# Design the product

Turn a validated problem into a version-one design: the shortest path to value, a written cut line and the decisions you will defer.

Canonical URL: https://worldenterprise.org/playbooks/design-the-product/
Last updated: 2026-10-10
Publisher: World Enterprise, run by World Enterprise Group Incorporated

## The steps

1. **List the jobs the customer is hiring you to do.** Write each job as a sentence from the customer's side, using the words they used in your interviews. These sentences, not a feature wish list, are the brief for the design.
2. **Map the shortest path to value.** Draw the single route from first visit to the moment the customer gets what they came for. Remove every step that is not on that route.
3. **Sketch the key screens and test them on paper.** Show low-detail sketches to people from your interviews and ask what they expect to happen next. Fix the confusion now, while a fix costs a pencil line.
4. **Draw the cut line.** Sort every idea into three groups, which are must exist for the first customer to get value, can wait, and will not build. Version one is everything above the line and nothing below it.
5. **Choose well-understood components.** Use proven parts for sign-in, billing and email unless one of them is your product. Keep a short log of the choices you are deliberately deferring and the trigger that would reopen each.
6. **Write acceptance criteria for what is above the line.** For each item, write the observable result that means it is done. A person who did not design it should be able to check it.

## What you will have at the end

- A list of customer jobs in the customer's own words
- A path to first value, drawn from first visit to first result
- Annotated screen sketches
- A written cut line for version one
- A log of deferred decisions
- Acceptance criteria for every item above the line