Background
Analyze situation
Background story
Team building
Define
Project kick-off
Define success
Process (research)
Data gathering
Define goals
Prioritization
User interview
Process
(design)
Expert interview
Benchmarking
Prototyping + testing
Design system
Results
Sprint delivery
Suggesting KPI
Tracking
HOW I WORK
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Background: Know the focus and know your team 🥰
In this step, first, I will talk with the stakeholders and take a holistic look at the product. It is important to keep in mind which stage the products are at since the focus is going to be highly dependent on it. For example, an MVP product is going to highly focus on bug shooting or de-prioritized features.
Then I will pay attention to what people say, especially what the team says. It is basic etiquette to not jump to a conclusion and start to criticize before listen and understand what problems the team was originally facing. It is also going to help to build trust among the team members.
In the case of Marley Spoon, we were in the process of finalizing MVP and looking at the first round of Internal Release.
Define: What do we call success and who should be involved? ✍️
In this step, I will collaborate with the stakeholders and figure out what "success" means to them, and whether they already have aligned on some tangible goals.
They likely don't. Hence it would be important to collect their feedbacks/ideas and then start with the process of "finding the problems".
In the case of Marley Spoon, we defined this first project as "post-MVP research"..
Process (research): Talk is cheap, show me the data 👀
In this step, I will find as many data resource points as I can, then using all the data I can find to build a case or a report. The case or the report will be most likely consist of insights, highlighted data, user quotes, problem statements, and suggestions of priority.
In the case of Marley Spoon, there are 3 data resource points I defined for the research process: Usability testing result + Internal bug/feature reports + Appstore feedbacks.
The usability testing is made of 2 parts: internal self-testing and real user testing. For internal bug/feature reports, I created a backlog and survey using Airtable. The Appstore feedbacks are a combination of the old App and the new App (after external release).
After presenting the case/report to the team, we prioritized some of the problem statements with the PM.
Process (design): Empower experts and developers as a team 🦾
Since we should have prioritized the problem statements from the previous step, I will turn each statement into multiple "HMW" questions and try to keep each question clear and concise.
I will not overlook the power and knowledge of the experts who have been working in the company for more than 6 years. For each of the questions, I will try to talk to the experts who might work in sales, operations, or logistics.
In the case of Marley Spoon, I always talk to the Culinary team, the CRM team, and the Internal tool team for insights and feedback. In the "Rating" project, since the culinary team will literally decide which recipes are going to re-appear again on the menu based on the rating of the recipes, it is crucial to understand their perspectives and how they are going to be impacted, alongside the users themselves.
Benchmarking and prototyping are the basic skills for Product designers nowadays. At this step, the more time you have for benchmarking and prototyping the better, but I will usually put a time limit on it. Since getting into too many visual details at this stage can actually "sabotage" the exploration.
In the case of Marley Spoon, as the only Product designer for the mobile team, I didn't only create various prototype but also even tried to bug the developers into the "creating" mode 😛
The result or the deliverables at the end of this step would be a working (but crafty) prototype/design which the team agrees on. At the same time, I will suggest KPIs to the PM and start to take care of the detailed design components and Design System.
In the case of Marley Spoon, I suggested "higher rating rate", "lower skip rate" and "happier culinary team". Since we are having a unique "white label" Design System, I also have to take care of the system for 3 different brands.
Results: Let's ship it nice and smooth 👾
I will not only suggesting KPIs for the design solutions, but I will also try to split the design solutions from the previous step to different Sprints.
Since I work so close to the developers and the scrum team in Marley Spoon, I am used to not create too much unnecessary pressure on the team. I understand the importance of keeping a steady and smooth workflow (for developers and designers) so during the final presentation, I will try to suggest the implementation tickets we NEED to build now, and the tickets we CAN solve in the next Sprints.
At Marley Spoon, it is also very transparent as I work with the developers on the same Jira board. I also initiated and introduced the templates of "how to write a design ticket" to the team, since the developer's ticket does not fit in with a designer's workflow, naturally.