{"id":43493,"date":"2018-01-09T04:49:39","date_gmt":"2018-01-09T11:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/everybody-is-a-designer%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8auniting-your-team-in-empathy-for-the-users\/"},"modified":"2018-01-09T04:49:39","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T11:49:39","slug":"everybody-is-a-designer%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8auniting-your-team-in-empathy-for-the-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/everybody-is-a-designer%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8auniting-your-team-in-empathy-for-the-users\/","title":{"rendered":"Everybody is a designer?\u2014?uniting your team in empathy for the users"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everybody is a designer?\u2014?uniting your team in empathy for the\u00a0users<\/h3>\n

Why you need a product development process in which empathy for the users is the binding material of the whole\u00a0team.<\/h4>\n
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In modern product development, waterfall methodologies seem ancient. Everybody has already gone agile or is in the midst of the transition. Teams work more and more collaboratively, but it is still rare for team members other than designers to actually be user-centered<\/strong> and care about the impact of the end product on lives of real\u00a0people.<\/p>\n

Great products are built on\u00a0empathy<\/h3>\n

We all know functional and reliable digital products are not enough to win the customer over. We need to go further and design intuitive interfaces that satisfy the user\u2019s functional and emotional needs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Airbnb, Google, Apple?\u2014?they all produce great digital design and they all take their users very seriously. However, this approach is not reserved only for big corporate budgets. We are seeing more and more successful products developed by bootstrapped teams who started out with empathy for the users rather than big visions. For example SketchApp, built by a small, passionate team who wanted to challenge Adobe and their bloated software suite, unusable for the average user. Or HotJar, a simple analytics tool which provides designers and marketers with the easiest way to extract relevant information about their users\u2019 behaviour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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SketchApp has been built from scratch specifically for UI designers | source: sketchapp.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Everybody has impact on user experience<\/h3>\n

Do you think that because you\u2019re a back-end developer you\u2019re not designing<\/strong>? Any, even the smallest or indirect, input you have into the end experience makes you a designer of some\u00a0sort.<\/p>\n

Have you ever informed the team about an observation or a thought you had about the product\u2019s concept? You\u2019re a designer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Have you ever sketched out an idea? You\u2019re a designer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Have you ever helped prioritise the product backlog? You\u2019re a designer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are you an engineer developing the latest winter car tyres? You design the user\u2019s experience.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Et cetera, et\u00a0cetera.<\/p>\n

There has been plenty of articles listing that kind of examples. E.g. Jared Spool\u2019s \u201cThe Power of Experience Mapping<\/a>\u201d, where he mentions Netflix\u2019s performance engineers and their impact on load times, which makes them experience designers.<\/p>\n

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It is sort of obvious to modern companies, but I cannot stress it enough?\u2014?user experience is created at the intersection of business, technology and user needs<\/strong>. When business and technology impact the design, they are a part of the design process. Of course, it doesn\u2019t mean that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU is responsible for the\u00a0outcome.<\/p>\n

In the end, it\u2019s the designer who is responsible for facilitating everybody\u2019s inputs and directing the product\u2019s design in the right direction<\/strong>. It is the designer\u2019s responsibility to share the knowledge about the users with the whole team and build their sensitivity about the real-life use of the\u00a0product.<\/p>\n

The hidden cost of handovers<\/h3>\n

I know it\u2019s a buzzword, but how to build empathy<\/strong><\/a>? Well, only by soaking up <\/em>our users\u2019 problems and motivations during the discovery phase, and not through personas or customer journey maps. Developers or other non-design specialists hardly ever read them<\/strong>. It typically leads to a disconnected product development process where everybody expects certain deliverables and does their work in silos, not thinking about the impact they have on the end\u00a0user.<\/p>\n

The cost of this is tremendous?\u2014?time wasted on handovers, pushing out tickets instead of solving problems and disparity of objectives?\u2014?while designers are focused on the users, developers might strive to address business problems. Too much focus on business goals is risky, because it puts all the weight on the stakeholders\u2019 shoulders.<\/strong> At the end of the day though product will be used by regular people, not your stakeholders, developers or even the designers.<\/p>\n

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Mailchimp\u2019s research team shares their insights (here: personas) with the whole company | source: mailchimp.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What I observed in the industry and what I am guilty of myself is the tendency for design teams to create a monopoly around customer insight and the design process. Designers sometimes think their designs are their own beautiful babies whom they do not want to share with others. However, the more you share, the richer feedback you will receive and the better design you will\u00a0create.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Uniting the team in a good\u00a0cause<\/h3>\n

I believe that it\u2019s my duty to improve the world a tiny bit by reducing the amount of time wasted and stress created by badly designed interfaces. It\u2019s a good, noble cause, isn\u2019t\u00a0it?<\/p>\n

It feels really good to see your design solve an actual problem for your users<\/strong>. I like to share that feeling with the team, because, in the end, everybody worked together to create that user experience. But how to make people care? How to make the team align in this noble\u00a0cause?<\/p>\n

Well, you need an inclusive design process<\/strong>. Or, in general, a product development process in which empathy for the users is the binding material of the team. Here are some considerations on how to make it happen in your project\u00a0team:<\/p>\n