Creating useful products

Understand to empathize with customers and users:

• Routinely talk to them to uncover their true challenges and reveal opportunities within the problem space and why they are important, what are we enabling them to accomplish and how are they doing things now so that we can digitize and streamline their workflow (shout out: Teresa Torres)

• Shadow them to see what they really do and think, to truly empathize with their challenges and understand their goals

• Funnel insights from across the business into the product org, leverage market research, watch sales and customer success calls – everyone who interacts with customers and users has a unique perspective of existing challenges

• Capture in-product feedback by enabling user’s to report bugs or share enhancement ideas, use surveys to capture usability sentiment, and add links for user to schedule calls with us

Refine our understanding of their experiences:

• Map our user’s journey, from their perspective, including all actors and consider outside/backstage influences for a holistic view

• Monitor product usage data to identify bottlenecks and behavior patterns

• Audit the product experience and compare to other products to see what they are doing, how they’re doing it to learn potential user expectations or bias, read reviews to see what trends to follow or avoid

• Research best practices to uncover expected user behavioral patterns and employ heuristics

Target opportunities to create change:

• State the problem(s) we are trying to solve from our user’s perspective and why it is important to our customers, users, and our business (Answer who has the problem, what is the problem, how do we know it’s a problem, when do we need a solution, etc.)

• Identify constraints that should be considered like timing or technologies (using APIs, iFrames, React, etc.)

• Define what success looks like aka the thing(s) our solution will enable users to accomplish and how to measure it so we can align, prioritize, and validate our decisions

• Brainstorm using white boarding tools and visuals like screenshots or sketches to stimulate conversation and increase understanding because words can be blurry

• Prioritize ideas using frameworks like impact/effort matrix, the MoSCow method, dot voting, and affinity mapping

• Agree on our solution and test assumptions as needed

Design, build, measure, and iterate:

• Document everything, especially key decisions because no one will remember

• Define the information architecture and decide if anything needs to change to streamline the experience based on the user’s journey map and tech constraints

• Start with wireframes to confirm team alignment and maintain a long-term mindset so we have strategic path forward and are considering the full affects of the changes

• Align to the design system for consistency and brand loyalty

• Be intentional with copy because words are a core part of our user’s experience

• Thoughtfully iterate designs infusing design principles, best practices, heuristics, accessibility, and interaction patterns

• Share often with other designers, product, engineering, go-to-market teams, customer success, etc., and be able to explain ‘your why’ – designs are conversation stimulates meant to inspire, educate, and question ourselves, ensuring we are creating solutions that tackle customer, user, and business needs so we prioritize and position the best solutions

• User test with prototypes to understand user behaviors and prioritize solutions, sharing your findings with everyone

• Establish a handoff processes, but involve everyone throughout the process so there aren’t any surprises – handoff should be more about specs and design system alignment

• Establish a quality assurance process where we walk through the experience as a user and confirm parity between the designs/prototypes and the environment because details matter

Creating effective teams

Understand to empathize with each other:

• Retro routinely to learn what to start doing, stop doing, continue doing, so we know what motivates and drains us, and make time to celebrate our wins

• 1:1s are for listening to your direct reports so you can give them what they need to be successful ie: advice, resources, and growth strategies

• Team health matrix and check-ins to foster team building, collective development, and awareness of any gaps we have or resources we need, growth opportunities, and ownership

• Career health check-ins to meet people where they are – get to know them and where they want to go so we know how to support one another, and how to give and receive feedback constructively

Create rhythms that foster collaboration, compare efficiencies, adapt together overtime:

• Establish product team-wide process so we know how we fit together – include roles, responsibilities, and align ownership areas to strengths because products are created differently at every organization so this helps everyone align expectations

• Centralize resources and documentation

• Track productivity and work quality, and establish a meaningful scoring and backlog process

• Establish messaging and documentation patterns so updates are centralized in tickets, Figma comments, and or slack/Teams so it’s easy to track and follow up

• Establish a core set of design principles that align to your company’s mission and business goals to act as a north star standard for every experience we create

• Establish design systems and copy guidelines include well researched usage guidelines that emphasis purpose, craft, quality, and usability, and improve engineering alignment with tokens and easily understood naming conventions (not just component libraries or UI Kits)

• Schedule product trio check-ins to align, ensuring productivity and building camaraderie within the team; but be talking and sharing often by sending links to loom videos of designs to watch in advance of meetings so meetings are productive

• External design reviews to pull in perspectives across the business ensuring everyone speaks in user-centric ways

Promote learning and challenge ideas to grow:

• Internal design reviews so designers have a safe space to improve presentation skills, discuss strategy and best practices, and ensure design system adherence and one voice messaging – this also allows our products to work more efficiently together

• Prioritize learning by sharing and questioning design components, patterns, usability trends, ethical and accessible designs, creative ideas, processes, and tool updates

  • Host learning sessions, swap memes/gifs, create channels that are fun and inclusive

Process looks different everywhere – it must involve everyone so it can evolve with the everyone. This ensures process adoption and personal accountability.

These assets have helped my teams and I ensure thoughtfulness across every step in the discovery process from generative to formative research.