Innovation is key to business success. Those who disrupt their industries change consumer behaviour, alter economics, and transform lives. These words from Heather Simmons (Reinventing Dell) tell us that you’ll quickly fall behind if you’re not constantly disrupting your industry.
Corporations need to focus on innovation and find new ways to bring value to their customers. Disruption is not a game of ‘Follow the Leader.’ Companies must learn to disrupt themselves before someone else comes along, finds a better way forward and transform their industry. Following a disruptor is not the path to success. Being the leader that creates the transformation before someone comes in and forces the rest to follow should be your goal.
This is where software comes in. Software development offers an excellent opportunity for companies to transform themselves. Creating new software projects — or new disruptions based on software — lets you find new markets and reach a wider audience than before.
But it’s not that simple. Designing a successful digital product is an exact process. According to a [2015 study by Standish Group (https://www.standishgroup.com/sample_research_files/CHAOSReport2015-Final.pdf), out of 50,000 software projects, only 29% were successful (defined by the project being on time, within budget and scope, and delivering value to the end user), 52% had major challenges, and 19% failed completely.
Disruption through Software Development
Developing software is a significant investment, and the risk of failure is high. Though the potential rewards are equally great. When done correctly, software development can help you create new products or services, reach new markets, and drive innovation throughout your organisation. So how do you plan for success? How do you create an innovative digital product that will disrupt your industry?
The answer lies in securing the foundation before starting the development, and this is what the reinteractive App Design Workshop is all about.
The Workshop helps address the challenges of developing software applications through an in depth process where we intimately help identify the problems you want to solve and the goals and purposes for your application.
It emphasises the importance of planning out apps and working out user flows and functionality from a user experience perspective while ensuring all functionality is included. Proper planning and visualisation of the project can fully name the product and provide wireframes to show the product before the expensive software development process starts.
In a nutshell, the App Design Workshop provides certainty to software and simplifies the project’s development going forward. It features a fully agile process where project stakeholders work with our team to crystallise the concepts behind the intended software. The process includes:
- A deep dive into understanding your company and the industry you are in
- Determining the types of users and personas your application is intended for
- Creation of a comprehensive site map and the architectural flow for all types of users
- Building full wireframes of each screen followed by a low-fidelity prototype to rapidly express and test the idea
- Prototype testing. Your stakeholders, staff, and some of your users interact with the prototype to test its validity and adjust accordingly.
Once the flows, ideas and plans for the software are finalised and determined as workable, full designs are created for the product to finalise the complete look and feel of the project.
Beginning the Journey of Disruption
Every disruption journey begins with an idea, and the best ones come from solving customer problems. Getting the team to sit down to create a picture of what problems customers face, brainstorm ideas on how to solve those problems, and get validated feedback from the customer about the ideas presented are all part of the first step.
You now take the winning idea and work out the Minimum Viable Product to make this idea a reality. This involves creating a Lean Business Model around a particular product, figuring out your Unique Value Proposition and understanding your customer persona. Everything about the process is customer centric. Then you convert these ideas, concepts, and models into UX wireframes and visual design mockups to understand how customers could get the most value. Creating a prototype and validating it with real customers is vital to see if the idea is driving home what they need.
If it does, proceed to project scoping, estimating, building, and launching. If not, adjust and revalidate — take a different approach, adjust the prototype, go back to the drawing board if needed.
The Ideate, Discover and Validate strategy is a process proven to create success. It gives absolute clarity around what needs to be done, what problems the customers face, and how to provide the right solutions.
This strategy gives you the toolkit, architecture, and roadmap needed to create and successfully launch a product to market.
Now you get an overview of the disruption process and the journey we take you through to understand it better. Contact us today so we can help you disrupt your game!
