A well-thought-out and beautifully-built digital product takes time and is best approached with a considered purpose. So the results of such an endeavor is a product that your company is proud of and your end-users love engaging with. 

So how do we get from idea to amazing digital product? We’re so glad you asked! 

The Phases of Digital Product Development

To turn your brilliant ideas into authentically useful solutions, you’ll hit most (if not all) of the following:

1. Assessment
2. Discovery
3. Product Development
4. Continuous Engagement

Stage 1: Assessment 

Your digital product truly begins by first taking a step back. The Assessment period is a chance for you to examine the demands of your project and the capabilities of your team. By performing code and design audits on your existing systems and desired solution, a DPD firm can not just point you in the right direction, but can provide the leadership and guidance you need to get started on the right foot.

This assessment process also takes into consideration the unique needs of your business and those of your end-users. Even though pen has yet to meet paper (or fingers have yet to meet keys), this step is crucial to building a digital product that you will love and your users won’t be able to stop using.

Stage 2: Discovery

This stage actively involves you and your end-user and typically means a lot of questions. How do you see your app working? What problems are you hoping to solve? What do your end-users expect from your product? In order to be most accurate, the answers will come from both you and your users. 

Think of it like a friendly match of tennis, where questions and ideas are lobbed back and forth from the product development team to the client. This step saves time and money in the long run as any problems or needs that arise can be addressed from the get-go, rather than building a product and then discovering you didn’t solve client pain points.

Stage 3: Product Development 

Here’s where the rubber meets the road (or the Nerds meet the Ranch, as we like to say). In this stage a complete DPD team begins the actual work of designing and developing your product. Using the information gathered from the first two steps, a good firm will follow the process of experience-driven transformation, or keeping your end-user firmly in mind throughout development.  

There are two main steps that the product team will typically take: 

Prototyping 

This process involves creating extensive models and testing them until the product meets the highest standards of user usability and utility. This process looks like this:

• Napkin sketches turn into wireframes.
• Multiple lo-fidelity prototypes eventually result in a few hi-fidelity ones.
• These hi-fi prototypes get narrowed down into a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
• Eventually, your MVP turns into a final product, ready to launch. 

Developing a MVP allows you to test the bare-bones of your solution, upon which you can later add layers of functionality, UX, and UI as you continue to test and iterate.

Testing

This is the time to root out any bugs, display issues, and more. Several devices and operating systems will be tested for functionality and compatibility, and the UX/UI will be smoothed out and sanded like a fine piece of mahogany.

 Stage 4: Continuous Engagement 

No matter how perfect a process is, a product will never be perfect (and that’s okay). If you’ve found a digital product firm that’s worth their salt, they will have brought you to this point ready to succeed. That means the leadership and guidance they provided throughout the process leaves your product and your team ready to handle future expansion. 

And that expansion often takes the form of continual testing, user feedback, and data analysis after a launch. A good DPD process will ensure that all future improvements will be minor fixes, with major app-breaking bugs having been avoided through smart design and development practices. 

Do You Need a Digital Product Development Firm?

Digital product development goes above and beyond just “building an app.” It’s why many businesses entrust a Digital Product Development firm to handle all the nuances. If you’re considering a DPD firm, here are some reasons why you may want to reach out:

• You have an idea for a product, but you don’t have the team to execute it.
• You are unsure of the scope or skill set required to bring your idea to life.
• Your team lacks the web, design, IoS, or Android skills necessary to create your product.
• You want to improve or optimize an existing digital product or system.

Once you decide that you want to jump into digital product development, it’s time to find the right agency that will accelerate your creative process and help you build your dream product.

Big Nerd Ranch Wants to Solve Your Toughest Problems

Big Nerd Ranch is the digital product development agency that is as passionate about your product as you are. We are invested in taking your company to the next level, while mentoring your team along the way. 

