Notes on quality

We often talk about quality in design. And sometimes it can be that simple to lift it up. Simply saying the thing: the quality bar is not where we want it to be. Then giving permission: we want you to do this, and we have your back. Now let’s run!

We say what we mean, and mean what we say

There are other ways to raise the oft-referenced, but rarely defined quality bar — but first, what is it? What is good design? Though this question gets dragged out a fair bit for debate, it isn’t something you need to overthink. Quality is often something hard to talk about, but easy to experience. When you use it, it works; when you look at it, it’s beautiful; when you pick it up, it feels good. We do this together in our teams, as we’re forming our design culture together. In fact you’re probably doing it already!

When we’re turning a problem over and over in critique (why doesn’t this flow feel good, does anyone else feel that weird cognitive hiccup?), or digging into the seemingly trivial details of a button design in a Slack thread (what’s with the corners, why is that shine layer interacting with the corner radius like that?), or questioning the direction an experience has taken (why are we focusing on building rules from scratch in a form, have we considered building them off of an example order instead?) we are rigorously defining what quality means to us in different ways using meaningful, concrete examples.

Though the content of these discussions can vary wildly, the qualities of these interactions are distinct and consistent. You’ll often find:

• A respect for the craft of design
• A deep curiosity for the work
• The honing of strong opinions, but the openness to see from new perspectives and change those opinions based on new context
• The ability to make connections across seemingly disparate ideas and make a leap to something novel and exciting.
• Seeing these qualities come together in debate — whether in person, on a call, or in a Slack thread — can be absolutely magical.

Great design teams can look wildly different from one another. But there are some similar qualities and practices that make producing quality work easier and more predictable. Here are a few I’ve found to hold true across a number of those teams over the years.

Make the work good, wherever it leads

The team is not precious about who owns what, or stepping on each other’s toes, but follows the threads of the work wherever it leads and insists on quality for every aspect of the project. The work must be good is a given, and an essential part of every day, like eating or sleeping. This is why we come to work — to make good things. And we do what we need to — push pixels, write words, influence other teams, establish new working relationships, write persuasive notes 😉 — to make that happen.

Critique is high-standard, low-ego

Critique happens regularly, without ego, and everyone on the team is focused on tirelessly improving the quality of the work together. Great critique involves the whole team giving up their personal attributions or attachments to the project, and focusing on diagnosing any issues with the work, and opportunities for making it better. This is a hallmark of great teams from Pixar to the Navy SEALs — a story well told in the Culture Code, which I highly recommend (thanks, Jess Erickson!).

Regularly zoom in and out

Regularly asking “what’s the bigger picture?,” to make sure we’re not optimizing the wrong approach. This is a common problem where the team gets focused on improving at a lower altitude, when they’ve actually made a critical mistake at a higher altitude.

Align to stakeholders, use them as a wedge for quality

When you get pushback on the priority of shipping quality, sometimes the question “do you think [UX leader] will be OK with this?” is enough to get everyone oriented on that priority. When it isn’t enough, call us in to unblock you. Being highly aligned with your UX stakeholders makes us easy to deploy in this way.

Make a habit of using the final product

Always remember that users don’t use your Figmas. The real experience you ship is in the product. When you treat prod as the canonical experience you’re responsible for, it unlocks a whole new level of quality. Spend more time in real product dog fooding, feeling the experience for real (workflows, animations, performance and all), and cataloging quality issues. And when you ship a new thing, pull in the whole UX team on Slack to help you get fresh eyes, and QA together as a team quality bar-raising activity.

Validating and refining

All of these practices and efforts leverage our diverse experiences, context, and perspectives to create stronger opinions about UX quality in our product. Those strong opinions help us come out of the gate with the best possible v1 baseline UX we can produce.

From there we can validate, refute, and inform that opinion with qualitative and quantitative testing and data. This feedback loop is essential to better understanding our world, but the machine is only as good as the input fed in at the front end — the better the options we feed in, the higher we can lift from there.

Catch each other when we’re tired

Everyone gets tired sometimes. We work hard every day, and often have to push to make what we value happen, sometimes through many obstacles. So you may push for quality all week, and then one day hit one too many speed bumps and say “I guess this is good enough, I’m going to let this one go.” This is where being on a team that values quality together, and agrees to catch each other when we’re tired is so important. Your teammates can step in here and help you give that extra push that day and say “hey, this isn’t meeting our bar, and I’m going to insist on this for you today.” Having this group alignment and support — knowing you’ll catch each other when you stumble, and always hold that same high bar — this is one of the many unlocks of a highly-aligned team.

I’ve been lucky to work with some incredibly high performing teams over the years — many of them here at Shopify. Because it’s such a thrill to be a part of teams like that, I’m always striving and pushing to ride to the crest of those waves again, and again. Identifying these trends has helped me do that repeatedly — I hope it’s also helpful to you, as you seek out those same thrilling waves yourself.