Designing Products for Different Demographics and User Groups

As you may know, working on a new solution always involves taking into account the needs of its potential users – without this, even the best intentions of its owners will be useless. Indeed, from the point of view of the consumer, along with the actual benefits of a particular product, you would like to think that it was created "exactly for you and your purposes". After all, for sure, there is already something on the market tailored to your tasks and wishes, so why choose something other that doesn’t fit them well? 

Below we will describe how the demographic data and correct segmentation of the target audience affects an integral part of the products, namely, their design.

How to Start?

Before you start implementing the visual part of your project, it is important to determine the key aspects of the people who will (and want) to use it. Therefore, the first thing you should start with is to define the target audience – the users whose needs have to be covered by your solution. To determine it for further help with designing a product, you can use the following list of key points:

• basic data (gender, age, location, etc.);
• hobbies (they can be easily found out by searching for your potential users on social networks and target communities);
• income level (for example, if a company sells services for the development of applications and websites, then, as a rule, the target audience will consist of business representatives, and not students or schoolchildren);
• pain points and goals (they can be figured out by pinpointing the problems that your solution will help solve).

As a result, the larger your list will be, the fewer users will get into this group.

Once you figure out each of these parameters, you can begin to create a portrait of a potential client – this will be the starting point for your product designing. In particular, thanks to the client profile, it will be easier for your digital product design company to understand what criteria play a leading role in choosing a specific product for a particular user, what they are willing to pay for, and what they are not. You can also find out what your potential buyers are ready to neglect, and what they will pay attention to in the first place.

Note that depending on the purpose of your project, there may be several client portraits: this fact is especially applicable to multi-purpose and universal solutions that are not strictly tied to any one of the parameters.

What Is the Role of the Client Portrait?

Now let's talk about the product design service and the impact on it the previously compiled customer profile, in which we determined demographics and other critical characteristics. Obviously, the appearance and the way the solution interacts with users can vary greatly for users of different age groups, social statuses, locations, etc., and it will be very difficult to create a neutral solution that everyone will like. The fact is that the main thing in creating an effective solution is to understand both the general characteristics of your future users and how they are different from each other. This idea is at the forefront of user-centric design.

Therefore, the first thing you should start with is to understand whether your product is highly specialized, or whether it is for mass use. In the first case, it will be quite easy for you to understand how to please your target audience. As for the second, you'll have to work hard to create a "hodgepodge" of trends and the individual needs of your average customers. Perhaps for this, you will have to delimit the user interface by levels of complexity or, maybe, just create an eye-candy visual part. You can also try to choose minimalism, as Apple and many product designing companies did, starting to launch products that absolutely everyone adores. Whichever path you choose, remember that your ultimate goal is to please your users, and not just to realize your business idea.

Conclusion

We hope that we have helped you understand how the correct definition of your target audience can affect the direction of digital product design services and now you will pay special attention to drawing up a client portrait before designing a product. If you are looking for specialists who are ready to provide you with high-quality new product design services, please, contact us. We will find you a specialist with significant product design expertise who will do their best to make your project profitable, competitive, and long-living.