Our expertise falls into three main categories:

• App development for web, Android, and iOS
• Design (UX/UI)
• Project Strategy

Our versatile and committed team provides guidance and development on a wide range of projects, including but not limited to the following: 

• Internal systems that manage finances, productivity, sales, and supply chain.
• Giving your website a fresh coat of stellar UI and making it mobile-friendly. 
• IoT integration for both internal and client-facing applications, like connecting mobile apps to household appliances or connecting internal systems to production controls. 
• Integrating streaming, social-sharing, geo-locating, and more onto mobile and web apps.
• Implementing e-Commerce functionality onto your web platform.
• Refining the UX/UI on all your digital platforms.

Our love for web, mobile, and design is in our name—we’re just a bunch of nerds who enjoy solving difficult problems. So, if you have a massive digital project on the horizon or just need a back-end boost on your current system, we’ll always have the right expert for the job. 

Building the Right Products for Your Business

Big Nerd Ranch isn’t just any DPD agency. With over two decades of experience in the tech industry and a long history of teaching, we believe in problem solving with a mentorship twist—that’s why, no matter the solution area, we also offer expert guidance and leadership for your team.  

Here are some of the areas we’ve found opportunities for growth and user engagement.

• Field Service – A purpose-built application for your employees that work primarily outside of your firewall. 
• Digital Brokerage – Solutions that provide your end-users access to their data or connecting them more efficiently to digital marketplaces. 
• Security and Regulatory – These solutions require a high level or regulatory compliance and are typically centered around the healthcare and FinTech markets, 
• Voice UI and Chat Bots – Provides a more efficient and streamlined connection to the consumer. 
• Multiexperience Development – Gives your users an intuitive and engaging experience across platforms. 

How Big Nerd Ranch Can Help Your Team

Our DPD process is what allows us to determine the right, solution-focused approach. Should you have a digital product challenge of your own, here’s what we can do for you and your team:

1. Depending on the project, we will first perform code and design audits—to deepen our understanding of your product goals and to determine the skills needed to achieve your end-goal. This will inform how we guide your team and assemble our own. 
2. If you are interested in having us mentor your team, we will also assess existing skill gaps and team dynamics to design the appropriate training roadmap for efficient workflow and continuous growth. 
3. We will then engage in the DPD process with a focus on design thinking to create a brilliant digital product that leaves your end-user satisfied and helps kick your revenue or productivity into high gear.
4. Using verified practices for workflow and continual engagement, we will leave your team with the refined toolset and electric enthusiasm needed to maintain and improve your shiny new digital product.

If this sounds like a good fit for your business goals, reach out today. Let’s see how we can jump into your next digital product—and rev up your team— together. 

Sources:

Web Essentials. The 7 Stages of Digital Product Development. https://www.web-essentials.co/blog/digital-product-development-stages.html

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Far too many “would-be” game-changing digital product ideas fail to get past the drawing board because a company lacks the proper resources and infrastructure to successfully execute their vision. Others die out somewhere along the way because the execution and followthrough simply wasn’t there. And still, others reach the finish line, though not with a bang but with a whimper. 

Digital product development isn’t something you want to just jump into without the proper support and expertise to ensure success. And it’s not something you can afford to get wrong. That’s why you need to partner with a digital product development firm that can help you create web and mobile solutions and successfully transform your large or small business vision into reality. 

Why You Need Digital Product Development Services

The digitalization of the modern world has changed how companies, consumers, and end-users do business and interact with each other. Whether it’s an app, a chatbot, or website, technology provides new ways to engage and deliver outcomes. As it becomes an even more integral facet of daily life, your company needs to have a project that delivers digital products and services that meet and exceed your end-users’ expectations and provide real solutions. With the innovation of consumer-facing apps, a digital experience is either the first and sometimes the only interaction a customer has with your brand. That experience needs to be as good or better than if they were interacting with a human representative. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a well-developed digital product design has the potential to completely change the way your company does business all while having an extremely positive impact on your bottom line. Your digital product can give you the opportunity to more easily engage with, and deliver more value to, your end-users. But to achieve those lofty goals, a digital product must not only be reliable and secure but it has to solve for a specific issue. 

