According to Matej Latin’s 2023 report on why designers quit their jobs, low UX/design maturity ranks among the top reasons.
This graphic illustrates NN group’s 6 levels of maturity. When we divide the levels in half, we have less mature companies (levels 1 to 3) and more mature ones (levels 4 to 6). It turns out that 77.5% of companies belong to the lower design maturity half, indicating that this is a widespread issue in the design/UX industry.
As product designers, it is our responsibility to proactively take the lead and make efforts to enhance the design processes.
PDS (Permanent Data Solutions)
Permanent Data Solutions is a Web3 startup that builds a suite of apps in the Arveawe ecosystem. We build a wide range of products, like ArDrive, ArNS, or the gateway service.
We are a team of around 30 people, consisting of engineering, product, marketing, and community departments. So, we are a startup, but we have a solid company structure.
And due to the nature of being a startup, we need to make decisions quickly and build rapidly.
Before we started working on a user-centered process, there was almost no user research being conducted, or it was very limited. The features that were being built were mainly shaped by the developers, and the decisions made along the way weren’t backed by any user data. They were mostly based on assumptions and gut feelings, which is also the case in many other companies.
This wasn’t necessarily wrong considering the expertise and the experience level of the team. However, we reached a stage where we needed to eliminate the risk of building the wrong thing and improve the products even further.
So, even though we were aware of the challenges of implementing a user-focused product design process, we decided to put real effort into it.
First Step: Creating Awareness
After being hired by the company, I had to work on two products simultaneously for the first few months. One of them was in the process of launching an MVP version, while the other required quick design solutions for various issues.
During this period, we were aware that the entire process needed improvement. In particular, the lack of a user-centered approach made it difficult for us to make confident design decisions.
So, we started sharing our thoughts about the improvements we could make with our colleagues in the company and also used the Design Maturity Evaluation document to assess our current status.
Some of the questions we addressed were:
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Is there a dedicated budget for UX/design? (Only non-UXers)
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How would you describe the UX research at the company? (Non-existent)
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What is the UX’s perspective on business impact? (Minimal)
And the rest of the answers to the questions were mostly either non-existent or minimal.
So the only reason that our rating was not 0, but rather 27%, was because we had 2 designers on the team instead of zero. 🙃
If your company is facing a similar situation, you may hear this statement a lot:
Sounds familiar, right? However, if you don’t make it as the product designer, then probably there will never be enough time for UX processes.
You don’t need to wait for approval from anyone to begin incorporating UX methods and tools into your process. You can start gradually and demonstrate the impact to decision makers, and influence them to allocate more time for UX design.
Fortunately at PDS creating awareness about the situation was not a difficult task for us, since the rest of the company was largely supportive and on board with prioritizing UX.
Second Step: Planning
We began exploring various design processes to determine our goals. Considering factors such as the company’s employee count, desired feature development speed, and available resources, we decided not to strictly adhere to a single process. Instead, we aimed to establish a foundation for our process and select the most suitable methodology based on the specific needs and details of each project. While it may be ideal to rapidly build and measure experimental or low-scale projects, other projects may require more research to minimize risks.
To build this foundation, we adopted the double diamond product design process and implemented a continuous research system as the basis for our design decisions, which involves regularly interviewing two of our users every two weeks and launching ongoing surveys to gather feedback.
Then we elaborated on our plan, clarified the tasks that needed to be performed in each phase, and outlined how roles would be distributed throughout the process.
I should also mention that the product design process is not strictly linear as it’s seen in the flow. We determine the starting phase based on the project’s specific needs after quickly analyzing what we do and don’t know. And we document all information in the project brief or the business case for larger projects.
If we have sufficient information gathered before the project and we can make confident decisions, then we proceed with ideation. If further investigation is required after testing, we may return to the research phase.
The key focus is to systematically implement a user-centered process.
We also mapped out our previous process to compare it with the new one. As you can see, in the previous process, we were skipping some steps and starting directly from high-fidelity designs.
Third Step: Implementing the Process
After completing the planning and preparation phases, we arrived at the implementation process.
The activities I have described so far took approximately 3–4 months. Although there are still areas that require improvement, I will briefly explain how we utilized the tools to improve our process.
Pip Decks
If you haven’t heard about Pip Decks before, I highly recommend checking them out. They are a deck of cards specifically designed for conducting workshops.
When starting a new project, we use Pip Decks to determine the appropriate phase to begin with. For example, if we lack a clear problem statement or knowledge about the target audience, we conduct a workshop or use the cards to guide our decision-making process.
Slack
We created a research channel on Slack where colleagues from different departments can share user feedback & information.
This keeps research-related matters active, and that ensures the entire company is informed about the user insights we’ve gathered. Improving communication about the new process is crucial in general because it’s easy to revert to old habits and fall back into previous ways of doing things.
Monday.com
Another thing we did was to create a user research database on Monday.com. But don’t ask why Monday.com 😀 We were already paying for it, so when we checked if we could use it as a research database, we found that it was quite sufficient.
The important thing is to be able to easily filter and analyze information when needed.
We also created a research plan template, as well as boards to collect all user feedback from different channels. We use the research plan template when starting deeper research for a specific project. Otherwise, we mostly use the data board on the left.
Confluence
We also created a document in Confluence to facilitate easy access to the details of the new process. This document explains our new process step by step, essentially serving as a guide for team members. Individuals who have not attended the meetings or are new to the team can easily familiarize themselves with the process by reading this document.
And finally, a view from our first workshop. 🥳
After much effort and hours of meetings, it was truly exciting to convince everyone and organize this workshop. Another aspect that made this workshop special was our decision to postpone the project we had planned to start. We realized that there were many unknowns and risks associated with the project, prompting us to conduct further research and testing.
As a result, we believe that all the effort we invested in the process has indeed made an impact, and we deem it a success.