Three Hard But Important Lessons From a Two Year Design Cycle
“Launching apps, eating snacks.”
That used to be my motto. Back when I was an agency side UX designer, I got to launch a lot — digital campaigns, large scale websites, mobile apps, tv apps, small sites, emerging tech experiences, and so on. Every one of these launches was a huge success. Right? Right!? HA!
And then, I went… client side. Client side, I got to launch an ecosystem’s worth of things: a large scale website, mobile apps, and TV apps. For each of these launches, the numbers spiked and success was celebrated. But then I got to see what happens after the party’s over. When you live with your tech & design decisions for months and years, you really learn what worked and what did not.
These are three hard but important lessons from living with your designs over time.
1. Optimal Design Is a Moving Target
People change, technology changes, culture changes — this is why “being innovative” is more than a shiny buzzy word, it’s pretty critical.
Here is one example from my own journey. I create UX/UI at Gaia, a streaming video platform focused on conscious media. Gaia has over 200K monthly subscribers and a 8K video library that covers topics including yoga, spiritual growth, and paranormal encounters. When we rebuilt and redesigned Gaia.com we had a goal to keep our existing subscribers — so some of our improvements were made with that goal in mind. We updated the global nav, but kept much of the categorization and language the same. We made sure that the display of our recommendation algorithm highlighted the most popular shows. It worked. When we transitioned everyone over to the new experience, there was not a lot of fall out. And then it didn’t work. We started acquiring new people, new people that didn’t value familiarity. The quantitative data told us that we need to accommodate new customers differently, but only talking to them gave us creative direction on how to do so.
What’s the lesson here? Continuous qualitative feedback. Your GA stats and cohort analysis can tell you that a group of users bailed but only when you dedicate time & resources to talking to people, and then really listening to their honest feedback will you understand why. Then, you have the ability to react thoughtfully.
2. Launch Fast & Iterate Has a Downside
Modern flavors of the agile software development cycle promote a launch fast & iterate approach. The upsides are that you can show progress and test your design paradigms early. To be clear, this is a huge upside. The downside is that those iteration cycles can dwindle as priorities shift and your ideas may be left half hatched.
For example, at Gaia we launched a video player feature that allows members to leave hearts along the video player timeline to indicate their favorite moments. We were optimistic about the feature but knew it was an experiment. We made some concessions in the name of getting it out the door. Some member cohorts enjoyed the feature and used it frequently. In fact, they want more out of the feature — they want to leave notes, access their list of favorite moments and share those moments. Other segments of users, including yogis, did not care for the feature and didn’t use it. One can conclude that the feature needs more work.
As a designer, you have the ability to stick with your feature, even after everyone else has moved on. Once you have lived with a design choice, consider what you could have done differently in hindsight, ask people around you for feedback, and of course conduct usability testing whenever possible. It’s pretty cheap to create a short survey on Usertesting.com and get some fast opinions from strangers. Sometimes the smallest changes make a big difference and can fix your own broken windows.
3. Product Roadmaps Require Serious Prioritization
Agency life is measured in weeks and months. Client side life is measured in quarters and years.
In an ad agency ecosystem, ideas are often generated by small teams of creatives working collaboratively with a client within an agreed upon timeframe. Over in client land, every day is a maelstrom of ideas fired from all directions — customers, other departments, leadership and of course from your own product team. This maelstrom continues forever into perpetuity.
Prioritizing the ideas, features, fixes and requests becomes the challenging full time job of many people. Good ideas may only make the cut if they deliver measurable business value. It becomes critical to prioritize features in terms of potential value compared to effort.
As a designer, how can you get your features prioritized? Quantify, qualify. campaign. It is your job to prove it. Look at analytics. Run qualitative studies. Prove that a change you want is beneficial for the business. Repeat your findings to various groups of people. Present your ideas. If you have to, make a giant poster and hang it up above your head.
Final Thoughts on the Design Long Game
Step back. Zoom into the atomic design structure: products, screens, templates, organisms, molecules, atoms. Consider that everything, even strong product experiences, have a lifecycle. Facebook will someday be obsolete. The molecules and atoms you created will come and go faster than the shell that holds them. And then those shells will decompose.
My lessons learned from sticking with something for two were not always easy but incredibly valuable. I encourage every UX / UI / Product / User Centered Design professional who builds new experiences to stick with those creations through the fun and hard times.
