The whole process of an Internet product from idea to realization

A good product has three basic conditions: value, usability, and feasibility, and none of them can be missing.

From an idea to design, to R&D, how is an Internet product created? This article will share the implementation process of Internet products from five aspects: product idea, analysis, planning, design, and implementation. Thanks to Mr. Liu Xianming from Fulcrum Academy for his guidance.

Product ideas come from four sources: sudden inspiration, user feedback, boss’s tasks, and inspiration from competing products.

Medium and large companies receive a variety of feedback from users every day. Although these feedbacks may not become real product requirements, some of them can sometimes provide inspiration for products after being refined and screened by product managers. Many products of large companies are derived from the forward-looking judgment of their bosses or investors. In order to meet the company's strategic layout, they will be assigned tasks for internal analysis and research and development.

2. Product Analysis

Now that you have a product idea, is the idea feasible? How to verify it? This requires verification through product analysis.

Product analysis is divided into two aspects: user research and market research. User research is divided into qualitative research and quantitative research; market research is divided into industry analysis and competitive product analysis.

2.1 User Research

User research is an activity conducted around the user-centered design methodology, which makes the actual needs of users the guide for product design and brings the product closer to users. The purpose is to identify the target population and user needs of the product.

2.1.1 Qualitative Research

Qualitative analysis can provide a general understanding of users and needs. The methods include interview, usability testing, user group analysis, scenario analysis, situational experiments, eye movement testing, etc.

Based on the starting point of the product, user groups are classified by labels such as region, identity, and behavior to study the several types of user groups and their characteristics. Combined with what people talk about the most nowadays is scenario analysis, by truthfully describing the real scenario, analyzing the goals of the user group in the scenario and the real driving factors in the scenario from the user's perspective, to understand their approximate needs.

But this kind of product analysis is easy to fall into one's own inertial thinking

Steve Mulder wrote in his book Winning with Users:

The user’s goals are different from mine;

The user's focus is different from mine;

Not all users are exactly the same.

Because of this, you must conduct face-to-face interviews with target users to gain a deep understanding of their goals and perspectives. It would be best if you could go into the user's environment, but the cost is very high.

We know that Tencent has a dedicated user experience center and facilities, a dedicated research team, and invests hundreds of millions of dollars each year in user research. These are beyond the reach of startups.

Because the sample size is small, we only have a general understanding of the users and their needs. Therefore, the product information obtained through qualitative research needs to be verified through quantitative analysis.

2.1.2 Quantitative research

Quantitative research is the practice of testing and validating something using a large number of samples. Unlike qualitative research, quantitative research focuses on in-depth understanding of specific issues to identify core populations and core needs. Commonly used methods include questionnaire surveys and data analysis.

In the Internet age, the cost of questionnaire surveys has been greatly reduced. Even so, it is still difficult for small companies to obtain a large number of data samples without channels and users, and the number of samples and research methods often determine the rationality of the conclusions.

For example, Tencent’s user screening and pop-up window can retrieve a large amount of sample data that is relatively consistent with the target user. However, the user data accumulated over the years is easy to access, and it all depends on how to use the data for analysis and reasoning.

In short, qualitative research is to understand the problems users encounter, while quantitative research is to verify hypotheses and prove problems. Both have their drawbacks, and researchers and product managers need to design relatively complete solutions and comprehensively consider them to reach relatively objective conclusions. Make the product as usable as possible, and then consider usability in the later design.

In reality, startups often ignore quantitative analysis, and their analytical reasoning and problem-solving process can only be judged and improved iteratively based on the experience of product managers.

Collecting all kinds of user data can be extremely valuable, but sometimes the real mission behind the statistics is lost. We need to have a clear understanding of who we are designing products for and what they want, and by building role models, we can make users more real and help solve these problems.

A role model is a portrait of the real characteristics of a target group. By giving a task a face and a name, the scattered data is reconnected, and users are classified according to basic attributes, usage habits, target needs and other characteristics to form typical virtual characters. Each character represents a group of real people and is lifelike.

For more detailed instructions, please refer to "Winning with Users: A Practical Guide to Creating and Applying Web Personas": http://book.douban.com/subject/2157554/

Personas can help us keep users in mind throughout the design process and look at products from different types of user groups.

2.2 Market Research

Understand market conditions, compare industry products, and enrich your understanding of products and competitive products through market research.

The purpose of industry analysis is to determine how big the market value of the product is and where its ceiling is. Does the product have a future? To answer the question of whether it is worth doing.

2.2.2 Competitive Product Analysis

The purpose of competitive product analysis is to identify the differentiated highlights of a product and its product operation strategy, and to solve the problem of how to do it.

First of all, we need to clarify what is a competitive product?

Direct competition: products with extremely similar market targets, user groups, product features, and user demands, such as Didi and Kuaidi before their merger, and Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo.

Indirect competition: Products with complementary functional requirements and user groups do not currently constitute direct competition of interests, but are in a potential competitive relationship. For example, YY and QQ in the early days.

