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Quality during Design
Quality during Design is a production of Deeney Enterprises, LLC. It is a podcast for product designers, engineers, and anyone else who cares about creating high-quality products. In each episode, we explore the principles of quality design, from user-centered thinking to iterative development. We introduce frameworks to make better design decisions and reduce costly re-designs. We explore ways to co-work with cross-functional teams. We also talk to experts in the field about their experiences and insights.
Join host Dianna Deeney in using quality thinking throughout the design process to create products others love, for less. Whether you're a seasoned designer or just starting out, looking to improve your existing designs or start from scratch, Quality during Design is the podcast for you.
Quality during Design
Map the User Journey: Design for Seamless Experiences
This episode explores the critical importance of evaluating the customer's use process during concept development.
Rather than focusing solely on what your product does, understanding how users will interact with it creates opportunities to design more intuitive, enjoyable experiences. By mapping out the steps users take from beginning to end using process flowcharts, development teams gain clarity on inputs, outputs, and the journey between them.
Quality engineers have long used flowchart analysis tools to improve manufacturing processes, and these same techniques provide tremendous value in product design.
Whether you need to simplify complex steps, compare competitor approaches, or identify critical-to-quality elements, these analytical methods help prioritize design decisions based on what truly matters to users.
The goal is creating products that feel intuitive and natural, preventing those awkward validation testing moments when engineers want to shout, "You're doing it wrong!" When we evaluate the use process early, we develop products others love while minimizing costly redesigns and user frustration.
Subscribe to Quality During Design and sign up for our newsletter at newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com to learn more about applying quality thinking to your product development process. Your users will thank you for it!
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ABOUT DIANNA
Dianna Deeney is a quality advocate for product development with over 25 years of experience in manufacturing. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, which helps organizations and people improve engineering design.
Welcome to the Quality During Design podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm your host, Diana Dini. I love watching videos online about how things are made. I think it's probably why I became an engineer. The other types of videos that I enjoy is watching people interacting with products that are designed Clever products. I really like the videos that are about.
Speaker 1:I was today years old when I learned this, and it usually has to do with some sort of product that we're using every day that has a design feature that people just didn't know about or didn't realize that they could use. Simple things like the ice cube trays with the little square in the middle. That's, you pour the water on the square and it fills all the cubes in the same amount, instead of swishing your ice cube tray from one side to the other underneath the spigot. Or for our automobiles, when we take the cap off of our gas tank to fill it up, what do you do with the cap? Some of us have a little plastic string or something that it hangs from, but other models actually have a little holder that's built inside the cover. You can latch it right on there and it holds it for you as you're filling your gas tank. Or sneakers that extra little spot for laces on the top isn't meant for lacing. It's meant to help you tie your shoe. I love these videos because there's a lot of thought and effort and consideration that went into those designs, but people didn't really realize how to use it or how to best use it to maximize their experience. And I wonder if the engineers that designed these products to be used in this way find these videos and what do they think about it. And, on the other hand, what's it like when you've engineered something and your users aren't doing it right? On the other hand, what's it like when you've engineered something and your users aren't doing it right, Not the way that you designed it anyway, We've been talking a lot about concept development, how it's a time during a product development process that's early in the process and a time that we can use with our team to develop the concepts themselves, and a time that we can use with our team to develop the concepts themselves.
Speaker 1:What are the benefits that we want to target? What are some of the potential symptoms that we want to avoid? And these are things that we can use not only to set the direction for the concept, but also to help us develop design inputs that are directly related to customer experiences. Well, today I want to talk about the customer's use process. Yes, even at concept development, when we don't have things mapped out, if we have a beginning and an end and a vague concept, we can evaluate the use process. Let's talk more about that after this brief introduction.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to Quality During Design, the place to use quality thinking to create products others love for less. I'm your host, Diana Deeney. I'm a senior level quality professional and engineer with over 20 years of experience in manufacturing and design. I consult with businesses and coach individuals and how to apply quality during design to their processes. Listen in and then join us. Visit qualityduringdesigncom.
Speaker 1:We're talking about evaluating the use process during concept development to better develop our concepts and our design inputs. At concept development, we have some user needs. We're better understanding our customers. We should have a little bit of an understanding about them. Through Concept Development, we'll probably get a clear picture. Take steps to get from where they start to where they finish, from input to output, and each step can be an opportunity for our design choices.
