Where do you start when you’re creating a product that will change daily life?

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When taking the plunge into creating a product that is chock full of functions and features, it’s often unclear how to construct so that it delivers the results you envisioned for your customers. The idea of leaping off of cliffs into the deep water is terrifying for ordinary people. There are a lot of unknowns beneath the surface.

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When we talk about software code, it simply doesn’t leap from the visionary’s head onto the page. The unknown can cause a lot of problems if ignored or left undiscovered. For that reason, we practice a process that reveals the unknowns and saves a lot of time.

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Bella Scena is a product that has three main functions: create and manage meetings as a process, organize todos, and be a calendar. However, the creator of Bella Scena, Amber Christian, conceptualized a product that was functional, beautiful, and could help save companies money and time by changing the way meetings are held. The cherry on top: she also wanted to tackle the crisis plaguing meeting culture and its effect on mental health.

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Bella is about putting on your own oxygen mask first before assisting others.

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With iterative design, the process is messy. The client and the design team get their hands into the product’s functionality and figure out how it really needs to work by doing sections or pages at a time — lovingly called sprints. This way, the team is able to pull out bugs more efficiently during the development process, which provides a lot of transparency for the client before sending it into development.

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The cost of failing while prototyping designs is significantly less than when a design has gone into development. In development, they are able to assess flaws in the product such as confusing user flows or accessibility issues. There is more time to experiment and fail without expensive consequences when starting with design.

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For those looking to get into the water with a little more understanding of what is going on around them, look to an iterative design process as a solution.