Design as a Verb
As I became more familiar with the organization, it was clear that sales was driving priorities. I could coach designers on advocating for the end user and implementing various research methodologies, but if priorities would be dictated from the top down these efforts would be meaningless. I initiated two projects to address these pains.
Project 1 Bridging the priority gap across different departments with the development of Customer Profiles that connected buyer needs to end user jobs-to-be-done.
Project 2 Developing a UX Backlog with the designers that quantified UX neglect in labor and $$$.
Customer segmentation and Buyer JtBD had already been created respectively by the sales and product marketing departments. But there were discrepancies among them and there was no connection between these insights and end user goals which was the biggest priority for Product/Design teams. This tool would help focus conversations and help non product teams understand how what we were building (not new features customers were asking for, but iterations and improvements to existing features and new features based on needs) would contribute to their goals and priorities.
The UX Backlog
We needed a centralized document to captures instances of experience rot across the entire platform. Every designer contributed to this and was open to non-designers as well. The document includes columns for support tickets and JIRA bugs to demonstrate the internal impact of UX debt or operational costs. It also includes columns for % of users impacted to develop a churn projection based on poor usability. This was a an essential data point because as a B2B, churn was a key priority. When sorted the document identifies and prioritize areas of greatest risks which would be added to the backlog
Together, these documents would help communicate the impact of UX to external departments.
Defining design quality within the design team
As we grew the influence of the design team externally, it was essential we aligned internally on what “good” design was. We began exploring internal design metrics like SUS and PURE that prioritize user experience as the essential metric. In the meantime we started conversations with the design team to begin nurturing a culture of strong design. Below are snapshots of a few projects I facilitated with the team.
Team Values/Principles
The development of team values was an opportunity for the team to align on what “good” design means for our team today. The workshop was incredibly insightful in understanding what different designers prioritized and for clarifying ambigous language.
Monthly focus areas kept these themes relevant as well as re-using this language during design crits and 1:1’s.
Asynchronous Retrospectives
A venue for the design team to share insights, suggestions, concerns on how the team was evolving. These were conducted and the end of every quarter and often influenced team OKR’s and individual growth goals. Notable outcomes were peer design sessions and a more visual project tracker.
Frameworks & Templates
Another key outcome of the above activities were templates and frameworks (T&F’s) to drive consistency and reduce time for specific activities. These resources helped facilitate information sharing across designers and elevated the way the team communicated to their cross-functional partners.