Speaker 1:Since we're in concept development, we're not focusing on what the product itself does. We're focusing on the way our users interact with the concept product. Our goal is to make it easy and enjoyable for our customers to use while still achieving the desired goal and outcome, and we want to reduce or eliminate the mistakes that they can make. To examine the use process, we're going to use a process flow chart. That's, that chart with ovals, squares and diamonds that are connected in a flow. This is a very useful exercise for a cross-functional team and concept development because of a couple of things. For one, we're getting clarity on our inputs and our outputs, Even if it's four or five steps. You're also defining a clear beginning and a clear end. If you've already worked out some benefits and symptoms, you have clarity on the end of where it is you want your customers to be after they've used your product.
Speaker 1:A flowchart will also help us analyze the inputs. Help us analyze the inputs At the input. This is where we can consider our assumptions and understanding of the use environment and our customers. Our customers also approach our product with their own assumptions and expectations. By examining the input from the system's viewpoint, we evaluate what we know about our customers and how they'll use our product.
Speaker 1:Another way that a flowchart provides value during concept development is that we're better understanding at least the basic steps that we're going to be asking our users to take with our product to achieve their goal. This allows us to better think about the user experience of whatever it is that we're developing. This is also going to help us prioritize things, because some use process steps are more important than others. We prioritize use steps that are critical to quality or add value. By breaking out our customers' experiences and examining what is important to them and their successful use of our product, we can more easily prioritize design decisions. I can tell you from my experience as a quality engineer on the manufacturing floor that process flowcharts are a really useful thing to be able to use are a really useful thing to be able to use. Quality engineers have a lot of different ways to evaluate process flowcharts depending on the goals that they have, and we can apply these same tools to the use process for design to better prioritize and understand the use process of whatever it is we're developing.
Speaker 1:If the process steps are confusing, then we may need to create another flowchart with a narrower scope. We can break out the confusing steps and do a sublevel process flowchart and do what you need to do with your team to better understand your use process. I call this an alignment flowchart. If we have competitor product with elements we like or don't like, we use a comparison analysis. This helps us decide what's important to implement. We may want to learn about the interfaces and inputs that affect the use process. In this case, we use a critical to quality analysis. If we want to understand where we need to simplify things, we can use a value-added analysis, and if we need to better understand who's doing what at certain points in the process, we can use swim lanes and a deployment flowchart. So we're exploring a concept. So, like other things in development, the more we learn, the more detailed we can get. We can focus on the priorities of the use process at concept development as we figure out how it detailed we can get. We can focus on the priorities of the use process at concept development as we figure out how it is we're going to meet the needs of our customers. We can further refine design inputs and do more detailed flowcharts as we need to.
Speaker 1:This is not my story, but I'm going to share it anyway. A product was in validation and you're doing the last minute checks for safety and usability. In this case, a test was being performed with users and the rest of the team was just observing. And users were using this almost finished product and they were having difficulty. They didn't understand how something worked or they wanted to do something and they weren't able to do it. And they were referring to the instructions and the instructions weren't helping and general the team was gaining a good understanding of where they could make improvements or where their design fell short. But part of the team that was observing was the engineer that designed it. The team could tell that he was getting more and more frustrated the more that these users were fiddling around with the product. And he got so frustrated that he burst into the room yelling you're doing it wrong. And he interrupted and he showed them how it is that they were supposed to use it. So the person running the test was upset because the test was. Results were tainted, I guess, by the interruption. Relations with the customers that were willing to take their time to evaluate and validate this product were a little more strained, and I can also understand the engineer's point of view.
Speaker 1:To help avoid this kind of situation, think about the way your users use products. In concept development it's not too early, especially if you think about how the users are going to interface with your product and not how your product is going to work to achieve the results. If you focus on the users, using flowcharts and other flowchart analysis tools, you'll be able to gain a better understanding of your customers, identify what's important and develop those design inputs that are going to create products others love for less. If you like this content or you find this kind of content useful to you, please subscribe to the podcast and if you're already subscribed, please sign up to the newsletter. You can visit newsletterdenienterprisescom. That's D-E-E-N-E-Y enterprisescom. You can also visit the website for the show notes and additional links and other resources. This has been a production of Dini Enterprises. Thanks for listening.
