Design process breakdown of a product designer
As you probably know, I’m a Designer. I’ve had careers in different fields of design including Web Designer, Developer, UX Design Architect, Graphic Designer, and Product Designer. Each with its own processes and ways of working.
I wanted to write this blog to encourage new designers who are seeking advice on how to design in different types of companies. Startups and already established mid-size or bigger companies operate differently. This is probably not the best advice or the worst, but it’s some advice… from someone who’s been in many different situations in the past 10 years as a designer.
I’ll talk about team organization and break down the design process I use when starting at a new company as a designer.
First, let’s talk about the organization
Depending on how your company is organized, the standards at which things are done affect how you work as a designer. How a company is organized (Top-down to flat organizations) and what they expect from their teams (Agile working atmosphere to management feature requests), differs from what they expect from the design process.
How your team is organized can change a few factors:
How many team members are there?
Are there data analysts?
What type of Project Manager is on the team?
What types of Designers are on the team?
The difference a Project Manager can make with a team of 10 versus a team of 25 is huge. Can we split a UX role into three different roles: UX Research, UX Designer, and UX Writer? Or do we only have the resources to hire one global UX Designer who happens to enjoy doing user research and writing on the side?
Sometimes this is the best way to go to get the ball rolling (especially with startups or companies less than 3 years old), then when things are going well enough, hire more designers to fit the specific roles. Someone hired as UX Researcher is going to have a lot more time and energy to do thorough research on a subject, user-test their hypothesis, and work closely with a data analyst to get clear, key results.
A person hired to do a little bit of everything is going to do just that— a little bit.
What is the recipe that makes the perfect team?
Well, that depends on what kind of organization you have. Some big companies like Google or Apple have the resources to hire specific people to complete specific projects. Smaller startups need to hire people who can do multiple things at once.
In my experience, the smaller the team is, the more roles you as the designer will play. The bigger the team, the more specific the work will be.
Working for a startup
I was hired at a native advertising startup in 2016 as a UX/UI Designer. We were 7 people: the CEO, CTO, Senior Developer, Front-End Developer, me (Designer), Sales, and Office Manager. I did anything from designing the internal tools they were using for their customers, designing marketing materials for conferences, writing blog posts, making UX improvements to their website, and being their copywriter and editor. (Naturally being a native English speaker in a foreign country automatically assigns you as the in-house editor, but that’s another story.)
Working for a mid-size company
For almost 4 years, I worked for a bigger company of 150+ people. I had a few different roles there, starting as a Web Designer working on concepting and designing their internal tools system. I researched and worked on competitive analysis projects for a secret app (that didn’t go to fruition). I worked as a UX Designer leading the process of localizing our product to 7 different languages. I worked on the Monetization team working on checkout flows and pricing chart research. And the most fun was working on the product team as a Product Designer and doing UX Research, user testing, and onboarding design flows.
During my time there, I was mostly doing Visual Design and UX Research. When I worked on the Product team there were about 15 people, split into two teams: Activation (Onboarding) and Engagement (Anything after the first 30 days). Each team had a Tech Lead, 2-3 front-end developers, 1-2 back-end developers. Then the teams shared a PM, a Data Analyst, a UX Writer, and an Agility Coach.
Which one was better?
I felt just as happy and engaged while working at the startup and working at the bigger company. My time was just spent differently. As a designer that is something you should consider. What would make you feel the most engaged and happy?
Design process breakdown
I’ve talked about working at both startups and mid-sized companies (I’ve yet to work for somewhere as big as Google or Apple). So now let’s break down the design process for each of those types.
Make a Design System as you go
If you are starting as a designer at a start-up, it might not be obvious, but don’t spend the first month of working at the new startup creating a super-advanced and thorough design system.
It might make you happy, but startups need quick wins that make big impacts.
You won’t know what you need until you are in the product for a bit of time.
Give yourself the time to know what kind of design system you want to have.
By waiting and creating a design system as you go, you create an opportunity for your brand to grow and meld the way you want it to as the designer for the startup. You’ll realize as you are designing that “OH! Yes, we need three different kinds of states for this button.” Adds to the design system. This is the better way to go for you as a designer and also for the company as a whole.
