Creating Momentum with Emergent Design
When starting a new digital project you might find yourself caught in endless meetings around project goals, team selection, project timelines, technology roadmaps, or branding and mission statements. Before you know it, a couple of months have gone by and you really haven’t tackled the problem and your deadline is fast approaching and you are scrambling to deliver.
How can you prevent this?
How can you create momentum on a project right from go?
You should start by asking: Where do 80% of the users spend 80% of their time?
Ask the right questions
Here are a few questions you can ask to gather the data you need:
- If a current website or app exists, are there any analytics?
- Are there phone or call logs from a call center that can be reviewed?
- Can you do user interviews to help gather this answer?
- How does the process currently work? Where is it slow?
- How is the problem currently being solved? Where is the bottleneck?
Once you have identified this core problem, your first task as a team would be to work on it.
Your role in the solution
Designer: You will focus on UX (not visual design) and work with a monochromatic style to iterate as much as necessary to solve the core problem. Make sure you still label headings and components so that styles can be easily updated in future stages of design.
Developer: You are tackling the most complex/important part of the project upfront. Your goal is to create a solid foundation with great test coverage. You can focus on integrating with other components later in the development process and refactoring the code as necessary. By working in this manner you front-load the effort on the project rather than cramming it in close to the end.
Project Manager: You have noticed projects are usually short on time close to the launch date. That’s when one bug in a core component can really throw a project off track. By working on the core problem upfront, you front-load the effort on the project. Additionally, since the core of the project is built early it goes through multiple rounds of testing as the project evolves. Doing so should make it more stable and de-risk the project.
Once you have momentum, take a step back
After a few sprints (agile sprints) of working on this problem, you can go back and add branding or refactor the code as necessary to extend it for other components that need to attach to the code. Always keep in mind to build the smallest possible chunk and let the design emerge until you hit your first production release.
Conclusion
Let’s sum it up. While working on new projects that involve both design and development, focus on the problem that affects most users most of the time. Don’t get lost in lengthy design and branding sprints in the beginning. Create momentum on your project and let the design emerge.
