A successful product launch is not a finish line; it’s a starting line. While many teams focus intensely on the sprint to get a product out the door, a truly mature development process recognizes that the journey has two equally critical phases: pre-launch and post-launch.
A disciplined pre-launch process ensures you build the right product, while a strategic post-launch process ensures the product evolves to meet real-world user needs. At Cardinal Peak, our user experience design services are built on a flexible, end-to-end methodology that guides your product from initial concept to long-term success.
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The Path to Launch (Pre-Launch)
The goal of the pre-launch phase is to de-risk your investment and maximize efficiency. We achieve this through front-loaded research, an agile hand-off between design and development, and rigorous quality assurance.
Our Flexible and Customized Product Development Process
As the figure above illustrates, this phase is a highly collaborative process:
- Front-Loaded Research: We begin with discovery and research to gain confidence in the business facts and user insights that will fuel an informed design. This work goes beyond surface-level user insights, establishing a data-driven strategic foundation that minimizes risk and ensures every design decision is fully informed.
- Agile Hand-Off: Our designers work lockstep with developers, delivering “just-in-time” UI to maximize efficiency during development sprints. This tight integration is a core component of our UX development services and transforms the handoff from a single event into a continuous collaboration, preventing costly rework and ensuring the final product matches the design vision.
- Quality Assurance: Before launch, every aspect of the finished experience is carefully scrutinized for precision through UX audits and QA testing. This meticulous process validates designs with real-world users and ensures flawless execution before launch.
The Journey After Launch (Post-Launch)
Launching a product is the beginning of the most important phase of learning. Your product is now in the hands of real users, providing a stream of invaluable data and insights. Our post-launch process is designed to capture and act on this real-world information.
Our Continuous Research Strategy for Post-Launch Optimization
This continuous research strategy allows us to optimize and evolve the product design over time:
- Observe and Tweak (30-60 Days): In the first two months, we observe initial user reactions and analyze data to see patterns emerge, allowing for immediate remedies and tweaks. We combine quantitative user data with qualitative insights from user feedback, allowing us to quickly identify and resolve initial pain points to optimize user experience.
- Measure and Strategize (90-120+ Days): After three months, we have a fortified view of product performance that informs a long-term research strategy to guide the product’s evolution with real-world data and insights to ensure long-term success. This is achieved by blending quantitative research (analytics, KPIs) to see what is happening with qualitative research (user feedback, interviews, usability testing) to understand why it’s happening.
Conclusion: A Partnership for the Full Lifecycle
A successful product requires more than just a great launch; it requires a great partner for the entire journey. By integrating our UX consulting services across the full lifecycle—from initial concept to post-launch optimization—Cardinal Peak provides a proven blueprint for building, launching, and evolving successful products.
Ready for a great launch and beyond? Schedule a consultation with our team to discuss an end-to-end product process that drives long-term success.