Creating and putting together a Design System is a bit of work. Maybe a whole other blog post in the future, but the main takeaways are:
Who are you creating this DS for? Consider how a PM would navigate through the components and brand vs how another designer would. Regardless of who you make it for, remember not to over-engineer it. Make it simple enough that you wouldn’t have to spend 4 weeks onboarding someone to use it.
Quick wins make big impacts
Do a User Experience Check
When working at startups, especially those that have gone without a designer for some time, there are probably some quick wins.
If it’s an app or works on mobile web, check for touch area sizes and that it passes standards.
Accessibility guidelines are often forgotten about. Check out contrast ratios like background colors with text on top, text sizes, etc.
Create some brand guidelines for marketing materials. There’s nothing worse than seeing the CEO send out a social media post that screams “We don’t know who we are yet!”
Use the app
Maybe this seems obvious, but what I mean is REALLY dive deep into the program or app. What I’ve done at all my previous workplaces is use my fresh, newbie eyes and do a usability test. I give myself a job, a role to play, a backstory, and then I pretend to be that user, and I go and try to use the app. As I do this, I take screenshots and paste them into Figma, writing questions as I go.
Sometimes this can take a bit more time than you think. I usually keep this file open and add to it for the first couple of weeks. I suggest making this a part of onboarding and keeping it in mind when you are hiring another designer to join your team. It’s been the best way for me to understand all the jargon my team is always using to refer to things in the app. I can say to myself, “Ah yes I remember using that too!”
The best part about doing this is you don’t have any bias yet about why some button is where it is or why this part of the app is called Home but what we really mean is Categories. You can really get a fresh look at the app and see how it’s used by a real first-time user.
Don’t forget to user test and research
Working at a startup is kind of like being a firefighter. You’re kind of running around with an extinguisher and putting out little fires here and there. There are a lot of different people messaging you in Slack and asking you to fulfill their requests because “Now we have a designer to do that!”.
However, you need to make sure you take time and also establish a routine in your design process to include researching, prototyping, and user testing during AND after release. Use this to your advantage and get it into the process for the entire team and get your PM on board with research.
Iterative Design
Assuming how users are going to react is the worst thing to do. The better way is to design in iterations. Creating a roadmap with MVPs and end goals is a much better way to release something. As a designer, you need to consider how much of an impact your iteration (or a less-than-fully-designed feature) will confuse users and clog up Customer Support (if you even have one).
Designing in iterations is a better way to design because it naturally allows for users to test it out for you. You can learn beforehand that something might not work as you assumed and make changes as you go.
This is often referred to as Agile working. This prevents spending too much time working on a feature only for it to fail and you’ve wasted the last 6 months designing and developing it. It also lessens the stress a development team might have.
For example, imagine you have an app that you can watch movies on. You know in the future there will be a show that people really want to watch, you know that there will be 100+ shows available, and you know that users will want to continue watching what they were watching before. For this situation, you would need to find out what do we need most to start and release this feature.
Well, adding the 100+ catalog looks like it would get the movies out there. Let’s do that in the first iteration. A few weeks down the line, it’s been released and now we’re working on getting the Continue Watching section developed. Release, few weeks later now we can work on adding in that Featured section.
So instead of waiting for 4-6 months before users even see anything in the app, we’ve released in iterations and now we have happy users, are releasing new content consistently, and we can make improvements on past features.
You will (likely) be a happy designer
I also suggest spending adequate time networking and attending seminars. They don’t necessarily need to be for designers— I’ve been to meetups that have speakers who spend the entire time talking about how data analysis is key to getting the KPIs your company wants, all the way to How to be a good PM, even though I’m not a PM, now I know what my PMs need from me.
It’s a good practice to learn how others work and the ways they succeed in their work. If your company allows it and if you are in a good location or near a big city, sign up for as many meetups, presentations, networking events, and seminars as you can.
I find mine mostly through Facebook events (I don’t personally have a FB but I created a blank account for this purpose) and with LinkedIn (I accept every LinkedIn request and follow companies that are big players in my city). You’ll see people sharing on these social media networks most of the time. Especially now, post-corona when people want to get out and start these up again. The worst-case scenario is you get some free soda or pizza out of it and you’ve added people to your LinkedIn.
If you want to hear more about what I have to say, check back occasionally here or follow me on LinkedIn.
