Continuous discovery and design craft: how Botify’s design team builds products (2/2)

After discussing continuous discovery activities and the exploration of opportunity spaces as important components of our design approach, I’d like to highlight our commitment to prototyping and design craft. One of our convictions is that design execution is as important as discovery and hypothesis. This is why UI design should be valued more, as it is an integral part of thinking about the user experience.

Articulate proposals and build prototypes

At Botify, creativity and design are not the exclusive domain of designers; they are done in partnership with product managers, developers, internal experts (SDS), and customers. Here are some of the activities that support this approach:

• Ideation workshops (Storyboarding, Crazy 8, 6 to 1),
• User flows,
• Wireframes / prototypes,
• Design critiques.

Rather than the usual sequence of ideation/proposal/prototyping/testing, designer Jean-Louis Frechin suggests an approach that places creative intent at the center and relies on provocation through creation. “To provoke is to challenge what exists, and this generates ideas that push the limits of tolerable risk. It is this shifted look that we try to bring on the opportunities to transform them into proposals”.

Botify’s designers are therefore committed to “making” and prototyping, which is at the heart of their approach. The prototype is not only intended to be confronted with users during tests or to be a support for collecting feedback, it embodies “thinking by doing”, in reference to Jean Prouvé. The expression of ideas and opportunities are not separated from their formal realization, linked to a “design gesture” (like an architectural gesture). Stéphane Vial described it as a “creative skill” specific to the designer:

“A project in the process of being made, they are scenarios in the process of taking shape thanks to diagrams, plans, sketches, models, patterns, zonings, storyboards, wireframes, etc. […] the designer’s art of making is an art of prototyping.”

We have set up a design critique ritual to discuss the proposals and improve them collectively. In dialogue with the developers, the prototype can be adjusted according to the constraints and reworked according to new technical opportunities.

Testing working hypotheses and imagining formal proposals

At Botify, we frequently test and measure the performance and attractiveness of the design proposals we provide. Testing does not occur at the end of the development cycle but as early as possible and on several occasions. It is mobilized as much to observe our users’ behavior, reveal the problems of use encountered, and open new opportunities.

We launch small-scale tests to de-risk working hypotheses as quickly as possible, requiring no more than 2 or 3 days. By failing more rapidly, we limit the investment of time and effort to move on to the following opportunities. In our toolbox, two techniques are particularly interesting: unmoderated testing and rapid surveys. As confidence grows, we can consider tests and surveys with larger user panels.

Our tools for this stage help to instruct the resolution of the puzzle:

• Test sessions,
• Synthesis of lessons learned (report),
• Standardized questionnaires (SUS, UEQ, SEQ),
• Design scorecard.

There is no separation between the architecture of the prototype and the “formal modeling of ideas” of the interface, its look and feel. Jean-Louis Frechin describes it as “what it does, what we see, what we feel, how we use it”. Moreover, we know that the attractiveness of the product strongly conditions the perception of its usability.

To quote Matthieu Savary from User Studio, we consider the form as “the main vector of desire and value creation.” UI design is a critical activity that takes on its full importance, mainly through the construction of our Design System and through the care taken in its execution. Our team is in constant dialogue with the Brand & Experience Marketing team, which promotes our brand identity by striking the right balance between standardization (what is familiar and reassuring) and differentiation (what expresses our deep identity).

We favor a holistic, open, and exploratory approach in the team. We choose to develop a critical strategy to the many tools at our disposal because we do not believe in the power of recipes. Above all, design is not a method but, first and foremost, a creative activity that uses the tension between rationality and artistic sensitivity; it always serves the creation of business and usage value. By moving away from a formatted approach, we favor an adaptive method based on the capacity for innovation in Botify’s DNA.

But this approach is not confining. To quote Frechin, “design has the choice between an inventive and creative approach, rational and constructed, according to the project cycles.”

We believe that design is a tool to bridge the gap between technology and usage. This is our ambition for our joint project with the product team and engineering.

Our Design Team recruits

We are looking for a Senior UX/UI Designer with at least 7 years of experience to lead the user research, prototyping, and interface design activities for one of our squads.

We are also looking for a UX/UI Designer with at least 3 years of experience to join the Botify Activation team.

References

Frechin, Jean-Louis, Le Design de choses à l’heure du numérique, FYP, 2019

Frechin, Jean-Louis, « Pour un design de l’offre », Les Échos, 2018

Savary, Matthieu, « Le design, une méthode ? », User Studio, 2018

Vial, Stéphane, “Le geste de design et son effet : vers une philosophie du design”. Figures de l’art, n° 25, 93–105, 2013

Briggs, Pamela, Patrick, Andrew S., « Designing Systems that People Will Trust », Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems That People Can Use, O’Reilly, 2005

Torres, Teresa, Continuous Discovery Habits, Product Talk LLC, 2021