Boosting Product Ownership: Understanding The Bigger Picture
“I’m just another speck of dust in this office”
“Why does a 2px shift matter? I don’t think user would notice that 2px shift anyway”
“I don’t even know what I’m doing this for, I’m just here to deliver tasks on time while looking forward to payday”
“Why should I sacrifice my days and nights stressing on work no one cares?”
Ever heard of those quotes around the office on a daily basis or have them echoing in your mind while working on infinite revisions? You are indeed not alone. Employees are paid by companies and expected to deliver work based on their specialisation, therefore would they be willing to complete tasks which amount exceed the assigned portion? If so, what might be the intention? Whichever goals an employee determines for themselves, I believe everyone’s main goal in life is simply to achieve happiness. Although it sounds trivial, it appears that financial well-being is one of the main ingredients of achieving happiness — however, us imprisoned employees long for freedom on various aspects, financial being one of them. Have companies nurtured their employees to achieve freedom?
The Migration to Experience Design
I am an easily bored person — my background hails mainly in visual design. Eventually, working as a visual designer by being highly fixated on interfaces or beautification of a product bores the blood out of my veins. Since then, I became somewhat skeptical regarding the significance my profession. I then decided to leave visual for interaction design, a field of design I find exciting since it provides me with the opportunity to apply my observation regarding user’s behaviour and several other user-centric values into an actual product. My interest in interaction design basically evolved to experience design, a field of design focusing on designing invisible forces — the intangible aspect of a product that is heavily reliant on user’s emotional, physical and mental-being. If I were a stray dog locked in a cage-full of other dogs, experience design is an entity that would gladly adopt me, show me the world and save me from my life-full of stray dogs.
However, reality shows me otherwise. As a stray dog faithful towards my new master, I expect my master to regularly feed, nurture, and take me for regular walks — none of those I have experienced unfortunately. I was expected by my master to be resourceful in order to survive.
As a 5-day-a-week-9–6 employee in Tokopedia, obviously I am honoured to be working on their products especially since the changes and designs I’ve executed will be impactful to a huge amount of user (mind you, millions of Jakartans are using our product) — rookie mistakes, users’ pain points while interacting with our product/feature might indirectly cause revenue loss. As designers, hypothetically it’s not our business to mend revenue-related issues, therefore we are not widely exposed to those sort of information. Then what are we exposed to and what should we be exposed to?
As someone who is paid to fix/create a particular product/feature which goal is usually associated with increased revenue (God knows how), we are usually exposed to the problems with a shortsighted goal. I believe there are multiple layers of goals that leads to the holy goal (increased revenue that is) however those layers of goals are not holistically exposed to designers (UX to be more exact). The problem is the big picture is kept very blurred to the majority of employees — presumably the higher your strata is within an organisation, the more information that relates to the ultimate goal is revealed to you. I don’t think this is ideal especially for us UX/experience designer, a profession which fundamental is highly associated with understanding the bigger picture.
Ideally, EVERY INFORMATION ranging from the biggest to the smallest picture relating to the product/feature that designers will be working on should be exposed to them — regardless to their seniority level, be it junior, senior, lead senior, head, head of leads, God of leads, God of Gods, EVERYONE across multiple strata that is. I believe by keeping junior employees in the dark by mainly revealing only the narrowed goals, companies are not nurturing their recruits to think in a more strategic level resulting stagnancy in skill development and lack of exposure regarding cross department’s function.
EVERY INFORMATION — sums up the concrete definition of “the bigger picture”; without understanding it, employees will never evolve into an entity greater than 9–6 corporate slaves who are endlessly required to complete a set of already-assigned tasks without being exposed to the impact of their work on the user/consumer.
Exposing employees to the bigger picture might actually provide them with a sense of appreciation and reminding them regarding the impact of their work on the user/consumer. Make employees feel matter and be transparent with the production team regarding the impact of their work on the holy goal (increased revenue) — only then they will realise their significant contribution to the company. Every other day, save them from doing their utterly mundane repetitive tasks and acknowledge the impact of their work in solving real world problems and benefit the company they are working at. This strategy might hypothetically increase employees’ product ownership — if employees care about their user/customer, eventually they will strive to produce high quality and user friendly products.
I’ve previously worked at both corporate and startup companies, my product ownership level was by far greater during my time working at a startup. At a startup, I was involved in the ideation process and occasionally exposed to the business aspect of the product — the sort of exposure I would not regularly receive when working at corporate companies. It was enjoyable until UNCERTAINTY kicks in; a terminology that still somewhat appears foreign in the world of employment where I believe very few are actually ready to embrace it (not even myself at this period, although I am still learning and being constantly reminded). In the world of entrepreneurship, it appears to be a normality so I was told.
In the meantime, I am currently composing this article while being stuck working on a never-ending project which has been running for 6 consecutive months. Bored as I am, I wasn’t initially aware regarding the impact of my project until it reaches its final state. I had to occasionally enforce myself to assess the bigger picture to holistically understand the product, especially the experience of using the product which is heavily reliant on understanding the bigger picture. I failed miserably in solving a very basic design problem simply due to the absence of the bigger picture.
If working within a team, I would suggest everyone to save each other’s back by pulling one out of their mundanity and help assessing each other’s work from multiple perspectives.
Finally, it becomes a rudimentary for me to seek for ways to remind myself to step back and observe from points of view I am rarely exposed to during my 8-hour, 5-days-a-week routine.
