the brief
To be in the best position to succeed, design leadership should be credible as designers, mentor and guide team members, know the details of what Product Designers and UX Researchers work on, and hire accordingly to build a world-class team. Design leadership owns the delivery of Product Design commitments and are always looking to improve the experience and productivity. They coordinate across departments to accomplish collaborative goals.
As I’ve grown as a leader in both Design and Product, I’ve found that investment in your people, helping them to level up as much as possible, is one of the best investments to make. It leads to people who feel empowered to do their best work and who strive to improve their craft. This in turn has direct benefits to the overall product. Closely related is a ‘group project’ mentality across the whole. In the end, we’re all in it together. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
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View of my design team's competency framework and team activities. Including a design challenge and team player cards for us to get to know each other better.
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Some screenshots of my team's design library where we build for efficiency and consistency.
the approach
I've identified three major needs/components important to making this product a success:
- Team building: my direct team, my peer group, and the wider team of engineers, product managers, etc.
- Product building: in the end, all of our medium is the developed product. Activities and processes should support the developed product.
- Company alignment: outside of our product team, the whole company still viewed themselves as a consumable products brand. Building a vision around how customers viewed the product through a digital lens not only consumable products to help build alignment and share focus.
- Team management
- Mentorship
- Skill craft
- Motivation
- Design system/patterns/library
- Product-wide collaborative team work
- Product team training
- Research
- Individual contributorship
- Individual, team, and company goal alignment
- Expect that things can and will go ‘wrong’:
- Become well informed on your project/situation to make better decisions and lessen unintended consequences
- Understand constraints, previous roadblocks, definitions of success, etc. when planning and throughout your project
- When things do go “wrong”:
- Take time to assess the new current situation and find a path forward
- Know when to ideate, iterate, or pivot when necessary. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast
Team building
Investment into your team pays off. Ensuring your team has the resources they need to succeed, that they feel supported, challenged, and creative is important to a successful product. Here's my quick list of important Team Building components:
Product building
Without a developed product, we don’t have anything of value. It’s what we’re all here for in the end, anyway. Setting goals, aligning the team around them, and then staying focused and tracking towards those same goals takes work. It’s accomplished through:
We're sharks; gotta keep swimming. "Live every week like it's shark week."
Company alignment
The most challenging component thus far has been establishing company alignment surrounding their product offering. This company had opted to stay offline for as long as possible and was now faced with shifting their way of thinking from only a consumable product to a fully digital experience.
Alignment is always important. Having people move in the same direction toward a new goal takes a lot of coordination and a well thought out plan. An important note about goals and planning: "Plans are worthless but planning is everything."
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Screenshots of various product flows and maps from some cross-department working sessions. It's important for our minds to conceptulize all the pieces that go into the holistic product.
product-wide collaborative team work
Working with others is how we discover a more complete capture of all relevant information and context. True of users, stakeholders, and coworkers.
We're taking part in a ‘group project’. We’re all in it together because we all contribute effort/work to our product. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” There's so much to discussion around this topic; more to come.
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A few screenshots from different product team trainings. The whole product team tries to do some team training together every couple of months. These are plans from some of my trainings.
research
Getting quality information from research and testing is a skill. Making product decisions is important and having solid research to back up decisions helps reduce unintended consequences.
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Usability testing, user interviews, and other research methodoligies provide key information important to decision making.
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Screenshots from both of our apps that are focused for the two main user groups of our product.
the result
Happy and productive team members. An app rating increasing from 2.3 to 4.7 (over 15k reviews on iOS). Better holistic alignment on the product strategy and direction.
When I started, there was one app launched. It was handed off from a design agency who spent a few years not getting much accomplished. Since then, we built a new vision and direction through working together to understand the holistic product.
starting app rating (2020):
Client app:
2.3
current app ratings (2023):
Client app:
4.7
Coach app:
4.9
WIP alert:
This is a work in progress as getting all of this together for a portfolio can take some time. Reach out to me with any questions, comments, or jokes!