. It depends on what you’re making and what you’re producing. But you can go and make minimal changes, and they can make a big difference.

The research process is quite sophisticated and nuanced when done right. There are steps that I always think we should take before we dive into any data. One of these steps is to understand the goal. What is the purpose of the research? We must ask ourselves this because the research itself is just a basic definition. It applies to every research education, including online UX design education.

It’s only meaningful when it’s there to be a means to an end. It’s not the end itself. We should always ask ourselves the big question of what are we trying to achieve? What is the research going to help us do?

Often, by the way, it takes much longer to figure out the challenge. It also takes time to home in on the question than to do the research. We often must wrestle our clients to the ground to say, what is it that you’re trying to understand?

I often find that the hypothesis is the most critical part of the research. It is because usually, the questions are not that hard to answer but, they need validation. In this case, when you come up with a great hypothesis, you know which direction to follow. Otherwise, you’re just bombarded with so much data.

You go in, and you try to validate the hypothesis. Or, as I said, elaborate on that hypothesis. Maybe say, no, that was the wrong hypothesis. We’ve got to start again, and that’s very valid too. It is because you want to nip it in the bud if it’s wrong. You do this before you proceed to spend many months of work and money developing something that’s wrong.

There are two key steps to take if you can before you dive into research, including UI design. One is to ensure you figure out what you’re trying to solve. For example, you are investigating UX and UI improvement. What is the ideal research question? Then, the other is where do we think is the answer? Could it be here? Maybe not.

Sometimes, I’ll tell the teams to go in with a blank slate; they should not have a hypothesis yet. Go in like you’re an anthropologist in a foreign culture, and you want to discover. Because if you’re too myopic in your thinking, you may discount other avenues. Sometimes, it depends on the timing, or how much information you have, to go down the route of having a hypothesis or two and trying to confirm it.

We learn from Agnes Pyrchla that online UX Design Education teaches you to put yourself in your user’s shoes. Who is your ideal user? Who should you be focusing on? You can use some different tools to get to know your users and focus your energy and attention on those people. The first tool to use is called behavioral archetypes. It’s a broader concept that describes a group of people who share the same characteristics, the same behavioral patterns and the same value systems. It’s different from typical traits like gender or socioeconomic status, and it goes deeper into people’s beliefs and actions.

Behavioral archetypes are helpful when thinking about your UX design strategy. One way to approach this is to set up a spectrum of users who take these behavioral archetypes to the extreme. For example, with social media, you can think about who is a creator and who is a lurker (someone who likes to consume content). When taking this approach to your design strategy, you can really start to form a notion of what types of people you’re designing for.

From there, you can get more technical and create a persona of the ideal person who fits into your behavioral archetype. This persona is what you’re going to base most of your design elements on. So, as you’re painting this picture of your ideal user, imagine yourself as that individual. You’re almost with them on their journey as you’re designing for them. Do a mental check in which you ask yourself, “If I were this person, would I like this product?”

You can get creative and wander in the mind of your imaginary user. That way, you can really embody them and figure out how they will react to the UI product or another product like it. It’s also important to know what function this person would serve. If you’re designing something for a family, are they the parent or the child? If you’re designing something within a school context, are they the teacher, or are they the student? If you’re designing something within an organizational or a business framework, are they the buyer? Are they the user? Are they an engineer? Are they a business person? These details can give you the context of what they’re trying to do.

After creating that persona, you can imagine what is going through that person’s mind and embody them, almost as if you were them. It’s a shortcut for trying to walk a mile in someone’s shoes, to the best of our ability, given that we never will be them.