Welcome to edition one of Ask MetaLab Anything! We’re pulling back the curtain and sharing what we’ve learned after shipping nearly 200 products. Have a question of your own? Send it to answersplz@metalab.co.  

First of all, we love this question—because the best products are often shaped by strong research, not just guesswork. The short answer is that it’s something in between being well-defined and fluid. 

The longer answer is that it’s about choosing the right research methods to solve the problem at hand, then synthesizing the research in a collaborative way to ensure the right decisions are made for the product and end user. 

Here’s how we connect the dots between research and design at MetaLab.

Step 1: Align research methods with project goals

First off, before you jump into doing a specific research activity, make sure it’s the right one. Solid communication with your clients and stakeholders will ensure your research answers the right questions versus wasting time just running through a gamut of research methods that are just ticking off a checklist of things to do on each project.

Step 2: Synthesize the research findings and collaborate on next steps

Research synthesis is where things get more fluid and organic. There isn’t one single synthesis method that works in every instance. 

For the most part, we use research to contextualize the customer journey and balance existing business needs with customer goals. Research also helps us prioritize those needs, define feature sets, and meet the client’s business goals. Even great research doesn’t answer every possible question though, so it’s always a mix of organic idea-generation and research insights.

No matter what kind of synthesis we do, we’ve found that the more collaboration the better—between our design team and with the client. Here are some research synthesis activities we love to run with client stakeholders and designers.

a. Aligning the larger team

Running workshops that include the project’s stakeholders is a great way to socialize research and get alignment with the entire team. It’s also a great time to get stakeholder buy-in on the design directions you’re going to explore and clearly define the project focus. 

An example of this is customer journey mapping, where you define a specific customer path and define their pain-points and needs along the way. 

b. Ideating with the larger team

We also like to run collaborative workshops with the larger team to quickly iterate and generate ideas. This helps the client feel like their ideas are heard and ensures the research and design team have a good opportunity to cross-pollinate important research findings.

A fun example of this is the crazy 8s method. To try this one out, give each member of your design team a sheet of paper with 8 empty squares. Then, everyone gets 60 seconds per square to sketch out an interface design. The idea is for it to be quick and simple, hence the time limit (and why it’s crazy).

Of course,  you won’t land on the perfect UI design during crazy 8s (and uh, you probably shouldn’t). But it’s a great way to start putting your research to work without getting stuck in the details or falling victim to decision paralysis. 

Step 3: Concept testing with users

After we’ve synthesized our research, we move into concept testing. This is where we test an initial prototype with real, potential users. To do this, we take our initial ideas and integrate them into 2-4 concepts (prototypes) that push us in the most promising directions. Then, we iterate based on user feedback. 

The best products aren’t instantly ready to go—real user feedback helps us define what works best.

This also helps the client see that their ideas were taken seriously, allows for creative problem solving early on, and gives fair consideration to all potential design solutions. It also helps us identify ideas that might not land well with customers, and polishes our early feature permutations.

Step 4: Finally, design! 

Only after research helps align on the project focus, generate an array of solutions, and tests these early concepts do we launch into a true visual design phase. This always looks a bit different depending on the project, but we typically work in sprints and value open communication throughout the process. 

Hope this helps in your design adventures! We’re always down to share more so send your own question for AMA to answersplz@metalab.co. 

Now that you have a strategy and your differentiators in place, it’s time to draft the entire product experience into a single document. This is a key step in the product lifecycle called product definition. 

One of the key deliverables that comes out of the product definition is the product blueprint. Your product blueprint allows you to visualize the entire product service on one page. This helps manage its complexity, including the actions and touchpoints of all the actors, key features, technical dependencies, and operational requirements.

Behind the scenes, there are several key assets that power this product blueprint: 

This view helps to ensure your team is aligned on the critical pieces of success.

That being said, it’s easy to go overboard with product blueprints, so don’t boil the ocean! Focus on the few critical features and components that will make a big impact for your customers.

Remember to trust in yourself and the research that has been done. Your customers don't always know what the right solution is for their wants and needs. That's why it's your job to consider their needs in the context of your product's potential and develop an appropriate blueprint that can scale in the future.

We saw earlier that you’re going to be spending the majority of your time in the product definition/design, testing, and build phases, which means you need a talented team of skilled makers. 

This may seem obvious, but when building the right team with the right chemistry within your budget, there are a lot of factors to consider. How long will it take for the team to gel? Do you stick with who you have? When should you contract vs. hire?

Too often, we see companies spend big budgets hiring a ton of great developers and designers. They throw them onto a project expecting the product will be delivered fast only to find the team isn’t hitting their milestones. Why? 

Teams typically struggle to get going immediately because of differing working styles, personalities, mindsets, and honestly… sometimes ego. That’s why you shouldn’t focus on individual hires but on the team as a whole.

If you have time, budget, and desire to invest in the future culture of your company, you have to invest time to build the team dynamics. We find that it typically takes 4-5 sprints for a team to find its groove — approximately four months, or more.

If you are an early stage startup, and don’t have a lot of time (six months or less), but still want to get a product out there quickly, we recommend hiring a pre-built team of skilled makers who have launched several products together. 

