ProductPlan’s Approach to Product Design

 

At ProductPlan, we treat product design with intention. From inception to delivery, we follow a rigorous process that ensures our customers get the best possible user experience. Transparency is a key cornerstone of that process. By hosting design sessions with engineers, PMs, and product designers, we gain different perspectives on a single problem. This helps shape our solution and brings the entire organization into alignment before the designs are seen by customers.

Interested in learning more? We thought so. We’ll share our entire process below from start to finish. Let’s get to designing better products!

Triple Diamond Approach

The overarching methodology we follow at ProductPlan is the Triple Diamond Approach created by Zendesk. For those unfamiliar, it’s a way to attack any design problem using four distinct segments: Discovery, Development, Validation, and Rollout.

Before we break the approach down, why do we use it? Primarily for its ease of use. With Triple Diamond, we start simple and expand from there. There’s no need to gather a ton of feedback upfront. Instead, we collect feedback from users over time and learn how they use the product live. It also provides a stop-gap to prevent any designer, engineer, PM, or stakeholder from trying to solve every problem.

Over-designing a feature, especially an MVP, can lead to unnecessary overhead and customer support once the feature is released. Sure, delighters are nice to have and add depth to the product, but they must be planned meaningfully. Now, let’s dive a little deeper into the activities in each ” segment” in the triple diamond.

Discovery

The Discovery segment has four main activities: Problem Discovery, Problem Validation, Solution Discovery, and Concept Validation. First, product designers should seek an understanding of the problem space and the customer’s needs. Second, they formulate a clear and concise statement of the problem that needs to be solved from the user’s POV. Then they begin researching potential solutions to solve the problem. Finally, designers can start creating early mockups and prototypes to be put in front of customers.

Development

With a potential solution to the problem, the development of prototypes can be tested both internally and externally. Cross-discipline teams work closely with one another during this phase and work through found UI and UX.

Validation

Validation is the Early Access Program with customers to gain more insights. Typically, a select beta user group is invited to test the new feature/product. This beta group allows for more feedback from real customers as they incorporate the new feature or functionality into their normal flow.

Rollout

Once enough data has been acquired and provides the necessary confidence in delivering a feature or functionality, general availability (GA) is ready for all customers.

Product Design Breakdown

With the Triple Diamond Approach out of the way, let’s break down exactly how we approach product design at ProductPlan. We’ll go through our entire product design process and focus on what works for us. Let’s start at the beginning with the Inception phase.

Inception

Working alongside our product managers and reviewing customers’ feedback typically reveals a new user experience pain point that possibly needs to be addressed. Before we begin our exploration, we constantly tie any problem hypotheses to our company objective(s) that directly refer to the product objectives.

The customer’s needs are super important at this stage. Hosting user interviews with current or potential customers gives us a foundation to start designing and working through hypotheses. From there, we categorize the needs to create a proper solution, which leads us to the next step, Research.

Research

Next comes one of the most important steps in our process: Research. Here, we employ three pillars of product design research: competitive analysis, user testing, and user interviews.

Competitive analysis is our very simple starting point within our research methodology. What our competitors or someone similar in our industry are doing provides us with many insights into our design principles. Here we ask the following questions:

• What seems to be working?
• What can we glean from that work to help kick-start our Exploration phase?
• What are some things we can avoid?
• Are certain tools too complicated?
• Can they be reduced to a more basic form so that we can build upon and grow the feature or tool?

The next steps involve user interviews followed up by user testing. For user interviews, we rely on our amazing Customer Success Managers and Product Managers to set up customer calls with users that we feel may benefit from a feature we are working on. After compiling feedback and input from these interviews, we can pose very early exploratory plans, protocols, and further questions to our users through user testing. From there, we take the valuable feedback from our customers and begin to iterate in the Exploration phase.

Exploration

Once we have a rough idea of the customers’ needs, we can begin exploring potential solutions. This is where our initial drawings are created. Something we like to emphasize during this phase is to make these early drawings outside of a design tool such as Figma. Instead, pen and paper or a drawing app are employed. We do this instead of working directly in Figma as we feel it does not limit ourselves creatively. Working within a design tool immediately may hinder the exploration process as you feel you must adhere to certain designs or guidelines. The most important thing during this phase is to get any raw idea out there, even if it’s far-fetched.

During this design phase, we also hold blue sky sessions with our PM, QA, and engineering teams. At the end of the day, as a design team, we need to both diverge and converge. All designers participate in blue sky sessions to provide more insights and context since there may be something another team/designer is working on similar to our efforts. These sessions help us ensure we are all in alignment between product, product design, and engineering.

Design system

Here’s where the actual heads-down design work begins. The designs might change from feature to feature, but we keep a few tenets in mind during this phase: accessibility, reusability, and brand consistency. This is achieved with confidence through our design system: Atlas.

In Atlas, accessibility is near and dear to our hearts. The web should be built for all, and while we are still working towards making our site more and more accessible, there are a couple of rules we have in place for anything we build. First, colors always meet 4.5:1 to achieve AA standards. Second, any new UI component built or expanded upon has native keyboard navigation functionality. In this way, we make sure that as our product grows and changes, we are still designing in a way that keeps access to our tool in the hands of everyone.

