Multisensory Product Design Guide: How Does It Draw Customers?

Last Updated on September 21, 2022 by DesignerPeople

Did you know businesses that embrace designs generate over 32% higher revenue and 56% higher shareholder returns in a year?

According to Statista, 73% of companies in the world prefer to invest in their product designs over other strategies to make their brand stand out in any competitive market.

Sure, you may have spent many nights perfecting the quality of your product. Still, if you cannot demonstrate the authentic value of your product through appealing product design, there is no way your product will do well in any market.

The concept of your product design should be user-centred, innovative and practical for your target audiences.

Starting from your business requirements to the technical aspect of your product design. Plenty of well-structured and optimised strategies go into designing your product.

And mind it.

You cannot go wrong with it, as your product design represents the true value of your product and the brand in general.

You cannot go wrong with it, as your product design represents the true value of your product and the brand in general.

So, there’s a lot at stake here.

Precisely why, we have curated this comprehensive guide that will equip you with all the knowledge and resources you need to create a stellar multisensory product design for your upcoming launch.

Let’s get started with designing your product, shall we?

What is Product Design? Why is it important?

Product design is a process where you create, develop and provide a solution for your target consumers regarding a specific market need. It is about blending the user’s needs with your business goals that make your brand successful.

Most product designs are usually built on a popular framework called Design Thinking, wherein the approach is entirely user-centric and considers a business’s psychological aspects and technological possibilities.

The importance of excellent product design is inexplicable with the advancement of technology and the markets. Creating an effective outcome for your product is all about building successful consumer experiences, which is why you need to invest in a good Product packaging design.

When your product design is appealing and persuasive, you can expect your consumers to choose your brand over the others. If the experience is positive, they are more likely to even recommend your products to their friends and family, resulting in more sales and revenue for your business.

Creative Product Design Process for a Successful Product

As we said, a successful product design should be fully user-centric with a multidisciplinary approach. The goal is to create an outstanding product experience through designs that streamline your marketing efforts.

You must deliver the best possible solution to your users for specific problems through your product design – The ultimate rule you must follow to ace your upcoming product design.

Hence, there are multiple steps that product designers follow to bring their vision into reality. Let’s quickly walk through the process together.

• Outline the Product Vision and Strategy

One of the essential phases of your product design is understanding and outlining your product value, vision and strategy.

The vision and strategy of your product will set the direction and guide the team members towards the final result. It also helps you filter out the aspects you do not want to add to your product design. If your vision and strategy aren’t clear, you will not be able to bring out the most authentic essence of your product.

Once you have your product vision sorted, you need to analyse your product design strategy – The route you must follow to reach your target consumers effectively.

Start with determining your product’s value proposition, which will help you map the aspects that must be highlighted in your product design.

Next, define the success criteria of your product, as this will align your product design with your business goals. Refer to the common KPIs such as expected number of sales per month, target customer demographics and others for this step.

• Product Analysis

After defining the product vision and strategy, proceed with the product research wherein you analyse your target users and market. This will save you tons of money and effort down the road as you get your strategies backed up by solid research.

Good market research is essential for designing a great user experience. This helps you understand what the market and your target users need and how you can leverage it in your product design. You can gather insights from third-party tools, user interviews, online surveys, competitive searches, etc.

• User Research

The next step is to conduct robust user research. Draw insights on what your target users think or need from your product.

Start segmenting your user base into different buyer personas based on specific contexts.

The goal is to step in their shoes and analyse different aspects in a profound manner that can benefit them.

This will make your product design strategy more aligned and precise to your target users, resulting in a highly converting product design for your brand.

• Ideation

This is the step when you need to brainstorm the most creative ideas that address your project goals enlisted in the steps above. Analyse the user journey, create creative scenarios to demonstrate your product story in your product design, especially user stories and plan the structure.

This way, you can have a complete flowchart of how your product design will look and feel to your target users. Through sketching or wireframing, you can draw your vision onto the paper and validate the ideas with the other team members for feedback.

• Design

Now that you clearly understand what you want to build, it’s time to get into the hefty designing process finally. This can ideally take anywhere from hours to even days unless you finally hit the right balance and implement all the concepts. Your prototype should ideally be a rough sketch of the look and function of your real product.

Proceed with prototyping, as this will help you build the initial idea of your design and follow with reviewing and refining the copy. Consider various feedback offered throughout the process and always keep the target users on the highest priority.

