Polished interfaces and tanking teams
Product design is a rewarding and incredibly challenging role. It shifts, evolves, and requires learning new tactics and technologies on a regular basis.
With the mass layoffs of the post pandemic tech world, and the purse tightening of startups and companies in general, this field is feeling immense stretching as designers attempt to stay ahead of the chaos.
I’m a product designer.
What that means changes based on who you talk to, but I like Figma’s definition.
“Product design is about the relationship that the designed product has with the user, but also addresses its competitive context,” says Nikolas Klein, Product Designer at Figma. “That includes user experience design, product strategy, and go-to-market planning.”
When I’m talking to people outside of tech I often say that I design apps and websites for a living, a woefully inadequate definition, but the only one I’ve found that doesn’t cause glazed eye syndrome.
Early in my design career I focused on the client relationship and whether the visuals felt correct. Those are important, but they miss the point of whether the thing you’re creating works in a definable way.
You have to be aware of how the product will make money by addressing the pains of a user.
Too much time spent myopically focused on a single area will sink your product. Years ago I worked on a consumer product in a market focused on improving people’s lives. We had the presumed luxury and time to hone the details on a specific set of features.
We meticulously crafted the interface, talked to users to ensure they’d use the features, and spent time on all the tiny details. It was my favorite design up to that point. It was beautiful.
And yet, it was flawed. Not because of the design itself. But because we failed to step back and see the context of where the design would help the company, and where the company stood in relation to the market changes and macro economic dynamics.
That’s not to say we should have focused on all that through each moment of designing the product. But rather all our dedicated effort on the minutia ultimately didn’t matter in terms of meeting the company goals.
A month after shipping the features 75% of the team got laid off, including myself. The startup ran low on cash and had to pivot.
I’ve taken the lessons of that project to heart.
It’s not that we shouldn’t focus on the details. They matter. You can tell when a product receives the dedication and craft of designers who care. It shows. Users will delight in the features, and feel that the product is solving a thing they care about at an emotional level. All those things are good, especially when the product is in a field that helps improve the world.
But none of that matters if the company goes under. Now, that’s not to say company’s deserve to live at all costs. They don’t. The natural ebb and flow of startups tanking is a necessary output of taking risks and trying hard things.
But, as a designer, it’s imperative to consider the details alongside the bigger picture that determines where the company will head.
When I approach a design I look to the metrics we’re trying to move, the users who will benefit from the features, and what we can feasibly build in an appropiate amount of time. Then I start crafting, quickly.
Design, improve based on your team’s feedback, share to users, tweak as needed, and ship. Then learn, improve, modify, and ship. The faster you can cycle through these stages the quicker you’ll learn from real use in the field.
As a designer I must constantly balance the struggle between the details and the metrics that we’re looking to move. One eye stays focused on the ground, while the other zooms out.