I’ve already mentioned in previous articles what is and how to create a product vision. By the way, this is the topic of my workshop on how to build your product vision and strategy, which has been receiving many good reviews, and which will have new dates announced soon.

Remembering, product vision is a tool that helps us to see how the product will be in the future. It could be a sentence:

Locaweb Email Product Vision 2016

Locaweb’s Email solution will be the most complete and flexible in the Brazilian market.

Below is an example of a product vision that could be created for an internet banking product that a bank decides to develop to provide to its customers:

Product vision example of an internet banking

Banco XPTO decided to have internet banking to reduce the operating costs of bank branches.

This software is used by bank account holders who, by using this software, hope to solve their banking needs (check their balance, pay bills, make investments, etc.) in a better way than when they visit branches.

Fun Retrospectives is a website with many examples of activities for team retrospectives and an app that helps run retrospectives. I’ve been working closely with the team to help evolve the product. Below is the view we created:

Fun Retrospectives product vision

For groups of people working together and looking for continuous improvement, Fun Retrospectives is a tool with content that helps that group learn from the past, prepare for the future, connect and energize.

Unlike generic endless online boards and low-content remote retrospective tools, Fun Retrospectives is the best place for activities and ideas to improve your team that works both standalone and as a complement to other great tools like Mural, Miro, Trello and jira.

And I’ve been using these tools on my journey as a “solopreneur” (individual entrepreneur) at Gyaco:

Gyaco’s vision

Gyaco connects business and technology through training and consulting in product management and digital transformation.

Or a value exchange diagram, as we use it in Gympass:

Gympass product vision (2020)

For some years now I have been advocating the use of the image along with the text to help make it clear who the actors are and what the exchange of value is. Even for products and companies that are not marketplaces or platforms, the image helps a lot:

Gyaco vision

Visiontype, another tool to support product vision

For some time now I have seen an increasing use of another tool to show the product vision. This tool is called visiontype,  a kind of video prototype that shows how a day in the user’s life will be better because of the product.

The example above shows how the life of a person looking for a new apartment in the future will be and shows some interesting tools to help in this search. This video served as an inspiration for some of the things we did at Lopes. For example, at 17 seconds, a 3D plan of the apartment is shown, which the person can browse. This option of seeing the floor plan of the property and walking around it was implemented on the Lopes website:

And the possibility of searching for properties using augmented reality was something we were evaluating together with the people at Mira App:

A video visiontype can be very inspiring both for the product development team and for the entire company, as it helps to make tangible what our user’s life will be like in the future thanks to our product. Some more interesting examples:

• Microsoft Productivity Future
• HP Safe City
• Asana’s vision for the future of the work
• SpaceX to Mars: Awe-Inspiring Video Shows Vision for Red Planet Exploration

While making a video like this is a fun process, it can also be quite laborious. An interesting option is to make a storyboard:

 

Storyboard from app vision to help people with depression. Source: UX Planet

Both the phrase, the diagram, and the visiontype in video or storyboard are tools that have a clear objective, to help us communicate how we imagine our product in the future. Choose the one that makes the most sense in your context and according to your needs.

Summing up

• Product vision is a tool that helps us to see how the product will be in the future.
• It can be a sentence or a sentence accompanied by a diagram.
• Recently there has been a growing use of the visiontype, a kind of video prototype that shows how a day in the user’s life will be better because of the product.
• Both the phrase, the diagram, and the visiontype in video or storyboard are tools that have a clear objective, to help us communicate how we imagine our product in the future. Choose the one that makes the most sense in your context and according to your needs.Visão de produto é uma ferramenta que nos ajuda a ver como será o produto no futuro.

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