Mighty Morphin Product Design Teams at Startup
Big problems as a designer managing designers at a startup.
One undeniable fact within the product development WORLD is that product designers are SUPERHEROES!
As a product design leader, you’re constantly establishing processes with your teammates, working to sift through thoughts of the future state vs the now, thinking through communication methods that will best engage others, maintaining consistency across multiple projects, & ensuring projects are moving smoothly. Whew! That was a lot huh? I know lol.
Life as a product design leader can be overwhelming no matter your job title but as teams begin to grow especially in design it’s a MUST to try to establish clear team goals that will help put things into perspective. This perspective will help relieve doubt and make sure we’re confident with our decision to focus on specific design improvements centered around those goals or what we like to call them here “OKRS”(Objective Key Results).
Thankfully here at Carputty, we have a good grasp of company-wide & department-level OKRs that will impact the experience for our customers. Those OKRs help us be more intentional with our focus as we continue to take strides in improving the user experience for both consumers and our internal team.
01 | Get the hell out of the way
As we progress as designers it’s an inevitable thing to lose sight of the fun & thought-provoking aspects of design. This happens because we start to focus on delivering quickly to make sure the bottom line(roadmap) isn’t affected, to make an impact quickly, and to ensure we’re not the blockers in any way to developing features.
As a design manager, it’s my job to keep those thoughts at the forefront but to try to pull back on those thoughts at the beginning of a project to ensure the full level of creativity of the team isn’t stifled or discouraged. Designers should have fun and explore different processes to solve very large, complex, and multi-faceted problems with all of the creativity possible.
This is a must even if that means you as a manager have to focus on a fast-turnaround deliverable of Phase I that solves the problem and other designers can focus on the ideal state of Phase II that’s more user-friendly for the customer. Speed & quality per project can definitely get hairy but it’s a process!
Provide Requirements
Try your best to understand the problem before discussing it with your team if it’s shared with you ahead of time. Requirements are needed to help get the ball rolling on projects.
(small-medium) Larger projects can take more effort given the need to wrangle all stakeholders to move forward.
Here’s a list of Design Artifacts that help with some sense of structure here at Carputty.
All of the above documents will undoubtedly grow & evolve as the company evolves.
Provide Some Sort of Design Process:
Over time provide some sort of design process. Design processes for smaller teams are unfortunately always continuously changing until the process is secured across the organization. It’s the wild wild west at startups because most managers have 6+ projects happening at once on top of what they want to actually do to advance the company. To ensure some sense of quality and understanding create a document outlining the design process. As fast as things come up you may miss it at certain steps but try try try not to jump “head-first” into it. “I definitely do this more than I like to admit! It’s a work in progress”.
Establish Feedback Loops
This can be set up in the form of weekly 1:1’s along with being available at all times if questions arise. For the most part, I’ve learned to make sure any and every question is answered as fast as I can answer them no matter if I have the answer or if I need to connect a designer to someone who may have the answer. Do what you can at all times to be helpful and not BLOCK anyone’s creativity/momentum. Of course, things come up but try to prevent long periods of “ghosting” even if you’re busy. It’s literally your job 😂
{ Remove unnecessary meeting times } — Trust your team! You don’t have to go to that meeting!
Encourage taking breaks / Using PTO helps everyone!
Burn-out for designers is at an all-time high due to massive layoffs & technological advancements that have reduced the need for “Full-stack Design Teams”.
For the lucky ones like us here at Carputty, we are able to immerse ourselves deeply into our product’s problems BUT sometimes you need to give your brain a break. Have your teams back and pick up the load if/when you’re needed so, that others can decompress.
02 | Growing is a Must!
Chat with your peers & learn from them
At Carputty, we started our inaugural 2023 Product Design Internship Program.
Given this was the first time a product design intern worked on the Carputty team for a set timeframe I wanted to touch base with my peers to gauge their experience with intern programs in the engineering space here at Carputty.
There were two main trends as it relates to intern programs here:
Varying Experiences from everyone
We’re all learning as we go so the idea of one person knowing it all is a pretty far-fetched idea and can prove to not be the best for team morale.
Sharing experiences that may have worked at other jobs can prove to be very helpful for advancing your team. This was especially been helpful as we work to build a more ADA-compliant product and gather qualitative insights with customer research.
As a team, we’ve determined the best steps forward based on previous experiences from my peers in Product, Engineering, Marketing, Business Development, and Project Management. We’re confident this will help us improve our process for the better. This wouldn’t have happened without chatting with everyone and I truly appreciate it.
03 | Highlight the wins & support each other as much as possible!
No matter how big or small be sure to call out what we’ve done. Design matters just as much as any other area of focus.
Design Accomplishments
Highlight the projects that were completed, in progress, and coming up to ensure all of your team's hard work is seen. It can be annoying as you pour yourself into work and give it your all to then see it’s not received well.
- Shoutout the wins!
- Share the fun!
In conclusion
As I wrap up this pretty fun article that took me down memory lane, I just want to say a few things.
If you’re a design manager, design leader, designer, or whatever you want to call yourself and you’re currently at a startup? You’ve got this!
I’m learning daily that I don’t know anything while also knowing A LOT! As long as I lead with positivity and continue to give it my all then we’ll be a A+ team! World-class design team, here we come!
Thank you for reading this article! Be on the lookout for end-of-Q3 Design Articles from the Carputty Product Design Team! ❤️⭐️
