Five product & business design secrets. (for designers anywhere)

Chelsea Winkel @hirechelsea

Hello, my name is

Design Facilitation Lead at Tallwave & Roller Derby Ass Kicker

Paul Van Tuyl @paulvantuyl

Hello, my name is

Emotional Design Lead at Tallwave & Coffee Drinker

We help innovative people transform great ideas into great businesses.

A lot of the time, they’re starting things up at their new or evolving company.

We’ve helped over 100 businesses start things up.

And holy sh*t is it hard.

(For designers with great ideas)

Five product & business design secrets

So you have an idea, now what?

Find your story.

1. Do your homework.

140, yo.

1. Do your homework

Explore. Dig deep and gather intel. Visually map it out. Ask questions and look for red flags. Draw conclusions.

2. Narrow your focus.

Illustration from Gamestorming

2. Narrow your focus

Define your segments. Learn their needs and benefits. Empathize with each of them.

3. Find your core loop.

Pacman: Eat dots. Avoid ghosts. Complete maze.

Instagram: Take photo. Apply filter. Share with friends.

Good design starts with good concepts. Sketch your ideas.

Illustration from Signal vs. Noise

Give it personality.

A refined visual direction is required.

3. Find your core loop

Find the part that matters most. Give your idea personality. Make sure it looks good. Turn it into a clickable prototype.

4. Validate your story with users.

4. Validate your story with users.

Is this the right audience? Do they have a need & how strong is it? Does my concept solve that need? Is the design solution the right one?

1. You know where to win 2. You know who you will win with 3. You know what concept to do it with 4. You've validated it with users

5. Make it happen.

Image from thinkfuture.com

Image from middlebury.edu

5. Make it happen.

Get users. Build it. Tell the world.(not necessarily in that order)

Go make awesome things happen.

Thank you.Get today's deck and additional resources at tallwave.com/phxdw

Ask #teamtallwave anything on twitter.