If you are a business looking to create and launch new products, you may be looking at working with a product design company to help you achieve this.

When meeting with a product design firm, you should go to them with a clear outline of what you want to create and why you have decided to create this. This is your pitch, and a pitch deck is a really useful way of presenting all of the information.

Product designers, and even stakeholders, need to understand what you want to achieve with the product, and they need to know the problems it solves so that they can come up with some good ideas. You shouldn’t go in there with one paragraph of text, instead you need to give a more detailed outline.

Things to include in your pitch deck

When creating a pitch deck, it’s good to write all of the information on post-it notes so that you can make sure everything is written down and in the right order before putting it into a proper document.

We’ve outlined some of the steps you should include within your pitch deck, which should be presented on Google Slides or another presentation software for easy presentation. Of course, you can also check some pitch deck examples to get a better idea.

• What problem are you trying to fix and what is your solution?

Here you need to outline the problem that you want your product to fix and how you intend to offer a solution. For example, when designing a new fan Dyson were looking to solve the issue of fans historically being very noisy. In response, they created a powerful fan that both cools and heats which is almost silent.

At this point, you need to consider whether you will create an entirely new product or whether you would like to improve on a product that already exists.

• Who is your target customer?

Identifying your target customer(s) will give everyone involved a better understanding of who the product is aimed at and so they can take this into consideration when thinking of style, colours and functionality.

Do you know for sure that your target customers will benefit from this product? Have they expressed a need for something to solve a challenge? This all needs to be detailed within your pitch.

• What is your timeline?

A timeline and a set goal for the end of the project is key to keeping everyone on the same page. Don’t be too granular with your timeline, and just keep it top line, but make sure it is somewhere that everyone can few both time to date and the road map for the project going forward.

This will give everyone a date to work towards, and will help to keep track of any areas that are delayed or may require extra time.

Deadlines are always likely change with product design and development projects, but it’s good to have an initial goal even if this is tweaked.

• Who else is involved?

It’s good for your project designers to know who else is involved with the process, who they will need to communicate with, and what your plans are in terms of how the product will be branded, manufactured and shipped.

• Next steps

Here you should outline your intentional next steps and your “to do” list in order of most important tasks first. These next steps might include:

• Complete design
  • Create an initial prototype
  • Test prototype
  • Meet with potential manufacturing partners
  • Seed product brief with influencers

• Sign off

In your sign off you should prompt questions and discussion, this will kickstart initial questions which could lead to answers that give the product designers even more details for them to use.  

This is a brief overview of how you should structure your pitch deck. It should be informative, detailed and cover all of the answers your product design company are likely to ask in order to be able to effectively begin the design of your product.