Design Process: Feedback
At WhooosReading, we started our design (and product) process from scratch. For a quick moving, small, and distributed team, we’ve come up with some really productive and valuable design workflows/activities. I am excited to start sharing some of our process.
(I know what you’re thinking- ”I work at a startup and we have what we have and ain’t nobody got time for processes.” I used to think the same way and we didn’t have time either but it ultimately saves you more time and energy.)
It seems like since the very beginning, we’ve had a constant stream of feedback flowing from our users. Whether it be through an in-site form, emails, or phone calls, we’ve been able to hear regularly from our users. We take their feedback seriously. This is why we created Feedback Fridays.
Who: The entire company (sales, support, success, devs, design).
What: Feedback Fridays (weekly meeting).
Where: Group (remote) meeting (video conference call).
When: Every Friday (duh).
Why: Feedback is crucial for meeting our users’ wants and needs.
How: (this is what our meetings look like)
Collecting Feedback. During the week, feedback items trickle in (usually via email). Our team then inputs the feedback into a Google Form:
And after some magic (thank you Zapier), we get these items integrated into our Slack Feedback channel like so:
This is really nice for two reasons:
- It makes it easy for the presenter to sort through all the items.
- It gives everyone an idea of how the week is going before we get to the meeting on Friday (don’t worry, there’s still always a surprise or two).
Follow Up. We review the feedback actions (suggested at last week’s meeting) implemented during the week. The idea being, that everyone should know the status of the feedback items that were discussed last.
Feedback Presentation. Our Feedback Fridays presenter lists the items that came in that we might want to take action on. These are usually items that are very serious in nature and or mentioned by numerous users.
Discussion and Brainstorming. First, we discuss whether action(s) should be taken for a given item. Generally, those with the closest connection to the item (i.e. account managers hearing from users) will discuss how they perceive the problem-taking into account the past, present, and future. We then brainstorm as a group different solutions and conclude with action steps we can take.
This process has worked well for us. We are often able to implement all the feedback actions in a week’s time. In the first wave of a dev release this has been really effective in enabling us to move quickly and patch things up while its still fresh. Feedback Friday is generally pretty quick and highly actionable,. Oh, and it has a fun name too :) .
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