Accomplishing all of that isn’t easy, which is why you’ll want a trustworthy partner on your side.  While each situation is different, there are three common reasons why a company might seek out the help of a digital product development firm:

1. Discovering business problems and solutions – Some companies require project management guidance for their digital product efforts. This can be solved by having a managing director with extensive experience to oversee market research. Experienced firms are capable of performing a full discovery to get to the root business problems and uncover novel solutions. This information is used to develop a better understanding about what skills or talent are required to build out a meaningful digital product. 
2. To partner with your team – A team made up of a senior engineer, UI/UX designer, and project strategists will lead and mentor your existing team. They’ll guide them through the process from start to finish and are responsible for delivering high-level code and amazingly intuitive designs. 
3. To fill in the gaps – Do you have engineers but have limited mobile or design talent? A firm can supply the right people to partner with your team and fill in the gaps. 

Benefits of Partnering with a Digital Product Development Firm

Now, it’s important to note that we don’t use the word “partner” lightly. Your digital product development firm should be much more than just a company you hire to do some work—they should be as invested in your project as you are.  

To that end, a digital product development firm can guide you through the process of developing a software development project, like a fully-functional mobile app or web app from ideation to product launch. Ideally, you’ll get a senior-level engineer, a UI/UX designer, a dedicated project strategist, and QA team to help manage the several stages of development. These experts guide the project through the entire journey, delivering benefits to each stage of the development process, including: 

Discovery and Consultation

Few companies realize how just important this stage is, but this is where you determine the viability of the idea.

 To do that, you must ask questions such as:

• Why are we building this product now? 
• What problems are we hoping to solve?
• Who will benefit most from this product?
• What is the competitive landscape and how do we build differentiation in from the start?

A worthwhile partner will look at your idea or existing infrastructure and seriously consider these questions before ever agreeing to build anything out. Their goal is to validate market demand to guarantee that you’re investing in the best idea possible. To accomplish this, they will surround you with a team of engineers, designers, and strategists to guide you through the collaborative discovery period, which includes: 

• Drawing board – Even if you already have a great idea, a good firm can help you think about it from all angles, break down organizational silos, highlight challenges, or brainstorm newer or better solutions. 
• Product Strategy – Return on investment is an important consideration that can’t be overlooked. To create positive ROI, a firm will build out a product charter that helps establish objectives and goals and makes sure that product strategy is aligned with the organizational strategy. This helps ensure that there is collective action and shared understanding across the entire organization. 
• Roadmapping – Once the research is done and the idea is set, the team can help sketch out the rough concept of the requisite baseline application functionalities for an MVP and MMP.  A solid roadmap can often shape or influence go-to-market strategies so understanding what that looks like can be vital to success.

Engineering Marvels

Once the discovery period is finished it’s time to take the information gathered and turn it into something brilliant. Some of the work you can expect: 

• Multichannel and multiexperince development. As your firm is developing your product they will approach it differently depending on where the app is going to be used the most. So, building an app that is to be used primarily on an iPad app is different than one that will work across devices. The same goes for a web app vs mobile.  A top-shelf DPD firm will have experience working across a wide variety of devices and understand how to create a seamless multiexperince solution for your user, or set you up with a single platform product designed to be scalable going forward. 

• Mentorship and guidance throughout the process. The major difference between a good development firm and a great one is the level of guidance and mentorship they provide throughout the project. A great firm will not just do the work you ask of them, but explain why and how as well. The end result of such an engagement is that your internal team is better prepared to carry on the work of maintenance and updates—meaning you save money in the long run. 

And then the firm you have selected begins the work. Here at Big Nerd Ranch, we often recommend working  in two-week sprints. Throughout the entire engagement, you should have constant insight into the work that’s being done, where you are in the project budget as well as access to quick answers around any questions or concerns that pop up. This method allows you to keep an eye on the progress, make important decisions all while allowing the firm to do the heavy lifting.

