Roles in otto.de product development

Our teams work with design thinking methods that help to make our product development cycle as efficient as possible. Simplified, the theory of the process looks something like this: In order to develop new applications for otto.de, we familiarize ourselves with the possible needs and problems of our customers, but also consider opportunities for improvement and potential. This is where our UX managers come in. In the so-called product discovery, they put themselves in the customer's perspective and observe the status quo. Through experiments and surveys, they define target group-specific wishes and requirements for otto.de and thus prepare the basis for the development cycle. There is always potential for development. That's why, in each development cycle, the teams have to decide on a specific problem to solve. The product managers accompany the process from the idea to the live go-live and support their team with technical product data know-how.

As soon as a problem has been defined, the joint brainstorming phase begins. In this phase, all possible solutions are initially considered. Here, too, however, a specific solution must be agreed upon in order to make product development as efficient as possible.

The next step is to implement the solution idea(s) as prototypes. The development of the prototypes is primarily the responsibility of our UX designers*. The prototypes are generated by them in our UX lab using special software and tested and further developed on test persons. Only then do they go into implementation and are integrated into otto.de by our software developers.

Our digital analysts then evaluate how the modified features are received by our customers. This allows us to decide whether we want to develop them further, or whether we are satisfied for the time being and move on to the next problem. As our features are always being adapted and improved, the product development process is understood as a cycle.