How I designed a web app in a month
Aligning a Design Team with Deadline for a Critical Product.
I was recently brought on to a young design team, without processes set up yet, as a Product Designer. We were given a goal — create a Web App by the end of the month. After talking myself off the ledge of this daunting task, I started to strategize.
As my previous experience in Project Management kicked in, I knew we had to make a plan of attack. First by defining exactly what the founder meant by Web App — what was the MVP/ Final deliverable? I wanted to make sure we were all aligned on the full scope. I found this Web App was a very lean MVP with 2 main experiences; onboarding and event management.
Next, I wanted to get a better understanding of the timeline — Why was the deadline at the end of the month? We found that for the developers to be able to hit their deadline which was set because the Web App was going to roll out with other updates and presented to our biggest client. Client = big deal = no budge in the timeline.
Finally, because there was a cross- functional team in the meeting, I wanted to make sure that everyone understood the terms we were using. I created small graphics so we were all aligned and able to communicate efficiently about different design processes.
With our unknowns and constraints defined. We started with the design team’s ideal design process for this project if there were no constraints — which as it should, included a lot of iteration, catch fails, research and time.
Then we started assigning dates and cutting corners where we felt was possible. Like I mentioned before, this isn't ideal but its real and we made sure to communicate the risks.
This is the work flow I came up with and with a few iterations from the design team— we were able to agree on it. Even though it isn't explicitly mentioned, throughout this process, there would be constant communication throughout the entire team of designers and developers to ensure the final product was buildable.
After we decided on the milestones and design plan, we took a step back and looked at the bigger picture — How might we design the MVP in sprints? We decided breaking up the MVP into smaller handoffs to the developer — therefore they could build the part of the MVP that we had just finished designing, while we started designing the next experience.
We decided that we would group the experiences into user flows, and build them out utilizing this two week design sprint. This month, we are building out the “Create Event” experience. If all goes to plan, starting January 28th, we will begin the “New User Onboarding” experience and so on and so forth.
We have an amazing team and I truly believe we can do anything we set our minds to, but I am with deadlines I am nervous to set our young team up for failure or create burn-out from over working to hit deadlines.
Development of this Web App is for an internship I am in called iContribute. We are a team of young designers, developers, founders, and project managers looking to get experience and contribute to a better world. Our product help connects students to local volunteer opportunities.