Design Expertise 

Every time a user interacts with an app, each touch-point represents an opportunity for brands to engage and impact the user. Naturally, UI and UX play a crucial part in this process. To create an app that fully captures a user’s attention, you must have a deep understanding of consumer psychology and behavioral patterns, UI/UX design, and digital product development. This means finding the perfect balance of:

• Price
• Usability
• Performance
• Quality
• Functionality
• Convenience 

A firm focuses on aligning a product’s design, experience, and interface with your goals and product strategy. Once the strategy is developed, the UI/UX team leader is responsible with guiding a team of designers and engineers through the following actions:

• Sketching and wireframing – At this point, the team determines how the digital product should look. This will act as the framework that everything else is built upon. By defining it, an agency is better able to create cohesion between the brand and the product. 
• Design – A digital product development firm understands how to best balance product visual design, user experience, and user interface to create a positive experience at every touch-point. 
• Prototyping – Once the design is fleshed out, the team can start to build out a prototype, which includes some of the basic features and designs. This prototype can then be user tested by both the team and target customers to gain actionable insights and discover areas of improvement. 
• Agile implementation – An agency is capable of building out the digital product using an agile approach in one or several languages. This helps ensure that you avoid waterfall projects and that the product is able to evolve throughout the process as needed. 

Launching the Digital Product 

Once the product is developed, the work doesn’t stop there. Bugs or unplanned use-cases are an inevitability with most any product launch; the first version is never a complete success. 

An agency can help you conduct small market acceptance tests to get user feedback and find places for improvement. After that’s been done, there may be some modifications that need to occur. An agency can help you refine the product once users have their hands on it.    

It’s here that you’ll begin to reap the rewards if you invested in a great digital product firm. 

Great design and development means a product that will last longer aesthetically and cleaner and more sustainable code. All that adds up to a product that will stand the test of time and will require much less investment in the future. 

From there, it’s time for large-scale launches to the mass market. For firms, this provides another opportunity to continue developing and optimizing the product. By conducting post-launch reviews, the team can assess the financials and customer feedback to determine strengths and weaknesses. After that, there’s still months of post-launch support and maintenance that must be conducted. 

Big Nerd Ranch: The Nerds You Can Count On

Do you have a digital product that needs to be built best in class? If so, Big Nerd Ranch is for you. 

We are a digital product development agency that focuses on partnering with brands—both big and small—to turn concepts into fully designed digital products. 

Just give us the project requirements, and we’ll ensure that it fits your budget, meets your deadlines, and hits your goals. Whether you need someone to fill in the gaps, lead your team, or provide guidance along your journey, when you work with Big Nerd Ranch, you’re teamed up with premier senior engineers capable of delivering high-quality design and code for any digital product. 

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Whether you lead a startup with an ambitious app idea, or a booming business with an internal application that needs an update, investing in digital product development can give you the tools you need to give your end-users the experience they want and need. 

But, you might be asking yourself, what exactly is digital product development, anyhow?

In a nutshell, digital product development, or DPD as the Nerds call it, is the art of taking a brilliant idea or existing applications and turning it into a stunning digital product that surprises and delights your end-users and provides your business with real and profitable outcomes. 

Now, we’d love to chat with you and tell you all the amazing benefits of DPD. But, if you’d like a primer before jumping in, we’ve got you covered there as well. 

The Process of Digital Product Development

At heart, Digital Product Development is about building an authentically useful application—be it web or mobile—that will serve your end users and provide the most value for your company. It’s work that is best entered into with purpose and with the right digital product agency on your side—a team that includes engineers, designers, and project strategists all working towards the same goal. 

Once you’ve gotten your project ready to go and your team in place, what happens next? While each and every digital product will have a unique through-line, here are some of the common elements each project should have.  

• Discovering the Known and Unknown – DPD begins with a discovery of your unique business needs, which includes understanding active stakeholders, your target market, and any flaws in your current system. If needed, this process can include a developer and designer taking a look at your existing product and setting the current state as much as the anticipated destination. It’s here that the beginnings of your experience-driven transformation begins in earnest. 
• Getting the Work Done – This is where the fun really begins and your DPD firm begins the meat of the project. Using Agile methodology, the engineers and designers begin building out the work that came from the discovery period. Throughout the engagement, your project strategist will be in constant communication—sharing updates, asking and answering questions, and generally keeping the project on track on both the client and firm side. 
• Guidance and Mentorship – Throughout the project, your DPD team should do more than just clock in and clock out. A true partner can provide guidance throughout the project meaning that your product and your team are better at the end of the engagement than the beginning.  

