Design to Avoid Problems: Focusing on Symptoms Early On

The art of product development is fraught with challenges, but perhaps none is more heartbreaking than hearing negative customer feedback when you thought you were at the finish line.

Picture this all-too-common scenario: after months of development and seemingly thorough customer engagement throughout the process, you finally present your polished product to users only to hear crushing feedback like “I don’t like that” or “That doesn’t work for me.” These late-stage revelations often necessitate extensive redesigns, creating costly delays and team frustration.

This painful experience begs the question: how could we have missed these issues despite our efforts to involve customers along the way?

“Stew” in the Problem to Better Understand the Concept Space

The answer often lies in how we approach the early stages of product development, particularly what I call the “problem space” within concept development.

Many engineering and product teams make the critical mistake of jumping directly from identifying a customer problem to designing solutions. This eagerness to design—while natural for creative minds—bypasses a crucial middle step where teams should deeply question, investigate, and truly understand the nuances of the problem they’re trying to solve.

This problem space exploration isn’t merely academic; it’s where the foundation for successful design decisions is established. By rushing through or skipping this phase, teams set themselves up for those devastating late-stage discoveries when customers finally interact with a nearly completed product.

Don’t do it solo

Cross-functional collaboration during the problem space exploration represents another critical factor for success.

Even when we do invest time in understanding customer problems, we often make the mistake of doing it solo rather than involving diverse perspectives from different departments and, crucially, from customers themselves.

Each stakeholder brings unique viewpoints and knowledge bases that collectively create a more comprehensive understanding of customer needs and environmental factors. Marketing might understand market trends, customer service knows common pain points, engineering understands technical constraints, and customers provide real-world context that internal teams simply cannot replicate.

This collaborative approach to concept development helps identify potential issues much earlier in the process, when addressing them is significantly less expensive and disruptive.

Be intentional with defining potential symptoms

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of effective concept development is being intentional about identifying potential “symptoms” early on.

While teams often focus on benefits—the things that will delight customers—they frequently neglect to systematically explore negative experiences customers might have when things don’t go as planned.

In this context, symptoms are what customers experience when there’s an unintended output or event. These aren’t the same as failures (which are specific to product functions you haven’t designed yet) or hazards (which are categorized negative events beyond the scope of the customer experience).

Instead, symptoms align closely with potential customer complaints—the very complaints that might send you back to the drawing board late in development. By intentionally exploring these potential negative experiences early, teams can make informed design decisions that prevent or mitigate them, applying quality during design rather than trying to fix it after the fact.

Front-load your discovery about symptoms

Implementing these approaches—thoroughly exploring the problem space, embracing cross-functional collaboration, and intentionally identifying potential symptoms—significantly reduces the likelihood of those devastating late-stage customer rejections.

While they can’t guarantee you’ll never encounter unexpected feedback, they stack the odds heavily in your favor by front-loading discovery and providing a more complete picture of what success looks like from the customer’s perspective.

What to do next time

The next time you embark on a product development journey, resist the temptation to jump straight to solutions. Instead, invest time understanding the problem space, involve diverse perspectives, and systematically explore potential negative experiences. Your future self—the one who doesn’t have to explain why a major redesign is suddenly necessary—will thank you.

Other podcast episodes you may like:

Uncovering Customer Desires: Understanding Benefits in Concept Development

The Hidden Costs of Poor Concept Development in Product Design