Recently a friend asked me some questions to clarify some terminology often thrown around in the realm of product design. Here are my answers that might clarify for anyone interested as well.
What is the difference between product strategy vs. corporate strategy vs. service strategy?
Narrow : I think product strategy is really about shipping a product that aligns to business goals, which includes short and long term visions, roadmaps, requirements, defining success criteria and metrics. In my experience, I feel product has the most power in the sense of what features will be built in bc they are the closest to getting a product to the public.
Broad : Business/corporate strategy is about setting a clear mental model for a business (which can include a wide ecosystem of products or just a few flagship products or simply just monetization methods) and setting plans on how a business can continue to thrive.
Bridge : Service strategy solidifies relationships between products/services and consumers. When I was at Fjord, we really focused on the “love” factor. We didn’t want to specialize in creating great products (or design), we wanted to specialize in making people fall in love with the product. At Intuit, the similar service design terminology we throw around here is “design for delight,” which is again not about delivering awesome products, but more about creating the small delight factors that make users think of a seemingly boring product, “oh neat, that’s awesome.”
What are the core must-know concepts behind interaction design?
I’ll probably write a separate post about this. I could go on and on about interaction design bc I live and breathe it, but any design discipline at its core is all about empathy. Understanding users, their needs, their problems, etc. is the number one focus. Everything else is just pixels.