11 Principles for Startup Design Teams
These help the Reverb.com design team turn it up to 11. Why do these matter? Because…
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” - Peter Drucker
1. Get An Customer Perspective Early & Often
Don’t just “talk to customers”, listen to customers. Great products start with deep insight into customer needs and mental models. Reduce the amount of time between wondering how people will perceive and use something and knowing how people will perceive and use something. Walk a mile in the customer’s shoes. And then walk a few more.
2. Effectively Give Feedback
Tie feedback back to customer and business goals. Help identify assumptions or where the designer might need to go learn more about the customer. Talk about potential issues before prescribing a specific direction. Ask more questions than the number of solutions you provide.
3. Create a Constructive Critique Environment
Set the stage by explaining goals and the types of feedback you’re looking for so people know how to direct their thinking and how to be most helpful. Explain the customer’s journey and demonstrate entire flows, not just one screen. Don’t pitch the design, let people react naturally. If you ask someone for feedback, they’re doing you a favor by giving you their time and attention. Focus on what you can learn from them. Don’t accept “looks good,” rather nudge those critiquing to be specific.
4. Don’t Let Designs Become Precious
Designers who aren’t willing to listen to feedback, or aren’t willing to iterate, or who get defensive when people ask them to explain their design will hold your team back from doing great work. You want people on your team who are willing to try any idea and who build on the ideas of others, rather than consistently champion their own ideas.
5. Focus (on what is important right now vs. later)
Determine what you need to learn in order to make a project successful and hone in on that. Articulate what you are and are not trying to do. Separate what must be done well now from what can be improved later. Saying ‘no’ to features is product design. Constantly ask yourself: “Is this the most valuable thing I could be working on right now?”
6. Formulate Good Experiments
Use data to help create good hypotheses on what to test. Break big hypotheses into small, testable ones. Identify the riskiest assumptions and test those first. Ask what signs you will get back from the market that will let you know if your hypothesis is true. Anchor experiments around a key metric that drives conversion or engagement.
7. Business over Ego
Seek what is best for your business, rather than best for yourself. It’s all about the work and the outcome, not about who designed what. Pursue the right idea over your idea. Be in it for the product and customers, not yourself.
8. Polish the Business Before You Polish the Design
Understand the business goals behind a project and ensure products are useful, useable, and meet business goals before spending too much time increasing the fidelity of a design. Something that converts well is better than something that draws attention to itself. Don’t prematurely optimize before you know something works and is good for the business. It’s better to be obvious than clever (if you have to stop and ask if something is too clever, that usually means it is). Once you know the core experience is good, iterate until you nail the details.
9. Prototype in the Medium of the Final Product
Whenever possible, bring interactive experiences to life using the same tools as used to create the final product. You’ll gain much more confidence in how the UX will feel in a real environment than any smooth (or laggy) prototyping tool. Plus, prototypes in code often use more realistic data and force you to account for screen size and content variations.
10. Collaborate Across the Business
Seek out perspectives from the engineering, marketing, sales, content, and customer service teams to learn more about customers. Learn their workflows and look for opportunities where you can make their jobs easier through improved design.
11. Take Initiative
Last but certainly not least, make improvements that no one has asked you to make. If you see something that’s broken, fix it and ship it. Find where you can uniquely make an impact. Increased responsibility is more often taken than given.
A Note On Experiments
Before starting an experiment, quantify what impact you could have on the bottom line and how many trials you’d need to be sure you’ve made significant impact. When an area of your business doesn’t have enough usage or the current conversion rate is low, you won’t have enough volume to run an A/B tests that reach statistical significance. Or, what you’re working on doesn’t have a large impact on the business, in which case you won’t be able to measure or influence a worthwhile metric.
Experiments should be driven by a hypothesis about the impact you’re trying to make. A smart hypothesis establishes participants (who), context (specific situation and motivation), job they need done (their goal), and a prediction of an outcome (evidence). All of which can be measured. For example:
We believe [customer] in [specific situation] wants to [job they’re trying to complete]. The quickest thing we can do to prove this is true or untrue is [experiment]. We will know we have succeeded when [quantitative/measurable outcome] or [qualitative/observable outcome].
Reverb.com is building the best marketplace for musicians to buy and sell gear on. We’re hiring! See open roles at jobs.reverb.com.
This is post #2 in the Frameworks FTW series. Read the first post about how to build a startup that learns quickly here. If you want to catch all of the posts, follow me on twitter.
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