This week in UX & Product Management — 26 Mar
05 / Next Generation of Design Leaders, How to Shape Remarkable Products, Design Doesn’t Scale, Never a Good Time to Do Research
Welcome to Issue 05!
I remember three years ago when Bob Baxley got on stage at Front and told the community we needed 159,000 designers. So it’s no surprise when I hear Kate Aronowitz get up and tell us that there are 66,000 design leadership roles waiting to be filled on LinkedIn. Companies need them and designers need to step up. It has been a long road to earn a seat at the table, now we need to not mess it up. Why are we not stepping up? If you’re a design leader now, what can you do to help those you lead eventually take our place?
Some might think that design is and always will be subservient to other organizations — telling them that design doesn’t have a place in the room where it happens, that design doesn’t scale. But that’s not true. Only the best companies understand that design plays a vital role in the success of products today. If there is a voice for design at the vision, strategy, and execution level, the company has a strong advantage. It’s no longer an afterthought as a result of the process of planning and creation. It’s intentional.
When you’ve got the organizational structure and leadership in place, growth can happen. It means the executives are focused on vision: VP’s on strategy, directors on management and teams on execution. This has to happen cross-functionally starting at the executive level down through the business, design, and development organizations. Stanley Wood shares a great example of walking through his 5+ year journey scaling design at Spotify and what it took to make it possible.
So much of creating products has to do with shaping and reshaping what we do through experimentation. This is often referred to as “optimization”. To do this effectively the partnership between business, design, and development, organizationally, needs to be in place.
Scott Belsky says…
“The journey of building and endlessly iterating a product or service is a field unto itself, flush with best practices in design, product management, customer research, and psychology…Optimizing the product you’re making is ultimately about making it more human-friendly and accommodating to natural human tendencies.”
Scott Belsky goes on to say…
“Every product or service in your life either helps you spend time or save time. The news channels or shows you watch, the social apps like Facebook and Snapchat that you use, the books you read, and the games you play all compete for how you spend your time.”
Often when building products we start with something simple and people love it. Over time we complicate it. Scott calls this “The Product Life Cycle.”
- Customers flock to a simple product.
- The product adds new features to better serve customers and grow the business.
- Product gets complicated.
- Customers flock to another simple product.
Keeping products simple is the hardest thing to do. When we start we’re excited to put the product out in the world at its simplest form. Once its out we should lean into research and make very calculated changes moving forward. Research often never happens until it’s too late. Erika Hall puts it well…
Myth: There is a right time to do design research
The time might be next quarter, after this release, when the designers have some downtime, when the budget has some room, if the prototype doesn’t test well, or last year before we made that terrible assumption that tanked our business. It’s usually any time but, you know, nowish.
The goal should be to do research constantly so that we can make well-informed decisions as we try to decide whether what we plan to improve in the product is an actual improvement according to the business and the users.
— Ben Peck
*Please let us know of anything else you think would be valuable to share in the newsletter.
// Spotlight
The Next Generation of Design Leaders Needs Your Help
“How long will you stay in your current position? Do you have the desire to build a team? When you leave, is there someone to take your place?…There’s never been a better time to be in design, but designers are exhausted and shunning the step up to management. There are currently more than 66,000 vacant design leadership roles on LinkedIn; demand is clearly outstripping supply.”
“She also demanded that design leaders make more of an effort to mentor the next generation — not by grand gestures, but by doing small things like giving people a chance on more challenging work or inviting them to important meetings.”
Kate Aronowitz at Fortune’s Brainstorm Design conference
// Articles
Product ⟶
We’re all in the messy middle.
How to Shape Remarkable Products in the Messy Middle of Building Startups
“He covers an expansive range of topics, from constructing teams (“If you avoid folks who are polarizing, you avoid bold outcomes”) to culture and tools (“Be frugal with everything except your bed, your chair, your space, and your team”) to anchoring to your customers (“empathy and humility before passion”).”
UX ⟶
How to scale design.
Design Doesn’t Scale.
“Every week, for 1-hour, two-designers from each product mission and the GLUE team, meet to share context on whatever they’re working on that will have consequence for the others. GLUE might share updates on guidelines, while a feature designer might want to align on a new design they’re working on. Often these updates will result in a friendly-nod to acknowledge we’re aligned, or a workshop to resolve any conflicts in the design direction. This meeting has helped break down silos, encourage collaboration, and amplify a shared sense of ownership for the overall experience.
…when you invest in aligning and co-ordinating designers, design does scale.”
Research ⟶
Research constantly.
It’s Never a Good Time to Do Research
“Myth: There is a right time to do design research
The time might be next quarter, after this release, when the designers have some downtime, when the budget has some room, if the prototype doesn’t test well, or last year before we made that terrible assumption that tanked our business. It’s usually any time but, you know, nowish.
In our daily lives, we are doing research constantly. This is why Alphabet Inc. is worth $779 billion. Query formation is the most critical life skill that no one talks about.”
// Upcoming Public Workshops
Introduction to Design Sprints
BY RICHARD BANFIELD
Boston, MA • MAY 24, 2019
Certified Scrum Product Ownership
BY JEFF PATTON
New York, NY • SEP 05, 2019
// Job Openings
Pluralsight// Principal, Product Management // South Jordan, UT
Apply ⟶
Pluralsight// Product Designer // South Jordan, UT
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Podium// Product Designer // Lehi, UT
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Podium // Sr. Product Manager // Lehi, UT
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Workfront // UX Manager // Lehi, UT
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Workfront // Senior UX Designer // Lehi, UT
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Axis41 // Freelance UI/UX Sr. Manager // Salt Lake City, UT
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Nav // Mobile UX Designer // Draper, UT
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// Annoucements
— TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT
Early bird discounts are only available for the next 3 weeks! Get the discount now while they’re still available!
Early bird passes are $500, that’s 30% off if you purchase before April 1st. It gets even better if you bring your team. Tickets are only $450 each for groups of 10+, which is 35% off on the full price passes.
