Four Ways to Keep the Big Picture UX in Mind
Or, “The Patient on the Table”
by Jeff Kraemer, Principal UX Designer at FreshBooks
Imagine you’re a surgeon operating on a kidney. You’re focused intently on that kidney, but you can’t forget there’s a whole patient beneath the white sheet on that table. You’re not looking at the lungs, or the heart. You’ve got a kidney to transplant, friend, and that’s plenty. But if you don’t monitor the heart and lungs — if you don’t remember that there’s a whole patient under that white sheet — you’ve got a well-installed kidney in a cadaver.
Similarly, UX designers sometimes take on a design problem and apply too much focus, to the exclusion of the overall user experience. That might stem from the way work is siloed in their organization, or simply a designer’s inexperience — but too much focus on the immediate design problem can lead them to forget about where their work fits in to the big picture. And that can result in a flatline design.
This issue manifests in big ways and small. It could be a nice new button style that’s inconsistent with other buttons on the website, which might gradually lead to a Frankensite. Or it could be a (big, expensive) new feature that hasn’t been properly integrated into the user’s workflow, which neuters what might’ve been a much-improved user experience. The classic information architecture example? “Let’s put a link to it in the global nav.”
So, how does FreshBooks avoid the “patient on the table” problem?
1. Focus On The Flow
Designing pages, or elements on a page, without designing the entire user flow is a classic UX pitfall. Basically, that’s confusing the UI with the UX. At FreshBooks, we use a few tools to steer clear of this problem:
We use task flow diagrams and scenarios that describe how users will get to the feature we’re working on, and what comes after using it. Of course this is pretty standard, but it’s important to resist the temptation to cut corners and jump directly to the UI design.
Every Thursday is testing day at FreshBooks, and when we conduct usability tests of our designs, we test scenarios and flows, not just screens. The design leaders at the table are responsible for calling this out, too — we’ll throw out test results if they don’t encompass a realistic user flow.
If we’re modifying a modal window that lets users, say, edit a message to a customer, we won’t simply test the modal. We’ll test how users get to the Invoice section of the app, whether and how they trigger the modal, how they interact with it, and what they do when their task is complete.
And once the results are in, we get together as a team to discuss them.
2. Talk To Each Other
The surgeon’s not alone in the operating room. There’s a team working together, and they talk to each other about critical information (one hopes!).
At FreshBooks, we have regular meetings to make sure we’re sharing information within and across teams. We’re not perfect at it, and we’ve never seen a company that is, but here’s how we manage information flow.
Product development is organized by tribes — groups that have several teams, working towards a common goal. Each team has (at least) a product manager, a scrum master, developers, a QA analyst, and a designer. And each team follows our Lean UX process:
- Monday, we have design charrettes. Team members sketch potential solutions to the design problem and set a hypothesis to test.
- Tuesday, we have circles — meetings to review work in progress.
- Wednesday, we prototype.
- Thursday, we test.
- Friday, we have another circle to review the test results.
Our circles are essential to keeping an eye on the bigger picture UX. Circles include all the tribe’s designers and product managers. This way, the PM’s and other designers can call out potential problems or inconsistencies that we might miss when our heads are in Sketch or Illustrator. And since, at FreshBooks, every new employee spends their first month as part of the support team, everybody’s very familiar with the product and its patterns.
The entire FreshBooks design team also meets for weekly critiques, splitting off from our separate teams and coming together to put our work in front of (only) other designers. That, too, helps us stay abreast of what each team is working on, and where our project fits in. And our fellow designers will help us stay on pattern, and keep track of larger UX flows and goals.
Some workplaces appoint someone to keep a team aware of the organizational vision and strategy, and how their work fits within it. Usually, that’s a UX Manager, UX Director, or Creative Director. We have those roles too, but nothing tops great group dynamics.
3. Follow Patterns
In our weekly design charrettes, we come to the table with some key information. Once we’ve defined the problem we’re trying to solve, we ask, “How have we…?” In other words, have we already solved this problem? Are there existing patterns in the app that we can re-use?
We also ask, “How have others…?” That is, we look at how others have solved a similar problem. Are there patterns that have worked for others that we might adopt?
We use those patterns as inspiration for the next step when we ask, “How might we…?” That question is a powerful conversation-starter that can spur innovative thinking.
So whatever our team comes up with is grounded in patterns — both within the context of our site and within our competitive landscape.
4. Monitor and Adjust
Our Lean UX process keeps us continuously testing and delivering. This means that surprises — and there are always surprises — are just part of the workflow.
We monitor — both during our design sprints and after we launch, through metrics — and we adjust the design when we find an issue. Part of the beauty of Lean UX is that we know we’re never locked into one unsuccessful idea.
So, that link to the blog in the global nav that seemed so important a couple of months ago? Is anyone clicking on it? Is it distracting users from other links in the nav? Can we test that?
The Patient Lives!
The fact is, we all get fixated on what’s in front of us.
This is necessary; as designers, we need focus. We’re asked to perform surgery, and that white sheet and bright light help us do our best work.
But at FreshBooks we believe in a healthy balance — designers can introduce changes to the user experience while harmonizing with the overall experience. They find ways to make changes seamless, even delightful, for our users.
Our team has found that the key to keeping the big picture UX in mind is collaboration. We’ve found that tools and practices that keep us talking and sharing with one another have helped us at every step of the design process.
We still work on improving this every day, and we’d love to hear how others keep the big picture UX in mind.
Jeff Kraemer is a Principal UX Designer at FreshBooks.
