DesignMap partners with a lot of different clients that build complex products, often with broad-ranging feature sets. Sometimes, we help them take that broad set of features and requirements and turn them into a new vision or an MVP—but other times, clients need a different kind of engagement that isn’t about starting anew or reimagining their entire platform. Sometimes clients need help getting a clear understanding of where their product stands—either as a planning exercise or as part of an organizational shift to focusing on efficiency and quality.
Maybe one of the following scenarios resonates with you:
If any of these sound familiar, it might be time to consider a product audit.
Imagine your product is like a big ball of tangled yarn. Short-term issues, like usability glitches, and long-term goals, like expanding the user base, are all mixed up. Over time, the product has become more and more complex and every screen is another thread attached to who-knows-what else. You have no idea where to start pulling first.
A product audit is like having a skilled untangler who can carefully unravel your big ball of mess, show you the connections, and identify where things have become knotted up.
Practically speaking, a product audit typically involves design experts walking through your product user-journey by user-journey, screen by screen, and creating a detailed map of the experience. At DesignMap, we use industry-standard heuristics and our experience in enterprise products to identify where the product is falling short. We capture an inventory of patterns and interactions, highlighting inconsistencies and approaches that are working better than others.
Specific deliverables might include:
With a successful audit, each phase and deliverable builds upon each other:
In this way, our product audit is not an academic, one-size-fits-all exercise. It’s tailored to your product's and your organization's needs and challenges.
The end result? Clarity.
When things get tough, especially with big products and platforms, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and fall back into reaction mode. It’s impossible to think about the big picture because you’re always putting out fires and bracing for the next big feature implementation. A product audit can help in a few ways:
Across the technology industry, the mandate is pretty clear right now: efficiency, efficiency, efficiency.
Product audits are an oft-overlooked way to understand the platforms you’ve built—not only to fully realize the investment you’ve made researching, designing, and building them in the first place but also to pave the way for exciting new technologies like AI. The more you understand and optimize your product as it exists today, the better positioned you are to integrate and enhance platforms for efficiency and innovation.