Throughout the entire project, your chosen firm should have two main goals in mind—delivering the best experience possible for your end-users and delivering real outcomes for your business. And, seeing as you probably picked up on that buzzword we used a bit earlier, let’s take a look at what exactly experience-driven transformation is. 

What is Experience-Driven Transformation?

In essence, it’s about finding the right and best solution for your end-users and discovering the disconnects in your business. The logic here is that if we start with an experience-based solution that is focused first and foremost on the user, the rest will take care of itself. Now, it’s never as simple as that, so let’s take a look at the details of the experience-driven transformation. 

Experience-driven transformation starts by understanding people in context. In other words, digging deep into the motivations of your end-users and what they need but aren’t getting from their current experience. It’s through this process that a clearer picture of the end-user is brought to light—information that is then used once the work actually begins.  

Now, the problem with experience-driven transformation is that it’s a bit like pour-over coffee—everyone is talking about it but people rarely know how to do it correctly. That’s why smart business leaders know to turn to the experts. 

How the Nerds Use Experience-Driven Transformation for DPD

Because it champions the end-user, a focus on experience seeps into every step of a digital product’s development. As a result, your partner agency and your team never lose sight of your target market in the process. 

At the Ranch, that plays out in the following: 

• We spend the time upfront getting to know you, your business, and your end-users. It’s through this discovery process that we’ll uncover the issues that you know about and perhaps some that you don’t. This is the stage where we chart our destination and trace a path on our map.
• When it’s time to get to work, we bring the whole Ranch. That means that you’ll get a senior engineer, a UI/UX designer, and a dedicated project strategist. Using the mutually decided upon a roadmap, your BNR team designs and develops your application with your end-users’ needs firmly in mind.
• Throughout the entire process, our team is providing guidance to yours. This is more than just technical details or rapid prototypes (though, you will get that as well!). Our team will help you navigate obstacles in the process and ensure that the app you get not only works for your end-users but also makes the most sense for your business.  

With a focus on experience, our design, engineering, and project strategist teams can create an optimal product for your end-user.

So is a Digital Product Development Firm the Right Fit for Me? 

Digital product development done right can be an investment—both in time and money. So how do you know if you should get involved with a firm? We’re so glad you asked! 

Some common scenarios for companies could be: 

• You have an idea for an amazing application, but lack the team or don’t know what sort of work or skill set it requires. 
• You have an idea and a team but they lack the pertinent Android, iOS, web, or design skillset.
• You’ve got an app that’s, well…it’s fine…and you could use some help getting your ratings up and just generally building out a better experience. 

The types of solutions you might be looking to implement could be:

• Field Service – A purpose-built application for your employees that work primarily outside of your firewall. 
• Digital Brokerage – Solutions that provide your end-users access to their data or connecting them more efficiently to digital marketplaces. 
• Security and Regulatory – These solutions require a high level or regulatory compliance and are typically centered around the healthcare and FinTech markets, 
• Voice UI and Chat Bots – Provides a more efficient and streamlined connection to the consumer. 
• Multiexperience Development – Gives your users an intuitive and engaging experience across platforms. 

From developing a brand new digital product to simply improving an existing one, a digital product development firm can power up your business by modernizing your digital presence, streamlining your workflow, and energizing your team.

The best ones, like Big Nerd Ranch, won’t stop there. They will also teach your team how to continuously improve upon these products and systems—even after the experts have left the building.

Let Big Nerd Ranch Be Your Product Development Partner

Big Nerd Ranch is the digital product development firm with the design and engineering experience to take on any problem—and the nerdiness to enjoy the entire process.

Not only do we have over twenty years of experience in the tech and problem-solving world, but we literally wrote the book on web and mobile development (no, seriously, we’ve written several of the books). 

Our end goal? 

To leave our clients with invigorated teams and beautiful digital products.

Big Nerd Ranch wants to become your digital product partner—we can take all of the market research, prototyping, and usability testing out of your hands so you can focus on what you do best—running a thriving business. We can also mentor your existing team to produce better products, faster. Check out our services or set up a call to learn more about what our nerds can do for your next project.

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