8 Ways Brands Can Make Their Product Innovations More User-Friendly

Hold off on adding extra bells and whistles to the end product until you understand what customers need.

There is plenty of hard work and excitement that goes into the launch of a new product before it hits the shelves. However, if the creative staff doesn’t do enough research and focus on early feedback from their potential customers, it will be a disappointment if the end users don’t find it functional enough to fit in with their current lifestyle.

To help companies find a better approach to balancing innovation with practicality in their product designs, eight leaders from Fast Company Executive Board weigh in on what creative designers must keep in mind.

1. Focus on Solving Real Problems for Real People

If you adhere to defining innovation as new, feasible ways to solve the real problems of real people—my favorite definition—innovation should always be practical. This should never be a trade-off if what you are creating meets this standard. If you aren’t, you may be in the “cool stuff” game, or very early in prototyping, in which case you’ve got to keep iterating toward feasible, useful solutions. – Amy Radin, Pragmatic Innovation Partners LLC

2. Take a Deeper Dive Into the Root of Your Customers’ Feedback

With new solutions brought to the market daily, leaders must place customers at the center of their business. Every process in your innovation cycle should revolve around meeting customers’ dynamic needs. To achieve this, focus on transforming products and solutions to tie directly to consumer feedback, including delving deeply into the underlying processes that drove the comments. – Mike Field, The Raymond Corp.

3. Consider Potential Revenue Growth in Product Innovations

Generate revenue, then get creative about design. The difference between art and entrepreneurship is that art has theoretical value as an asset but IP valuations revolve around revenue growth and generating value. People can be as creative as they want with product design so long as it continues to scale revenue and increase demand, but innovation is counterproductive without proof of concept. – Sean Adler, SWN

4. Make Multimedia Content That Brings Your Product Vision to Life

Learn from your customers. Create multimedia content to bring your product vision to life for your end users. Test and learn from product sizzle reels and step-by-step product demos. Create white papers and user documentation. Enable live chat or offer one-to-one conversations. Send ongoing product information and have it centrally housed so customers can find it when they need it. – Mack McKelvey, SalientMG

5. Test Your Product to Gain Consumer Insight

Successful innovation is pragmatic. Creative leaders don’t start with practicality; they start with potential. Tie your ideas to early market trials, pivot ruthlessly, and iterate relentlessly. The real question isn’t can it be built, but should it be built—and only by testing and learning in real-world conditions can you find out. – Alex Goryachev

6. Require Creative Teams to Submit a Cost Sheet With Financial Projections

One way any leader can achieve the balance of innovation with practicality is to insist that creative teams include cost sheets with achievable financial outcomes in their pitches. Creatives often have big dreams but forget that they cost. Some dreams have little financial value over the long term. You can negate that by mandating they also include the cost and long-term financials of innovations. – Baruch Labunski, Rank Secure

7. Design Standards-Based Products With Configurable Functionality

Creative leaders balance innovation and practicality by designing standards-based products with configurable functionality. In manufacturing, this approach delivers effective solutions that are faster, more economical, and supportable. Configurability avoids the high costs and risks of customization while ensuring adaptability and a clear, future-proof roadmap. – Eddy Azad, Parsec Automation Corp.

8. Amplify the 10 Percent That Matters

Success in product design is about strategic subtraction. From working with Fortune 500s, I’ve seen the best leaders cut 90 percent of their ideas to amplify the 10 percent that matter. They use a “10X or Nothing” filter: If a new feature doesn’t boost core user value tenfold, it’s eliminated. This focus transforms the user experience without chasing every shiny new feature. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS

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