A story and tips about how we design a digital product at Darwin Analytics (SAAS startup). Talk at the Tech Startup Day in Brussels.

1. Darwin Analytics
Evolve faster.

2. Darwin Analytics is a young
SAAS startup.

3. We provide a tool, to
prove & improve your
content marketing.

4. Designing
a digital product.

5. Design is not
“making it pretty”.

6. Design is how it works,
what it looks like
& what it feels like.
(Steve Jobs said that)

7. Design is a
team effort.

9. Involve the whole team in your
brainstorms — to get valuable
insights from all sides.

11. To flex our brainstorm muscles,
and to avoid obvious ideas,
we do something silly
— like picturing our product for
fictional characters.

13. Discuss what’s important and
what’s not, to align goals and
priorities.

14. Design is
not perfect.

15. It’s hard to show people
unfinished, ugly things.
Do it anyway. Get early
feedback, on everything.

17. Focus, by writing a
feature spec.

20. Write personas for your
feature spec, based on
real people to build
valuable features.

21. Describe what
the feature will do.

22. Describe what
the feature will not do
(and prevent feature creep!)

23. Make ugly mockups.
Show them to everyone.
Get early feedback.

24. Measure — set your
expectations and measure
the outcome to learn more.

25. Ship it and get more
feedback.

27. This is Big Bertha. She’s a huge
excel sheet, tracking every mistake.
And she won’t forget!
She keeps you from getting used to
the imperfections in your product.

28. Design involves
your clients.

30. Get a CAB (customer advisory
board) to get valuable
feedback and ideas.

32. Do user tests, card sorting,
interviews, ... To get a better
understanding of your client.

33. It’s okay to feel ashamed. We
learned so much out of these
sessions...

34. Having a cab is wonderful.
Feedback.
Ideas.
Motivation!

36. Thank them whenever you
can, with whatever you have.
Even if it’s just pizza.

37. Iterate as much as you can.
You will get better at it, and
find your own way.

38. Thank you
@darwinanalytics
@choisissez