Drawn together
8 steps for creating a cross-functional design approach
Let’s face it, designers do not own the design process. If you keep your ideas to yourself, when working in agile/lean-oriented teams, you will be ignored at best or challenged at worst. To prevent this, ask others to join you…instead of being the owner, be the host of the design process.
Let’s face it, designers do not own the design process
At Zalando, all team members (developers, product specialists, customer care, etc.) are invited to participate in research and design workshops, propose ideas and suggest changes in a process managed by UX specialists. This cross-functional approach enriches design solutions with the help of business and tech input. It also makes it much easier for team members to accept design outcomes, as they end up feeling some ownership as well.
Unfortunately this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Properly managing the design process is difficult, managing the process with non-designers is even more challenging. People want to solve issues their own way, get distracted by other tasks, don’t understand the design methods, or don’t believe in the efficacy of those methods.
So, how do you deal with it?
1. Establish Design Rules
First, define your design process. Document it in a clear way and share it with your teammates. Do the same with your design toolbox — create a list of your methods with a clear description of every activity.
Ensure that everyone understands and accepts the way you want to approach design. If there are any doubts — be open to dialogue and finding a common ground.
2. Make Clear Who Is Responsible for the Final Decision
Be honest about it and don’t pretend that decisions are democratic if they aren’t. It serves no purpose and may only lead to frustration.
3. Focus on Informal Communication
Keep the number of scheduled meetings to a minimum. Most people are already overscheduled… replace meetings with short, single topic, informal chats.
Do not keep design artifacts to yourself and share them with the whole team as soon as possible, allowing them open access.
Do not keep design artifacts to yourself and share them with the whole team as soon as possible, allowing them open access.
Be physically available to the rest of the team. Be open to having a discussion whenever teammates need it. Yes, it can be inconvenient at times, but it will help you earn the team’s trust.
4. Draw
Try to make your communication visual. Drawing is a universal language, understood by people from different backgrounds.
Don’t talk about design without having something to draw
Don’t talk about design without having something to draw with in your hand. When a team member suggests an idea, answer: “Okay, let’s draw it!” You can visualize every problem, process or idea (including “non-visual” topics, like voice interfaces).
Finally, enrich your design toolbox by techniques that require team drawing, like a Design Studio Workshop or Storyboarding.
Wall behind my desk — we are trying to create visual artifacts for every design discussion
5. Separate People from Their Ideas
It’s a common scenario: people in a team have different ideas about how to solve a problem. Everyone has a tendency to think that their ideas are the best. They get attached to them. Things get emotional and people want to show that they are right.
When this happens, teams have a tendency to support ideas that:
- belong to a person with a higher role in the organization (HiPPO — highest paid person’s opinion)
- are presented better
To avoid this situation, you need to separate people and opinions.
Start by drawing. When you move the idea from a person’s mouth to a sheet of paper, the solution becomes more independent. People sometimes realize that once their idea is on paper it’s not so attractive anymore.
If time allows, try a solution proposed in the book, The Sprint. Each participant prepares their design proposal separately, then all ideas are presented and validated anonymously.
6. Define Clear Discussion Goals
Our design team started design critique sessions. At the beginning it was a disaster — every design was torn apart by hundreds of comments, all of which were more or less accurate. It was not only unpleasant but it was also ineffective. We generated long lists of errors without too many ideas on how to solve any of them.
We decided to put more structure into our design discussions. Now, before we talk, we write:
- What we want to achieve with this design
- What kind of feedback is expected / What should the outcome of the discussion be
Sounds simple, but at the time, it was a big change — our discussions became more structured, efficient, and had a clearer outcome. It also helps to quickly drop any discussion that is not particularly productive.
7. Do Not Criticize
When we focus on generating solutions, we never criticize, so that people will feel encouraged to share even their craziest ideas. It also makes the process much more efficient.
We recently collaborated with a Google team on the Google Assistant Gift Finder project. During the workshop we focused on generating as many different ideas as possible, later choosing the ten most promising. At their suggestion we commented only on those things we liked, ignoring the rest.
We had tackled a similar task a few weeks earlier, but had included criticisms. In the end, we had similar outcomes but it took us three times longer to get there.
8. Change Critique into Questions
It is hard to ignore doubts when you are trying to choose the best option. Choices become clearer when we ask questions.
Example: Instead of “This button should not be here,” we ask, “Why did we decide to place this button here?”
Instead of “This button should not be here,” we ask, “Why did we decide to place this button here?”
Sounds subtle but it changes a lot. It starts a discussion. The presenters must explain the reason behind their decisions. If we are not sure about an explanation we can go even deeper with further questions.
With this method we unearth not only potential errors, but also illustrate the process that led to a specific choice. Knowing this process makes it much easier to come up with proper solutions.
What’s more, if you’re preparing a design with the expectation of “why” questions, it will make your solution more mature and well thought out.
Conclusion
Since we’ve implemented these communication changes here at Zalando, our design meetings require less time and have a clearer outcome. And it’s become easier to communicate and reach agreement with other designers, developers, and product specialists.
Proper design communication limits uncertainty and when the team believes in their design decisions, the result is more efficient work and a better final product.