The key takeaway is to not waste all of your time and money hiring. Building a successful team takes time and cycles of members working together to hit their stride. When necessary, augment with experts to help your team grow, add a skill, or just simply to outsource a function. It ultimately comes down to how you want to allocate your resources.

Don’t reinvent the wheel… and don’t build everything from scratch! Accelerators are existing tools and technologies you can leverage or integrate into your product.

Some of the tools that we use to help accelerate the design process to create and test out designs, concepts, and prototypes with users include Figma, Framer.io, and even Typeform.

For development, we use many different tools and platforms on our projects to help accelerate the product development lifecycle and build products that can scale to meet customer demand.  Several of the most popular and impactful integrations and platforms used by our teams include:

AI is everywhere these days for a reason. It’s powering brand new ways to get work done and being incorporated into almost every tool we already use to make workflows easier. From content creation to scheduling, we are seeing tools popping up for everything. Here are a few that can help accelerate product development:

There are important considerations to keep in mind when using any AI tool in a responsible way. Sensitivity of data uploaded into any of these systems and the originality of the content is a big one.

Policies and regulation with AI are still being figured out, so it’s wise to exercise caution when setting guidelines for your product teams. Leverage these tools as inspiration or starting points for copy, as pieces of a larger composite for images, or to get as specific as possible with prompts in order to generate something unique.

Product development succeeds when teams develop a culture of continuous learning. This is fueled by rigorous testing, analytics, and strategic iteration during key phases of the product lifecycle.

In the discovery phase, we immerse ourselves in understanding our potential early adopters' needs and motivations (see #validators). Alongside this, we work with clients to think through solid analytics strategies. This step instills a data-centric culture from the start, setting the stage for ongoing learning and adaptation. 

By aligning qualitative user insights with a framework for quantitative data capture, we ensure the product strategy we craft will continually evolve to meet user needs.

As we pivot to the alpha and beta stages, the emphasis turns to iterative improvement. We engage early adopters in testing programs. Their first-hand experiences provides invaluable feedback to detect bugs and potential enhancements. 

This feedback, bolstered by real-time analytics data, drives our evidence-based refinement process, prepping the product to be market-fit.

By investing in this cycle of continuous learning — persistent testing, data-informed analytics, and strategic iteration — we embrace a user-centric ethos in product development. This equips our clients to not just navigate, but also thrive.

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When Ravi Mehta (former CPO at Tinder/Product Director at Facebook) was working on the first iteration of his personalized coaching product, he validated it quickly with a paid offering he pieced together with a number of low-code tools.

Leveraging learnings from a community of early adopters, he partnered with MetaLab to help enhance, refine, and evolve the product into the Outpace app.

Outpace launched earlier this year. It provides guided programs for personalized career development designed to level up with the support of a one-on-one AI coach.

We are in a post-WeWork/Theranos era of founders promising growth without showing any profit. You need to ask yourself "What do we need to show investors?" Users are great, but how is this actually going to make money?

You have to show real numbers and an actionable monetization strategy. This means outlining your marketing and growth strategies — and the mechanisms that will bring in not only revenue but profit.

Revenue strategies can vary greatly, but the following are a few of the most common buckets of digital product monetization mechanisms:

There are many ways to monetize a product, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. The right way is the one that will resonate with your audience, so feel free to experiment and be flexible when choosing a strategy.

We’ve been supporting Modular with the release of their new AI platform and product offerings. Early in our engagement, they asked us to design a marketing site to help them grow and segment their sales pipeline. This allowed them better understand, and target, existing and potential users. We took those early learnings to ensure the product landed with their audience and supported their revenue targets.

The product lifecycle doesn’t end with a launch, it goes far beyond. Once you begin to get a better understanding of your customers and their purchase behaviours, it’s vital to adapt, being flexible with pricing, monetization strategies, and identifying unexpected revenue drivers. 

For example, you may see that your primary offering for your SaaS tool is slowly gaining traction, but over and over customers are requesting access to an API for a specific data flow. You may be sitting on a large additional untapped revenue stream and there could be more. Meet your customers where they are!

It helps to consult the people who’ve been there before. There are a million people on LinkedIn who are trying to sell you a service or product that you may not need. There are critical steps that could cost you if you miss them. There are shortcuts you may not even know exist. Trusted advisors can help you navigate this and more. There is just no substitute for experience.

Find seasoned product leaders, designers, or engineers who have launched products in the past and will be familiar with the nitty-gritty details. They will have the perspective to help you find the forest through the trees. You want people on your side who can make sure you are spending your time, efforts, and money on the right things.

These are the Product Survival Kit items that we recommend to anyone who is creating and launching a product in today's climate. It's a mix of techniques, processes, people, actions and tools that we've seen provide success to many of our clients, colleagues and partners out there. But remember — each product is different, so find the mix that worst best for you. 

It may seem daunting but it is possible to successfully bring your idea or product concept to life today.  This may even be the right moment to go after it. Companies who launch useful and impactful products during economic downturns have a history of surviving and thriving. The next one could be you.