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How product designers can study complex products
Studying a complex product in an unfamiliar domain
I love to design complex products. It’s exciting and challenging for me to make product design for complex products with an unfamiliar domain.
Initially, I designed simple products, and the first time I worked on a complex system, I had a problem because nobody explained the product and domain well to me. I didn’t realize the importance of studying the product and the domain, leading me to deliver poor design.
My experience designing a complex product inspired me to develop a clear guideline on how to study complex products and domains.
This guide will help designers who working on complex products for the first time and lead designers who want to build an onboarding process for the new joiners.
What are complex products?
A complex product is a product with many features, functions, flows, and many possible configurations. Usually, these are B2B apps that solve problems in a domain unfamiliar to most people. Some examples are Blender, Houdini, Docker, and Pycharm.
When do you need to study a new domain?
When you join a new company, move on to another product within the same company, or take on a new project, you’ll need to study and understand the domain, the product, and the users to deliver a good design.
What is an unfamiliar domain?
If you design a delivery app, the domain is deliveries. If you design an e-commerce app for the fashion industry, the domain is fashion. Both are easy to understand since most of us are familiar with these topics.
An unfamiliar domain is a field in which you have no background, for instance, Data analysis, Agriculture, wood industry. For that reason, you will have to learn much about the domain before you start to design to deliver the right solution to the user.
