All startup teams are filled with people who are passionate about the product, with strong opinions about how to best solve the customers’ problems. While their hearts are all in the right place, and the product could be designed in a multitude of ways, it must be developed in only one way. As a designer or product manager, you need to listen to their feedback, but ultimately decide on a final design. How can you create a cohesive user experience when everyone thinks it should be designed in a different way?

Developing an effective product design process starts with acknowledging some hard truths:

There is no one right answer. Multiple people with conflicting opinions can all be right.

You can A/B test forever, and never release anything. While everyone on your team is entitled to their opinion, you should not waste time testing every one. You must find a balance between going completely on your gut, and testing every possible variation.

You can never truly know the right answer until the product is released in the wild. You can put wireframes and proofs of concept in front of beta users, but until the product is fully developed, you won’t know how it will behave as a wholistic experience.

People are different. You are never going to solve the problem for every user. You cannot compromise your design by trying to account for every possible user mindset. You should instead focus on guiding people into your product mindset.

The user voice always speaks the loudest. Everyone on your team is giving their opinion of how they think the user thinks or behaves. What the users actually tell you should trump all opinions in your organization. Gathering good user input is difficult, but critical. Surveys, focus groups, support tickets, social media, and in-app analytics will support or refute the proposed solutions. Be prepared to be wrong, change your mind, and move on quickly.

With that in mind, our product design process will involve gathering feedback from as many sources as possible, brainstorming and fleshing out potential solutions, and validating them early and often throughout the design and development process. Without further ado: