Meet Zendesk Creative: Your questions answered
Have you ever wondered what it’s like working on the Creative team at a B2B enterprise software company like Zendesk? Well, now it’s your chance to meet the team.
This past fall, our Singapore Creative team got together and hosted a fun, interactive, and open-ended panel discussion to answer questions about Product Design and UX Research for the design community. The event sparked some great conversation and we wanted to keep it going by sharing our answers to some of the unanswered questions.
What is a typical day like working at Zendesk as a Product Designer?
Answered by: Audrey Quek, Product Designer
It would be dependent on the phase of the projects we’re working on, but in general, a typical day begins early (between 7–8am), where we’d have syncs with our San Francisco teams such as UX Content Strategy syncs, design experience stream syncs or engineering demos.
After which, I’d spend some time going through Slack messages and prioritising my to-dos for the day as I munch on some breakfast.
In the late morning, it’s usually stand up time with the two different scrum teams I’m working with.
At midday, depending on the day of the week, we have our Singapore design team weekly stand up where we share about what we’ve been working on and have discussions on team related events and activities. On other days, we have a weekly design critique session with our Melbourne team, where we’d present work to get feedback from a broader group of designers. We also have syncs with program management to provide updates on the statuses of upcoming releases.
In the afternoon is usually where I’d block out time to focus on the current project I’m working on. These could be design explorations, crafting research plans, documenting design thoughts and decisions or creating specs.
Depending on the project, there could also be cross functional meetings with our product and engineering partners. This is where we’d walk through the proposed experience to ensure any concerns are surfaced and have discussions on open questions.
What are some unique challenges that come with having a lead role as a Product Designer?
Answered by: Peng Hong, Senior Lead Product Designer
There are a few challenges:
Alignment — Usually there are a few designers working on the same product, alignment and collaboration instead of working in silos is important. Getting alignment early on is important, to ensure consistency. It is the design leader’s responsibility to drive alignment and have a shared vision. The alignment is a continuous process, which needs to happen at different stages of the product development process. Moreover, design lead also needs to work with cross functional partners to ensure alignment, it could be challenging at times.
Know when to hand off — as a design lead, I still see myself doing hands on work, it could become challenging to draw the balance between being hands on and hand off. If the design team has alignment and regular feedback sessions throughout the project, I do not see the need of being the gatekeeper and slow down the project. Knowing when to hands off is really critical.
Get feedback — getting feedback on your design, and providing feedback to fellow designers are crucial. Be proactive asking for feedback, and keeping in mind your idea is not always the best idea is very important. At the same time, design leads need to provide feedback or speak out when you see things are not going in the right direction. One of the challenges is to be proactive but not be seen as micromanaging, one of the great advice I’ve received from a great mentor is, to always ask questions instead of giving directions.
How do you effectively collaborate with teammates across different offices and timezones?
Answered by: Laks Lakshmanan Lakshmanan, Senior Product Design Manager
The Zendesk Product Design organization is distributed across multiple locations and timezones. We use a combination of asynchronous and synchronous methods to collaborate. Asynchronous collaboration refers to team members communicating with each other without an expectation to be responding immediately and not being in a live conversation (for example on Slack or Skype). Synchronous collaboration refers to live exchange of information in real time (for example in a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call). I’ll call out how we use a few of these methods here.
Talking about synchronous methods, Slack is the primary communication tool within Zendesk. Right from 1–1 direct messages to team-wide, work-stream-wide and company wide communication happens over Slack. The Product Design organization does its weekly asynchronous standup over Google Slides. This is extremely useful and helps Design team members to be informed of what others within Product Design are working on, even if they do not work with them closely on the same project.
In terms of synchronous communication, we try to maximize the time zone overlap between locations with targeted team meetings. Leadership conducts All Hands that brings together the entire Creative organization on a quarterly basis. We also have various other project related monthly and quarterly check-in meetings to track and update project statuses. We have regional critique sessions that the Design team members leverage heavily to get feedback on their designs. For example, the Singapore and Melbourne teams participate in weekly APAC regional critiques to get early feedback on their designs, right from design directions to workflows to visuals.
What is a typical day of a UX Researcher?
Answered by: Anna Lee Anda, Team Lead UX Researcher
A day varies depending on if there are projects in progress, but let’s assume as a UX Researcher there are projects happening. A day might include tasks such as interviewing customers via Zoom, doing some analysis with a cross functional team, updating stakeholders, answering questions on our Ask UX Research Slack channel, updating the page on the organisation’s intranet, for Zendesk we use Confluence and meeting with other project stakeholders if there are other projects happening which you are helping with. For the project Confluence page we cover things like a summary of the research and details around the research that was conducted. As we put a lot of detail into it, it can be something that gets continuously referred to. Occasionally the day includes non-project work like helping build out UX Research processes, preparing UX Research material and creating external facing material or talks.
