When my designs did not go into production…
Background
In June I was designing the user experience of two of the biggest modules of the Cuddle admin side “Users and Groups Management” and “Data Authorization”.
The scope of designing administrator modules in simple terms involved managing users, groups and assigning them appropriate data access permissions. Business data is very sensitive for an organization and data needs to be made available to its users very carefully. The “Data Authorization” scope was not only vast but very complex in terms of defining user or group access at business transaction, measure, attribute and business object level. E.g. Based on user data permissions, Cuddle user will see either “Region West, All Stores and All Brands” data or only specific “Store Walmart” or “Brand Tide” level data.
All teams including Product management, Engineering, UX and Customer Success Team started discussing and brain storming the two big module related business requirements and user stories. The multiple long informal / formal series of discussions /meetings related to complex user journeys, design concepts, feedback leading to iterations, technical challenges kept the team temperature rising high and body adrenaline moving fast. The scope complexity and design work seemed never ending. I had sleepless nights over “Data authorization” topic and valid / invalid permission scenarios.
After multiple iterations and feedback sessions I came up with final design deliverables, Sketch and Invision prototypes for Managing users, Managing Groups and Managing Data Authorizations /Permissions
The Bad:
After handing off the final designs, I was super excited! Because, the scope was quite huge, the release spread across many sprints. I couldn’t wait for development to finish and see it live on production. Few sprints went by but there was no sign of this project — it wasn’t prioritized. During the planning of one such sprint, we learned that the project has been parked indefinitely.
I conveyed my disappointment to my team members and to the leadership team. I was angry. Frustrated. We started with so much energy, we put in so much work knowing that this is going to be real; why was there a sudden change? Why were we not kept in loop early on when anticipated?
I spent the next few days discussing with other members who worked together on this.
It became evident that we did not have enough resources in engineering team to pick this up given the impact it’d create versus other projects.
The team member in me understood. It’s a startup, it happens. But, the designer inside, upset. I still wanted to see it go live. I still wanted the users to use it, give feedback — good, bad.
What we could have done better:
Discussions on both happy and unhappy design scenarios/activities are essential
We needed to talk about dropping a project with equal transparency as we do with a new, meaty project. This paired with some visibility of what the future roadmap looks like is always helpful.
Design activity is not over unless it delivered
Delivery could mean it is live on production and we have engagement on it. It could also mean, in this context, that we can come to some closure — a) documented, to pick up later. b) designed, parked for a later sprint and so on and such. So, as much as we get excited for a well released feature — followed by looking at data, doing qualitative research, etc. We should also gracefully talk and discuss about the ones we halt/ park.
The Good:
Initially when I used to reflect back on my Admin related design work, I used to get more of negative emotions. As time passed, I started realizing some of the important aspects of this design work
Learnings are valuable
I received great learnings out of this painful exercise. Not only my domain and business knowledge enhanced but the experience of dealing with complexity and arriving at simple and meaningful design solutions fostered my confidence to a great extent.
Documentation is important
The structured design deliverables and related communication help UX and Engineering teams to refer or to reuse the design deliverables work in future.
Light at the end of the tunnel
After five months, we prioritized and released the first few phases of the project. Today, the project is live!
