To achieve success at an org level, Design needs to deliver consistently. For that, designers have to be armed with a process or framework that can be relied upon.
A robust process to practice the craft
Inspite of hiring the best talents, often times they fall short due to lack of consistency and efficiency in the design process. My role is to understand the strengths and gaps in a design team and set up robust processes and frameworks that will help every individual designer design better, faster and more importantly feel empowered to push the craft to the next level. Every team and organisation and product requires modification in the Design Framework but creating and maintaining one ensure designers feel are able to contribute to their full potential.
My Journey as a Design Manager
I am currently Director of UX Design and lead a team of designers at Roposo. The team consists of super talented and passionate Senior and Junior Product designers, UX researchers, Motion Graphic designers and Graphic designers. Here is a glimpse of some of the milestones and achievements we have achieved as a team and also some of my personal on-going learnings.
The importance of a Design Process
As soon as I took over the team, I realised that while the designer were all individually capable and competent, there was a need for a design process that needed to be set up.
The next step was to define the design process and get buy in from different stakeholders ( PMs and EMs). This is the process which we follow as a team for each of the features we will ship, so roles, timelines can be set and communicated within the team and to PMs and EMs.
The process starts with a kick off meeting where all stakeholders meet and discuss and understand the scope of the project from the PMs. This is followed by the research phase and ideation, ideally user testing should start as early as possible so the design process is robust and everyone is on the same page.
Important Note: This process is to be followed only for larger features and each of these steps can be discussed and discarded or picked depending on the requirement ( to be discussed in the kick off meeting). For eg. a small bug fix will go directly from Screen to Zeplin
Earlier the process was staggered and broken. Although the designers were working very hard to ensure that the designs were completed on time, the lack of information was causing delays and lots of rework. The product managers would hunt (literally) for the designers who had bandwidth and then proceed to explain the task to them.
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The Setbacks of the process
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Operational - Difficulty in estimating the time taken to complete tasks
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Technical - Lack of clarity on the end goal of a design
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Psychological - Designers often felt unsatisfied and rushed
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External - Hiring or onboarding new designers or PM's into the process was cumbersome and seemed like we worked in a hap hazard manner
A more inclusive and user-centric approach coupled with the fact that designers now felt more in control.
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The key aspects of the process were
1. Discover - Identify and understand the problem before approaching it simply to provide screens or flows
2. Design and peer review - While designing screens, a basic concept and peer reviews brings out the best in designers
3. Handover for dev - Changes based on the basic concept testing followed by a handover for developement
4. Validation and Feedback - Once the design is released, ensure that the feedback loop is closed using both Qualitative (eg. user interviews) and quantitative (eg. Analytics) methods if possible
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Other Takeaways
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Collaboration over task completion - Design needs to involve a discussion where data and existing user insights are discussed BEFORE the designer starts working to ensure that designers understand where the problem is coming from.
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Involve UXR from day 0 of the design process - For larger design pieces, its crucial that researchers are aware of the goings on in the design so that the insights from the usability feedback sessions take into considerations the why. Recommendations are much richer this way. This is of-course more difficult to execute but it gives much better results.