Being Design-Led Can Help Speed Up Your Product Release Schedule

Our Briefcase Builder functionality went GA two cycles faster thanks to a shared design vision.

There is a common misconception that it takes too long to practice design-led product development — an approach that involves research early and often. Yet a project our team worked on actually moved faster due to being design led. By not rushing past the critical upfront questions, the team also created less design debt and tech debt along the way. It was just the system change we needed to quicken the pace.

A cross-functional team recently applied this method to Briefcase Builder, a new offline functionality for field service agents. Design-led product development helped build team cohesion, which sped up workflows. Tasks could easily progress for every role — from the architects, UX designers, product managers, and researchers to the engineers who achieved a technical feat.

It resulted in launching two releases early.

“We felt like a team,” said Brady Sammons, Salesforce UI/UX Principal. “Like on a basketball team of only five players, if one isn’t into it or isn’t feeling it, then it shows. We were a tight-knit group that was based on facts instead of theories or ideologies. We empowered each other to try things and, if they break, that’s ok. It gave us the confidence to build so quickly.”

Such accelerated innovation is possible with a shared design vision and an ability to build for the future.

Co-create a shared design vision

Sammons reminds us that design-led product development starts with a design vision. You need a map to show where you are and where you’re going. For Briefcase Builder, customers pointed out the general destination: Their field service teams needed offline support in areas with spotty connections.

“From the start we had a very vitally requested use case. We knew as soon as we could deliver that, a lot of customers were waiting to use it,” said Divyesh Jain, Salesforce Senior Manager, Software Engineering.

The team rallied around big-picture questions:

• What could it look like if we did everything our team and our customers wanted to do?
• How does it make the user feel?
• How often can we involve users and research & insights?
• How do we want to flow through problem sets?

They didn’t just guess. They reached out to the people who would be using the product.

Ask versus making assumptions

Practicing human-centered design means asking users what they think. On this project, research included a range of roles — from field-service reps to admins to salespeople.

Saebra Waterstraut-Foster, Salesforce Principal Researcher, Research & Insights, found that each role had unique needs. For example: Field service reps wanted offline workflows. Admins wanted built-in protections for creating, editing and deleting Briefcases. And sales users wanted offline records. “We worked simultaneously to create a customer survey looking at buyers and decision makers, and to test design with end users.” Including the user resulted in a host of research-driven design optimizations.

Such necessary work on a shared design vision and user research requires a time investment from leadership.

Invest resources in the upfront process

“The product and engineering teams were open to carving out time in the process to consider this,” said Aran Rhee, Salesforce Product Design Principal Architect and guide of this project’s design vision. He created a set of screens and an interactive prototype to visualize their destination. It included key flows with reasonings and alternates for short- and long-term areas.

The design-led workshops he put together helped unify the program and got them all rowing in the same direction. “We put our name tags away,” said Alex Yi, Salesforce VP Product Management, Mobile & Web Platform, who encourages vigorous debate among diverse voices. Leaving titles at the door improves internal brainstorms. “We try and equalize our roles to ensure that voices are heard regardless of level or discipline. It makes the exercise not only more successful but also a lot more fun.”

The creation of a shared design vision is an invitation for everyone to weigh in. It’s not delegating jobs — do this, design this, code this. An aligned team makes everyone more nimble and avoids negotiations halfway down the line.

It also helps to know what’s expected — and know what to do when the unexpected hits. When this inevitably occurred on Briefcase Builder, the team’s map let them pivot seamlessly. User research feedback showed that users needed reminders to avoid hitting limit restrictions. The team cycled a fix and created notifications to communicate active usage throughout the UX. This helped engineering with system load and ensured user success.

When you know where you’re going, you can also build for the future.

Build with the future in mind

Set the destination and then design backwards. This approach avoids “moving the user’s cheese” from release to release. Creating a minimum lovable product comes from small, iterative stages that improve toward the desired state in a thoughtful way.

Early on with Briefcase Builder, the research team identified multiple relationships between objects. Though the initial release included only single-level relationships, the engineers knew to write their code to take hierarchies into account. Designers kept this in mind for the user interfaces, too.

The same was true for connecting to multiple apps. “We assigned that early even when we only had one app,” said Jain. “Doing it at that point helped us avoid complexities in the future. This way, we built it before we needed it.”

This helped the team avoid working release to release, which can be twice as much effort. Knowing future phases smoothed out the transition from beginning to middle to launch.

There’s a balance to strike when it comes to time. Move too slow and a product could miss a market opening. Move too fast and you can miss critical details. Design can support being able to do this successfully, as Briefcase Builder proved.

“I really enjoyed design-led product development,” Jain said. “It’s the right way to go. Our success is always an amalgamation of all skills. I really enjoyed the process and will do it again.” Today, this practice is driving multiple projects we have under way. And they’re moving faster than ever.

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