We strongly emphasize reusable components, which refer to building blocks used in design and code. These components include buttons, various selection inputs, page layouts, and other user interface elements. We do this for two reasons. Not having to redesign a certain component saves time and gives our designers more confidence in what they are building. And two, not having to restyle or rebuild functionality gives our engineers the freedom to focus on tests and enhancements.

Finally, since we don’t want our customers to have a disjointed experience, we maintain consistency across our global styles and brand. This makes for a better-unified experience from end to end. It also prevents confusion from an incongruous design to the rest of the platform.

Design review

After a design is complete, it’s time for review within our team and cross-functionally with engineering. This is accomplished through two syncs: one with just the design team and the other with design plus key engineering stakeholders.

Our weekly design team sync is a free space to share what we’ve been working on and explain user needs and design decisions. The feedback from other design members is vital as it keeps us all in lockstep. It’s also important to emphasize providing psychological safety during this sync. This creates an environment where we can share openly without judgment.

Our engineering syncs allow us to meet with key engineering individuals to help align the design direction. From here, engineering can share with the larger team to keep everyone aligned. We can also gather feedback from the engineering team here if dev work is found. From here, we fine-tune designs accordingly.

From these conversations, PMs and Design can better understand the project’s scope from an engineering perspective and the time allotted to the problem and solution. Full designs from here can be broken down into snack-able items that allow us to release an MVP while having a list of enhancements to chip away at in parallel with other work.

Delivery

Delivery is the final step in our product design process at ProductPlan. Here we conduct our handoff ceremony with engineering. What do we hand off? Annotated Figma files with prototypes to provide engineers with proper expectations of flows. Importantly, this is also when we work with sales and marketing to ensure deliverables are known and understood. We then deliver marketing materials for landing pages, email campaigns, social media content, and more.

Tools used

I’d be remiss not to mention the tools we use during the product design process at ProductPlan. We employ the following:

• Figma for design and prototypes
• Miro for cross-team collaboration
• Dovetail for research aggregation
• Adobe for animation references for our engineering team
• Metabase and Google Analytics for statistics around usage
• Pendo for first time user experiences and new feature onboarding

Final thoughts

At ProductPlan, we are deeply committed to providing the best possible user experience. Our approach involves transparency, collaboration, and a systematic design methodology. We create a safe space for exploration and conversations, allowing each team member to contribute genuinely and perform their best. While we strive for continuous improvement, we owe much of our progress to the consistently insightful feedback from our customers. Together, we are building better features and enhancing our product!

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The 5 Critical Hypotheses That Make or Break Your Startup

 

Yann Goarin

Product-market fit remains one of the most discussed yet least understood concepts in startup building. We've mystified it, treating it like a binary switch that suddenly flips from "no PMF" to "PMF achieved."

But this approach leaves founders navigating without instruments. In my previous article on why 9 out of 10 startups fail, I showed how the product-first obsession of “build it and they will come” leads directly to billions in wasted runway and countless failed companies.

The PMF monolith

The startup world has become remarkably scientific about certain aspects of building companies—growth marketing, software development, even fundraising. Yet when it comes to product-market fit, rigor is abandoned for intuition, leaving founders staring up at an imposing, inscrutable monolith with no clear path forward.

This creates a dangerous knowledge gap. Founders know they need product-market fit, but lack a systematic approach to find it. They're left with unhelpful advice like "talk to customers" or "iterate quickly"—the startup equivalent of "just be yourself" on a first date.

First principles thinking

When facing complex problems, the most effective approach is to break them down to their fundamental components. By applying first principles thinking to product-market fit, we can transform an ambiguous concept into a set of testable hypotheses.

After studying the patterns of successful and failed startups, and consolidating insights from years of product launches, I've identified five critical hypotheses that every startup must validate. These aren't arbitrary or theoretical—they represent the core assumptions that must be true for any business to succeed.

This approach is the difference between spending runway on educated guesses versus running targeted experiments that deliver actionable insights.

The 5 critical hypotheses framework

These five hypotheses form the foundation of product-market fit:

1. Category

This is your strategic playing field—the specific market space where you choose to compete. Think of it as choosing which game you're playing, not just how you'll play it.

When you get it right: You find yourself in a growing market with clear demand signals, where your strengths align with market needs. Investors immediately understand your opportunity. Customers easily categorize and remember you. Your growth trajectory matches the market's natural momentum.

When you get it wrong: You're constantly fighting uphill. Either you're in a shrinking market, or you're positioning in a way that confuses customers and investors alike. You hear "So you're like X meets Y?" Your marketing dollars evaporate with minimal return. Your sales cycles extend because you're constantly explaining what category you're in.

2. Customer

This defines exactly who you're serving—and more importantly, who you're NOT serving. It's a specific segment with identifiable characteristics, common needs, and similar buying behavior.

