Embracing the power of research
We always remember the first and the last thing. I still remember the first feedback my manager gave to me in the years when I just started working in Agile. Without a doubt, it made a big influence on my work ever since. He said – you are making a great impact, work you deliver is in many aspects excellent and what’s most important, you deliver before the deadline. At that point, I knew it’s time to hear something not so glamorous. Sure enough, then he said…
The one improvement point that you might really benefit from at this stage is… perhaps, doing a bit more research before jumping into the design phase.
I know. It sounds even a bit silly to point out a thing like that today. After a global acceptance of a user-centred approach, we can’t even think of a design process without a research. Competitors analysis is something we do without a second thought. However, back then, designers were somewhat scoffing at suggestions like that as everyone was taking a lot of pride in having unique solutions and original designs. On top of that, coming straight from freelancing, my raw instinct was to get the task done in the most efficient way and move on to the next one. While that is production-wise a great attitude to have, it comes with a lot of assumptions.
Real-life comparison
Designing a digital product is a lot like pathfinding. We are creating a user journey by defining a path and taking the same journey first. Now let’s compare this to a real-life situation. Picture yourself driving a car without navigation and trying to find that hotel you booked. Not fun, right? Now take it up one notch and imagine yourself driving to your first day at work and taking a route without first checking where are you going. Chances are, your trip may be a memorable one for all the wrong reasons.
The mindset shift
So it started. For my next task, I arranged a meeting with our customer support and went through all the reported issues related to my current task. I asked our back-end developers to give me some specific query results from our database allowing me to have a deeper insight into profiling. I searched for the best practices similar to my task and I took a long look at how some of our competitors tried to solve similar features. In the end, I sorted all this data into one serious presentation. It felt good. I was ready.
Reaping the benefits
My next feature presentation to the stakeholders was flawless. I was backing up all the design solutions with data facts, comparisons, examples, and success stories. There was no space for speculations. In a very short time, the conversation shifted from “I think” sentences to a discussion with facts, and the meeting ended in a brief, meaningful, concise, and productive manner.
Even more so, I realized that while I was trying to discover user needs, I have discovered the right way to pitch design solutions to the product stakeholders. I became a data-driven design evangelist.
Best practices or thinking outside of the box?
As with everything in life, there needs to be a fine balance with this. There is a thin line between following the best practices and copying other products. The designer needs to be open-minded to recognize and adopt a good solution but also to challenge the designs and leave space and time to think outside of the box. A successful product designer will often walk the path between those two opposing guidelines.