How to learn about a new domain for complex B2B product design

Hello, I’m Hal, working at a cybersecurity startup called Flatt Security, where I’m involved in product design, product management, customer support, and various other tasks. I’m such a coffee enthusiast that I was put in charge of being the “Coffee Guy” at Spectrum Tokyo Festival 2024.

Before joining Flatt Security, I spent four years at freee designing a tax software for tax accountants, and then four and a half years designing accounting, workload management, and HR/labor management software for small businesses—making it a total of eight and a half years of experience focusing on B2B SaaS products.

Now, having switched to a startup in the cybersecurity domain, in my first month I gave product demos to about 30 people at an IT Expo held at Makuhari Messe, and by my second month, I had written almost all of the help pages for an engineer-focused authentication feature by myself. I also reached a level of domain understanding that allowed me to singlehandedly run online support sessions for our engineer-focused services.

You might be wondering, “How did you manage all that in just two months?” Honestly, what I did was simple: I repeatedly “got hands-on, researched, and asked people questions.” But since that alone wouldn’t make for much of an article, I’d like to share some of the domain-understanding techniques I’ve practiced.

What Is a Domain?

an area of knowledge or activity; especially one that somebody is responsible for
Oxford Learners Dictionaries

Looking at the first meaning from Oxford Learners Dictionaries, it’s explained as the area of activity or knowledge for which a person has responsibility.

In the context of B2B services, a “domain” refers to the specialized field or discipline that the service provides. For accounting software, that domain would be accounting or taxation; for labor management software, it might be payroll or social insurance procedures; for cybersecurity, it’s cybersecurity itself.

For designers, understanding the domain means “figuring out what problem this service is trying to solve, and understanding that ‘world’ inside and out.”

Why Domain Understanding Is Necessary

If you’re reading this article, you likely already know this, but if you don’t understand the domain, you won’t be able to correctly grasp your users’ pain points. You might simply take stakeholder requirements at face value and end up just making things look nice on the surface.

Especially with B2B services, the users are often working in highly specialized fields. Even a single change in interface layout or a single piece of copy can have a huge impact on their business.

Moreover, without sufficient domain understanding, you might struggle to comprehend business processes and key challenges, causing requirements to become unclear or misaligned. You also risk designing something without fully capturing its intended purpose, missing the true essence of the problem your product aims to solve. This is why it’s so crucial to first understand the “world” your service is targeting.

Mindset for Domain Understanding

So how can you effectively deepen your domain understanding? Here’s the mindset I keep in mind:

1.It’s normal not to understand everything at first

When you jump into a new domain, nobody can fully understand it right away. Relax, accept that you won’t get it all immediately, and focus on not getting discouraged. Continuity is key, so allow yourself not to be perfect in the beginning.

2.Grasp the big picture first

Before diving in too deeply, start by forming a rough mental image of what the service does. Attempting to become an expert right from the get-go is time-consuming and overwhelming. It’s important to see how quickly you can get an overview.

3.Nurture a “worm’s-eye view” with individual projects

hile keeping the big picture in mind, ask to be assigned to smaller-scale projects you can manage, then deepen your understanding of that narrower scope. If you only have a broad overview, you might miss the more technical details. By working on actual UI and designs, you’ll notice the specialized terms and get a better “feel” for how the domain works.

4. Don’t dig into everything from the start

Getting from 70% domain understanding to 90% or 100% is extremely difficult. Becoming an expert in the field is for the actual professionals of that field. I studied accounting at college, and many of my classmates went on to become CPAs or tax accountants, dedicating years to mastering that domain. I chose not to become such a professional but to understand the domain from a designer’s perspective.

I witnessed how hard my friend worked to pass the CPA exam after two years at a specialized school, I know how demanding it is to reach a real expert level. That’s exactly why, as a product designer, I approach domain understanding with deep respect for the professionals who actually use these services.

Domain Understanding Techniques

With that mindset in place, here are some practical tips:

1. Read a lot of references

References include official documentation, industry news, blogs, books, etc. Expose yourself to as many “information sources” in your domain as possible. Consume them in bulk so you get used to the terminology and overall flow. You might have heard that in language learning, focusing intensely on one book and reading it over and over can be effective. But in domain understanding, it’s the opposite: try scanning through five or so different sources.

You can skim the table of contents or skip the parts you already understand. By reading multiple authors’ explanations, you’ll encounter different ways of approaching the same concept, which helps you find an explanation that resonates with you. Plus, seeing similar explanations multiple times helps reinforce your understanding.

2. Join sales calls

Sitting in on sales meetings or negotiations is one of the quickest ways to understand the domain. You get to hear the raw voices of actual users—what words they use and what problems they face.

And because sales reps are talking to “people who don’t know the product but are experts in the field,” they explain the service in clear, easy-to-understand language. Understanding the terminology and materials used by the sales team can be a significant milestone in your domain understanding.

3. Keep taking notes for unfamiliar terms and build your personal glossary

When you come across unfamiliar terminology in meetings or references, jot them down right away. You can look them up later when you have time. Don’t feel pressured to research them thoroughly right away. If you keep a running list, you might notice yourself writing down the same term multiple times.

Focus on exploring those high-frequency terms in detail. B2B services have an endless supply of complex jargon, and investigating all of them in depth can be overwhelming. But by narrowing down to the most frequently encountered terms, you often uncover the key concepts that are crucial to understanding the domain.

4. Leverage ChatGPT

One tool I’ve been using a lot recently is ChatGPT. It never gets annoyed at how many times you ask the same question, and it’s always there when you need it. I often prompt it with, “Explain ___ in a way that a fifth grader would understand.” When I needed to learn about authentication mechanisms for designing in the security field, I had ChatGPT break things down for me.

Of course, ChatGPT can sometimes provide misleadingly plausible answers, but if you’re new to a domain, you may be at risk of misreading references and misunderstanding them anyway. If your goal is to grasp the big picture quickly, ChatGPT’s potential inaccuracies might still be better than your own incomplete knowledge—just make sure to confirm your understanding at some point using other methods.

5. Explain your understanding to someone who knows more

Once you’ve done some input gathering, check in with someone more knowledgeable. “Here’s how I understand it—am I correct?” In the process of explaining it to another person, you might realize, “Wait, how does that mechanism really work?” which leads to deeper understanding. Plus, your expert colleague can point out any misunderstandings you have.

Through repeatedly asking ChatGPT questions and discussing with the development team’s engineers, I managed to write most of the help pages for an engineer-focused authentication feature by myself within two months, and even ran online support sessions for our engineer-focused service solo. There’s no way I could have achieved that on my own.

In Closing

I’ve talked about the mindset and tips for domain understanding, but honestly, once you try it, you’ll see that understanding a new domain can be quite fun. Discovering unknown territories as part of your job feels a bit like an adventure. By designing security products, I ended up learning a lot about protocols and authentication mechanisms in about two months.

As a result, I’ve become less intimidated by engineering. I even rebuilt my personal portfolio site using Next.js and p5.js, and during support for a feature under development, I was able to identify some issues, come up with improvement ideas, and implement them myself.

Understanding the domain for an engineer-oriented B2B service is obviously essential for delivering value to users, but it also expands a designer’s perspective and skill set. It’s a triple win at least! If you’ve read this article and thought, “I’d love to design an engineer-focused product,” feel free to contact me on LinkedIn!