Product design is a lot like art. When done exquisitely, it goes directly to the soul and creates an unexplainable emotional connection, in this case, between a company and its end-users.
Coming up with first-class product design is not rocket science, lots of creativity, expertise and the product vision itself come together to produce what we tag exceptional at the end of the day.
It’s certainly not an easy one, to come up with first-class product designs, especially when you’re looking to design a new product idea.
Designing new products comes with its own challenges. There is a likely chance you may encounter problems during the process.
Some of which are,
- You may not know how to solve in-house,
- May not have the resources available to solve in-house,
- May not have the agility to solve the problem in the timescale, or
- Your internal efforts have yielded predictable results need to create something new.
If these are your pain points, you'll most likely need the help of product design consultants.
A Product design consulting firm is an agency equipped with a team of product design experts, marketing experts, product strategists, etc. They are established to help you create exceptional products with end-to-end professional support and expert guidance.
To help you get a better grasp on why hiring a product design consulting firm should be a top priority during your product design process, we’ve outlined in this blog 5 specific reasons why product design consulting is essential.
Why should you hire a product design consulting firm?
1. Consultants may possess the expertise and experience, you don’t.
2. You want a fresh perspective.
3. You want to do more in less time.
4. You want to be more result-oriented and less burdened.
5. They may have solved a similar problem before.
Let’s start with,
- Consultants may possess the expertise and experience, you don’t.
As Benjamin Franklin has stated,
"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
Exposure to more knowledge and expertise allows you the chance to approach your product design from many perspectives, not just relying on your approach or that of your in-house. far better ideas come when you seek more knowledge. This presents your project with a very high chance of success at the quickest time.
To get the best of your product design, you should look to hire a product design consulting agency. By hiring a product consulting firm, you are basically gaining access to a wealth of their knowledge, expertise, and experience in the planning and execution of your projects.
Even if you have an in-house team for your product design and development, you should still look to consult experts to get more insights and knowledge, especially in areas you don’t have expertise in.
With product design consultancy on board, you are at the advantage of deriving more value for your product in less time.
2. You want to be more result-oriented, and less burdened.
Rather than have to solve every problem or look to be involved in everything relating to your business, you can basically hand over the product design aspect of your project to professionals.
Product consultants are a group of professionals, who can help you identify and select the right stakeholders who will have the most influence on your product design.
Product design consulting can also give you an enhanced view of your business, such as a deep insight into the costs and profits associated with developing your product, help you identify all key partners needed to successfully build your product, and devise means to tackle flaws in your product design strategy.
Having a professional team in charge of your product design affairs will reduce the burden on you and allow you to focus on more important issues (e.g the sales rate or the B2B client projects).
You may have hundreds of designers and developers in your company but they could all be busy with other projects or maintaining existing product lines. A product design consultancy can be like a functional design department that you can parachute into your company to solve an immediate problem without taking focus away from other important projects.
3. You want a fresh perspective.
Have you tried exploring new ideas or coming up with a new perspective to solving your product design problems and you keep having predictable results?
It’s most likely an indication to look beyond your company’s structure.
One important role of product design consultancy is to challenge the way you do things and present you with alternate solutions or a fresh perspective to approaching your product design problems. These novel perspectives will be based on their experience exploring the market and meeting the needs of users.
Every business needs fresh inputs/perspectives from time to time. Without it, your business can be stuck doing things the same way for years, while there might have even been new and better ways of approaching that situation.
In fact, in some other situations, as a result of their experience, your product consulting firm may have encountered a problem similar to yours and would have devised an easy route to solving that problem.
4. You can do more in less time.
If you’re struggling with resources in-house and it’s hindering you from achieving much you can always look to get more expertise on deck.
Alongside helping you come up with new perspectives toward solving product design-related problems, having product design consultants on board increases your capacity to run more projects simultaneously.
A product design consulting firm is like an extension of your organization. Your consultancy will do the coordination and management, assigning the right project managers and technical people to the projects. Ensuring your projects run smoothly and in the fastest time. You can even give your design consulting firm multiple briefs on different projects to accelerate your development.
5. They may have solved a similar problem before.
Professional consulting companies have a wide breadth of experience working with many different organizations. Some of these design consulting firms may have already even done something similar, they may have designed a similar product, worked in your industry before, or solved a similar problem in a different industry.
Whatever the case, the obvious upshot of this is that they will probably already have a good understanding of your industry, your customers, or the problem at hand. They may also already have a good understanding of the technical and regulatory factors and be able to help you solve your problem more quickly and with less effort.
To wrap up,
It’s normal to experience at least one or two of these pain points as a startup business or even as an established firm, in fact, most will at some point have experienced a combination of these pain points. The problems are quite universal; you might just be wise to speak to experts, and professional product design consultants, so they help you through the problem phase and ultimately reach your business goal a lot faster.
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