What is New Product Acceleration?

New Product Acceleration sounds like something connected to a productivity or lifestyle cult. It’s actually an approach we’ve developed to help clients quickly bring their ideas to life and reduce the time it takes to get new products to market. It’s based on lessons learned from years spent working with companies from a wide range of industries, who all faced similar challenges when it came to product design. Specifically, it took too long, cost too much, and involved too much risk.

Who is New Product Acceleration for?

If you’re involved with Digital Product or Service Design, and identify with these scenarios, then you’d likely benefit from New Product Acceleration:

We need to scale up our idea into a full product design as quickly as possible
We have some initial sketches or features but need help designing the final product
We’ve got great ideas for a concept but we are not sure where to start
We have a product team that always miss product deadlines and projects are not moving as fast as the business needs

How does New Product Acceleration work?

In a nutshell, it’s a simple 3 step process that can be applied across any industry:

1. Define a clear vision for the product

This is about getting everyone on the same page from the get go, meaning fewer misunderstandings later on. It involves identifying your target users, agreeing how your product will meet their needs, and deciding how success will be measured. You can then move on to the fun stuff – generating concept ideas about features, functionality, look & feel.

2. Bring your ideas to life & test with real users

This is all about setting up rapid feedback cycles. Prototypes let you test your ideas as often as you need to and address feedback quickly. So testing suddenly becomes a regular part of your project, not a tense cliffhanger event that happens at the end. No need to second guess how people ‘might react’ or what they ‘might do’. Build a prototype, let them use it, then see and hear the reaction for yourself.

3. Evolve into a complete design based on user feedback

Creating high fidelity designs based on concepts that have already been validated takes the stress out of the design process. Designers can do what they do best, working to create the best possible user interface that showcases your product, without worrying about whether users will like it or not.

What are the benefits of New Product Acceleration?

We’ve hopefully spelled these out, but here’s a trusty list:

Launch new products faster in busy markets.
Take the risk out of product launches – validate ideas first!
Reduce rework and wasted time, ultimately saving money.
Increase the chances of your product resonating with target users.
Increase revenue by getting your new product to market quicker.
Increase the likelihood of your product being and remaining relevant in a fast-moving digital climate.

Want to find out more?

If you identified with anything in this article and want to find out more, get in touch.

Don’t worry, we don’t do sales calls. Instead, arrange an informal chat with one of our Consultants about your business challenges and how we might be able to help.

We have a wealth of experience and expertise in all aspects of Digital Product and Service Design, including New Product Acceleration.