• Validation And Testing

This crucial step ensures that the design concept works as intended and planned. Simply validating and testing your design through multiple steps can bring incredible and unexpected insights that may further optimise your design.

You can choose to test with your product team and even a few sets of users that will bring you valuable advice on your product design. Filter and implement only the necessary advice on your final product design.

• Activities After Launch

Building an effective product design is a process that continues for as long as the product is in use. Hence, once the product is launched, it’s time to analyse the user interaction with the product.

Consider tracking different metrics using third-party tools and analysing them. This can help you cover many expected behaviours that may be a point of improvisation in your product design.

Proceed with consistent A/B testing to test out different versions of your product design. Keep tracking the product performance regularly to check whether it meets customer satisfaction and demands accurately.

Type of Product Design by Different Industries

Product design can never have a one size fits all approach. The requirements and guidelines for product designs vary across different industries. Here is a quick discussion about product designs of some of the most common industries out there for your reference.

• Food Product Design

The key to an effective food product design is to translate consumer wishes into product properties based on the process of Quality Function Deployment.

From the chemical and physical changes during food processing and storage to its environmental impact. You need to cover multiple aspects of your food product in the design that elaborate on the product stability, quality, sustainability, processing and its life cycle. The goal is to be transparent and valuable to your users.

Tip: Ensure that you have a neat and tidy label with all the properties and instructions about the food product in a readable font. You can also include elements related to sustainability, food wastage, etc., that will make your brand more valuable and appealing to your target consumers.

• Dairy Product Design

The dairy industry is one of the most nutritional industries in the world. For dairy product design, you need to hit the right balance between the composition, process and structural properties at various molecular, microscopic and macroscopic scales.

Mixtures of all the components such as protein, fat, water, salts, carbohydrates, and interactions between water-casein, hydrophobic interactions, and others are just a few elements you must add to your dairy product design.

An ideal way to proceed is to visualise the dairy products as food products with a multiscale structure wherein you address the macroscopic, molecular and microscopic properties.

• FMCG Product Design

Fast Moving Consumer Goods or FMCG are brands that have products with shorter shelf lives. You must follow product authentication to protect the product and be clear with the facts.

Next, you need to focus more on the brand value proposition for FMCG product designs. To achieve this, have an open framework-based brand value protection solution integrated with different technologies and tools. This way, your product design will be relatable, trustworthy and reliable to your target consumers, making a long-lasting and holistic brand value.

• Cosmetics Product Design

One of the biggest and fastest growing industries in the past few years has to be the cosmetics and beauty industry.

With the combined exposure of social media spreading the word about brands and makeup trends, you need to have a unique strategy to stand out.

To break through the beauty industry, you must focus on creating an innovative, aesthetically pleasing, fresh product design for your consumers. Brainstorm effective design ideas that will disrupt the beauty industry in the upcoming years.

Tip: Focus on the challenges of common makeup consumers, such as long hours of getting ready to bring quick fixes with your product. Something portable and easy to clean is also a unique factor that can make your cosmetic product design stand out. 

Conclusion

It is no longer a secret that good product design helps your business grow exponentially. According to a study, 50% of companies reported a surge of loyal customers after focusing more on their product designing strategy. 

Following a well-structured product design process ensures that your time, efforts, and revenue are spent in the right direction. Be strategic with your research, as this creates the foundation of your product design. It clarifies the importance of each step and its deliverables, reducing the risk of common mistakes in product design.

Once the process is completed, follow DesignerPeople learning cycle and analyse even the minor aspects of your product design. This will allow you to improve your product design upon a solid base already defined, resulting in a lower risk of compromising on the experience of the consumers.

To guarantee the effectiveness of this solid approach, continually improve the design with thorough testing over time and integrate the latest tools and technologies to be updated with the changing trends of the market.

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Author: Megha Malik

As a passionate entrepreneur and creative brand consultant with experience of 14 years in digital, branding and packaging industry, it is my honest effort to put my experiences and knowledge of industry towards readers. A chartered accountant by degree but a marketing personality in blood has motivated her to take in designing industry as a career. With her fun-loving personality and sharp branding skills, she is a great motivational speaker on her YouTube channel, an active member in various business channels offline as well as online. Do connect me personally via my LinkedIn and I love to share my expertise with you.