How do you decide on what research methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups) to use for projects at Zendesk? Are there any preferred methods that the team uses as a business software company?
Answered by: Anna Lee Anda,Team Lead UX Researcher
There are a couple of things that drive the research method:
- How much we know about the problem area already and if we are likely to start from a blank slate, or if this research is to confirm or validate something
- How much time we have and what type of users we might need to work with
- Tools and available resources
- A researcher’s expertise and experience
Usually when I am running a research project I like to use mixed methods (ie more than one research method) or bring in other sources of data so we can be sure we are getting an accurate picture of the user’s challenges or the problem space. We do a lot of remote interviews and rely on remote research tools as our customers are very global so it helps us ensure we have a wide range of participants on our project.
How do you bring in your stakeholders during the UX Research process?
Answered by: Anna Lee Anda, Team Lead UX Researcher
Stakeholders should be at least informed every step of the project, and ideally involved in the project at all parts of the project. Realistically what will happen is varying levels of involvement along the project lifecycle.
The first phase of kick off and planning there is a lot of stakeholder involvement to make sure that everyone is on the same page in terms of the big questions to be answered and the research goals.
Ideally the Product Designer and Product Manager are there listening to the interviews live as they happen, everyone has a job in the interview — either asking questions also, answering technical questions or taking notes.
Later when we do analysis, depending on the research method, we get the cross functional team involved in the analysis so that by the time the report comes out it is a formality with not too many surprises and the project team has a sense of what needs to be built or improved upon.
When it comes to sharing the report, we invite the broad stakeholder group to come and listen to the presentation, it gets recorded so it’s accessible to those who couldn’t make it or who aren’t in the same time zone. Then everything gets shared on Confluence so that it is accessible and searchable by everyone and could be used as a basis for other projects.
What skills and qualities do you look for in an incoming Product Designer
Answered by: Laks Lakshmanan Lakshmanan, Senior Product Design Manager
Depending on the level and the project that we are hiring for, the expectations for an incoming Product Designer may vary. Some of the common qualities that I would look for during hiring could be broadly categorized into ‘What’ and ‘How’.
An individual’s knowledge around fundamentals of design, design processes, problem solving, usage of tools, knowledge around data and user research fall within the ‘What’ category. Skills around storytelling, presentation, negotiation, working with stakeholders and ability to influence and impact would fall within the ‘How’ category.
There are different approaches you can take to acquire these skills. Pursuing a degree in Design or Human Computers Interaction (HCI) is an ideal way to get started in Design. If doing a degree is not an option for you, an immersive/certificate course in Design or User Experience is an alternate option. In addition to this, working hands-on on projects is the best way to build up your knowledge about solving a real business problem, working with a team in seeing your designs developed and learning about user research and design processes, This will also help you develop some of the ‘How’ skills around storytelling, influencing and negotiation. Design internships and Pro Bono opportunities are great ways to begin if you are someone who is starting fresh and yet to start on full time opportunities.
How about for a UX Researcher?
Answered by: Anna Lee Anda, Team Lead UX Researcher
There are a couple of things that are critical skills as a researcher — much like what Laks said — these are broader skills that are harder to learn such as critical thinking, clear and concise written and verbal communication, presentation skills, stakeholder management and engagement, having initiative and being organised.
Then there are the research skills — it is helpful to be strong or confident in a couple of different methods and look to add new methods or techniques along your career.
In what ways do you approach professional development and career growth opportunities at Zendesk?
Answered by: Audrey Quek, Product Designer
Career growth at Zendesk (or anywhere else) is very much self driven, it’s up to the individual to be purposeful about the areas they want to develop in.
As a start, goal setting is done every half year, where we’ll review our short and long term goals and write out a plan on how we want to achieve them. These are discussed with our managers during one-on-ones, so that they help guide us toward our goals, help us push for opportunities or provide constructive feedback . I’m thankful that we have an awesome manager that is invested in our growth!
Doing a skills wheel exercise to evaluate your capabilities as a designer is a useful step in identifying areas for growth. From this, we can utilise the internal learning platforms or the professional budget given to every employee to develop those skill gaps. For example, in the past I had enrolled in some online courses when I wanted to pick up some animation skills so I could build more interactive prototypes to better communicate my designs where needed. To improve on my communication skills, I also engaged in a workshop on how to facilitate conversations in the workplace.