Industry leaders: There is no direct overlap of user groups and no competition of interests, but the products or teams are forward-looking in technology, product concepts, and profit models, and are the possible development direction of a certain industry.

How to do competitive product analysis?

Competitive analysis can be simple or detailed.

In simple words, "three looks" at competing products

First of all, what type of user group is it targeting? What needs does it solve?

Second, look at the highlights. How does the product meet user needs? What are the highlights?

Third, look at the data to understand the current survival status of the product, its activity and profitability, etc.

In detail, the analysis can start from product information, company background, user positioning and needs, product functions, product logic, product interface, operation strategy, profit model, product data and other aspects.

3. Product Planning

Once you are sure that the product can be made, you can start product planning.

It is mainly divided into four steps: listing features, classifying features, prioritizing, and version planning.

3.1 List of features

The requirements obtained based on user and market research become features, and these features are exhaustively listed through brainstorming or association methods.

3.2 Feature Classification

The features can be divided into different categories according to the order of scenarios, uses, and processes. The KANO model can be used as a reference. The categories should try to meet the MECE principle, that is, "mutual independence and mutual exhaustion". This is a method of organizing ideas proposed by McKinsey, which presents a clear and exhaustive classification result.

3.3 Prioritization

After clarifying the product positioning, sort out the main lines of the product, determine the primary and secondary functional modules, and prioritize the corresponding features based on comprehensive considerations such as the product's core functions, commercial value, and resources.

3.4 Version Planning

Plan the version line for the prioritized functions and prepare for communication on the first phase of the plan and technical implementation.

4.1 Product Architecture

Draw out the primary and secondary processes of product functions or information acquisition, and build a suitable product architecture.

The advantage of an efficient structure is its ability to "accommodate growth and adapt to change." The most important criterion for structural quality is not "how many steps are required for the whole process", but "whether each step is appropriate" and "whether the current step naturally extends the task in the previous step".

One of the great things about WeChat is its “light as a feather” product architecture and natural operating process.

4.2 Establishing Navigation

Currently common modes include main navigation, search navigation, common links, breadcrumbs, and operation navigation.

Nowadays, search navigation is generally used in conjunction with the main navigation, mainly based on websites, such as Baidu and major e-commerce websites.

Common links are used in websites with many navigation sites and information with huge categories, such as 58.com.

Breadcrumbs and action navigation are currently the most widely used on mobile devices.

4.3 Page Layout

Clearly divide the primary and secondary areas of the interface to obtain a better user experience and guide user operations.

Both navigation and page layout must take into account the user's usage and reading habits. This is the interface closest to the user. Mainstream users will not consider the purpose and considerations of our revision and upgrade. Douban’s page and navigation revisions are often criticized by users. When WeChat changed the bottom navigation to a notes bar, it also encountered complaints from many users, and eventually changed back to the bottom operation navigation.

Our products are constantly adjusting their direction, trying to maintain a balance and appropriate transition. On one end is user demand, and on the other end is product direction. Every revision is looking for the best middle point to satisfy the experience of mainstream users. Currently, many will adopt the grayscale release method for testing and verification.

4.4 Experience Details

The main details here are visual hierarchy, interaction details, document presentation and other details.

5.1 Teamwork Division

Product realization requires team collaboration and cooperation. The product team generally includes product managers, project managers, technical development, testing, operation and maintenance, and design.

But this is just a general situation. In large companies, there may be a more detailed division of labor, such as user research, product experiencer, data analyst, etc., and the division of labor and responsibilities in different companies are also different. There is no standard division of labor and combination.

The situation is even more ambiguous in startup companies. It is possible that a product manager will take on multiple tasks including project manager, tester, designer, etc., and together with technical R&D personnel, they form a product team.

5.2 Development Mode

There are currently two mainstream development models, the waterfall model and agile development. Internet companies mainly use the agile development model.

The waterfall model defines the various activities of the software life cycle as several stages of work connected in a fixed order, like a waterfall.

1) The division of each stage is completely fixed, and a large amount of documents are generated between stages, which greatly increases the workload.

2) Since the development model is linear, development results can only be seen at the end of the entire process, which increases development risks.

3) Tracking project phases with too many mandatory completion dates and milestones.

4) The prominent disadvantage of the waterfall model is that it cannot adapt to changes in user needs.

Agile development is a people-centric, iterative, and step-by-step development approach. It means dividing a large project into multiple small projects that are interrelated but can also run independently, and completing them separately. During this process, the software is always in a usable state.

The five aspects of product implementation are not independent of each other, and there are no clear time boundaries for work. The processes and treatments vary from company to company and situation to situation, and are carried out iteratively and cross-wise like the idea of ​​agile development. In fact, experienced product managers do not need to follow such a step-by-step approach. They will consider all aspects of their thinking every time. When analyzing ideas for products, they may already have a basic model for product planning and design in their minds.

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