Gathering, sorting, and organizing ideas is a critical part of product design – and it begins as soon as the project launches. Getting organized gives order, form, and structure to the massive amount of information involved, ensuring that everyone on the team can see the larger vision, make meaningful contributions, and capture inspiration when it strikes. There’s no doubt that product design can be a chaotic process, but with the right organizational approach, it can also be streamlined to drive innovation more productively. Here’s how:

Start with consumer insights.

Product design begins and ends with the consumer, because those are the people who will be purchasing the end product. Once the users’ wants and needs have been determined through research and observations, gather all insights in an area where they can be easily accessed, analyzed, and leveraged.

Store all relevant data in one central hub.

The key to an organized and streamlined product design process is to keep all consumer insights, competitive research, inspiration, and physical and digital content involved in a project in one central hub. This can be a physical or digital workspace, as long as it’s accessible and can be easily interpreted by the entire team.

Organize your assets according to project phase.

Consider arranging your assets in various smaller groups within your workspace, such as "research," "ideas and inspiration," "stories that need work," and "actionable items." By sorting materials in this way, different team members can easily make adjustments and mine the information available for new concepts. It’s also a smart idea to keep prototypes together and track all iterations throughout the life of the project, so users can see from a higher level what is, and is not, working.

Provide context to the information.

It’s not enough to simply collect and categorize assets in one central area. For the greatest impact, product managers should also frame the information by linking ideas to relevant research and insights, and adding structure with digital and physical inspiration and content.

The bottom line is this: Product managers need high-level organization to jumpstart and fuel the design process. It keeps the entire team on the same page, facilitates collaboration, and provides a much-needed viewpoint for evaluating ideas. For more information, check out our solution sheet on how Batterii helps product managers streamline the design process.