When you get it right: Your marketing speaks directly to prospective customers' specific pain points. You know exactly where to find them. Your acquisition costs are predictable and sustainable. Your sales cycles shorten because you're answering the exact questions your prospects actually ask. Your product team knows precisely who they're building for.

When you get it wrong: You create "consensus products" that try to please everyone but delight no one. Your marketing messages sound generic because they are generic. Your limited resources are spread too thin across too many customer types. Your customer acquisition is like a slot machine – occasionally you hit a match, but you can't predict when or why.

3. Problem

This validates that the problem you're solving is actually worth solving—not just technically interesting or vaguely annoying, but genuinely painful enough that people will pay to make it go away.

When you get it right: Prospects' eyes light up when you describe their problem. They finish your sentences. You hear "How soon can we start?" instead of "Let me think about it." You don't have to educate customers about having the problem—they're actively searching for a solution. Your sales process feels more like taking orders than convincing skeptics.

When you get it wrong: You find yourself constantly "educating the market" about why they should care. You hear things like "that's interesting" or "nice to have" instead of "I need this yesterday." Your sales cycles stretch as prospects perpetually have "more urgent priorities." You're building a vitamin when the market is looking for a painkiller.

4. Value proposition

This is the bridge between your customer's problem and your solution—it's not what you build, but why anyone should care. It's the powerful "so what?" that makes prospects reach for their wallets.

When you get it right: Your messaging resonates immediately. You can articulate your unique value in a single compelling sentence that makes people nod. Prospects clearly understand why you're different from alternatives. Price objections are rare because the value is obvious. You can communicate your core value without technical jargon or convoluted explanations.

When you get it wrong: You find yourself drowning in feature explanations while customers' eyes glaze over. Prospects constantly compare you to cheaper alternatives. Your team can't consistently articulate why customers should choose you. You resort to competing on price rather than value. Your sales material reads like a technical specification rather than a compelling narrative.

5. Solution

This is what you actually build—the product, experience, and business model that delivers on your value proposition. It's the execution that brings your strategy to life.

When you get it right: Users intuitively understand your product without extensive tutorials. Your solution delivers the promised value consistently. You're able to develop efficiently because you're building only what matters most. Your economics work because you've designed a solution that's viable to deliver. Users experience that magical "aha moment" when engaging with your product.

When you get it wrong: You create technically impressive products that users struggle to adopt. You over-build features that nobody uses while missing critical functionality. Your unit economics collapse under the weight of delivery costs. Your product roadmap feels like an endless list of fixes rather than strategic evolution.

The testing sequence

The order in which you test these hypotheses is critical.

Most technical founders work backward, building solutions before validating any of their market hypotheses:

1. Build a solution (because that's what they're good at)
2. Try to articulate its value (often in technical rather than benefit terms)
3. Search for problems it might solve
4. Hunt for customers who might care
5. Finally, figure out how to position it in the market

This reversed approach is the startup equivalent of building an elaborate treehouse, and then looking for a suitable tree—great craftsmanship, limited utility. It explains why so many startups pivot multiple times before finding fit, or run out of runway first.

By testing market hypotheses first (category, customer, problem), you dramatically reduce the risk of building something nobody wants. Each validated hypothesis creates a foundation that de-risks the next step.

This doesn't mean you can't build anything until all hypotheses are bulletproof. It means allocating your runway proportionally to risk—spending weeks validating market assumptions can save months of wasted development.

Hypothesis-driven execution

Implementing this framework doesn't require sophisticated market research or months of delay. It's about developing a hypothesis-driven mindset where assumptions are explicitly stated, then systematically tested.

Start by documenting your current assumptions for each hypothesis:

• What exactly is your category? (Be specific)
• Who specifically is your customer? (Get precise)
• What precise problem are you solving? (If it takes three paragraphs to explain, reconsider)
• How are you uniquely valuable? (Focus on benefits, not features)
• What is the minimum viable solution that delivers that value?

Then design simple experiments to validate each one, beginning with market elements before moving to product elements.

This might mean conducting problem validation interviews without showing your solution. Or testing landing pages with different value propositions before building features. Or experimenting with category positioning to find where you resonate most strongly.

The goal isn't perfect information—it's reducing critical uncertainties before betting your company's future on unvalidated assumptions.

Looking ahead

Finding product-market fit isn't about luck or intuition. It's about systematically validating the core hypotheses that determine whether your startup succeeds or fails.

By breaking PMF into these five components, you transform the intimidating monolith into a series of manageable experiments. Each validated hypothesis chips away at the mystery, revealing the structure beneath and becoming a load-bearing pillar of your eventual success—or a clear signal to pivot before burning more runway.

In future posts, I'll dive deeper into each hypothesis with specific frameworks for testing and measuring progress. But for now, I challenge you to honestly assess your own startup:

Which of these hypotheses have you actually validated with clear evidence?

And which are you treating as assumptions because they're convenient, comfortable, or simply because you've never questioned them?

Your answers will reveal whether you're building on solid ground or setting yourself up for an expensive education in the school of startup hard knocks.

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