Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur or innovator beginning your journey with just a concept in mind, be it for a mobile app, a web platform, or a software application, there are essential steps to follow if you wish to transform your idea into a digital product. Check out how to increase the chances of success and minimize the risks associated with digital product development, following a structured step-by-step.

1. Identify a Market Problem or Need

No matter how disruptive your product idea is, if it doesn’t solve a real problem or need from the market, chances are you will waste time and money developing something that won’t find use. Therefore, make sure that your product will solve a pain point from a particular audience or even a massive group of people; this can be accomplished through research and analysis.

The Ateliware process includes the Discovery phase, in which we delve into various activities that assist clients in understanding the market and identifying user pain points. More information about the Discovery phase will be further explored below.

2. Investing time in the Discovery phase

Product Discovery is a well-defined process that aims to identify and address uncertainties through the structuring not only of the product, process, or service but also of the project. This structuring will minimize the risk of cost and time investment, define technical feasibility and business value, and ensure the experience for everyone who is involved.

At Ateliware Discovery’s main activities include, having a clear understanding of the problems and needs, establishing the business goals and objectives, validating the product idea, creating a user-centered value proposition canvas, and if the solution is a product, structuring and scoping a roadmap for the product’s development.

Each stage of the process is carefully crafted to ensure that, by the end of the discovery phase, your company gains a clear vision of how to develop the optimal product, avoiding unnecessary rework and waste.

3. Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

This step definitely cannot be skipped. Once you want to turn your brilliant idea into a real product plan, you need to prioritize the product’s features, one important step inside Ateliware is to use our years of expertise to help the client do that. After all, you don’t want to start developing your product without being sure that you will get a return on your investment, right?!

With the MVP plan in hand, you’re ready to test the product with a smaller investment of resources. If it is necessary to change the direction of the product, you can do it in advance, without wasting money and time.

4. Crafting the Product Concept

Now that you are sure that your product idea solves a real problem from the market, and that you have already created a Value Proposition, it’s time to create a prototype of the proposed product. This can be a primary or more advanced mockup, it must allow investors and designers to see what you have imagined, finally, a prototype is also used to present the model of the final product to consumers.

In the Product Concept phase, Ateliware works on building high-fidelity mockups, linked to navigation and interaction flows, business rules, and use cases. Our team is responsible for developing the visual identity of the product, designing navigable prototypes, creating a comprehensive mockup of the product, adapting the product for mobile and web formats, establishing a style library, and providing usability test reports.

5. Test the Product with Real Users

It’s time to test it with real users and gather feedback, to maximize the benefits of user testing, consider a diverse group of testers that represent your target audience. Answer some questions such as, Does it address their pain points effectively? Is it intuitive and enjoyable to use? These are essential questions to answer as they directly impact the product’s market fit and long-term success.

Pay close attention to this step, each piece of feedback will contribute to refining the product before it is launched on the market. Go beyond the validation of the product usability, In this step, it’s essential to validate the Value Proposition and ensure that it has a market fit.

6. Started to develop and Bring the Product to Market

Once the product has been tested and refined, it’s time to start developing it. You can hire a development team and set a timeline and budget.

It’s super important that you, as the product creator, follow all the steps in the product’s development. Even if you’re outsourcing all the phases of creation, be the protagonist during the process and keep a close relationship with the team. When all work has been done, you will have the necessary knowledge to manage the product.

How can Ateliware assist you?

All digital products developed here at ateliware follow these steps. Now you know why they are essential to the product’s success.

Following each step above, we have co-created many digital projects that have achieved national and international success, such as Pipefy. One of the points that really made a difference in the project’s success was the rapid development of an extremely functional and well-resolved, first version of the product, with a focus on releasing a functional version as soon as possible.

In three months, Pipefy was already up and running and had three companies as customers. This made it possible to accelerate Pipefy by Silicon Valley, which turned the product into a business. You can check out other cases from our clients.

And if you want to talk about the possibilities of boosting your business through digital solutions, get in touch.

This article was written in partnership with Bianca Souza, Head of Design at Ateliware.