Design Process Improvement
Problem: The design process encountered challenges due to inconsistent approaches across pods, leading to conflicts, misunderstandings, and differing expectations among marketing, business, pod members, and design teams.
Goal: Creating a presentation to define the design process of the Customer Experience Platform from initiation through to launch.
My role:
-
Clarified issues and inconsistencies in the current design process.
-
Provided suggestions for improvements.
-
Defined roles and responsibilities for each team member within each step of the process.
-
Assisted in developing new documents to clarify scope of work.
Design and Working team: Design Director, Product Senior Manager, Design Managers, Sr. Content Writer
Outcome:
-
New documents to be filled out by Marketing and Business at the outset of the design process.
-
A presentation to clarify the new design process and roles and responsibilities in different stages.
-
Education series to be available to pod members, Business, and Marketing teams.
01 - The Current Design Process
At the outset of this exercise, I clarified the current design process stages and the purpose and objectives of each stage, delineating each step within the stages and detailing the specific activities occurring at each step. This included defining roles and responsibilities for all pod members, such as product owners (POs), design managers, UX designers, visual designers, UX writers, publishing, and quality engineers (QEs), as well as the roles played by our partners at each stage.
02 - Potential Improvements
As a subsequent phase of this exercise, I proposed several suggestions aimed at enhancing the design process. This included the introduction of new documents to streamline workflows and the allocation of specific responsibilities to each team member (which were marked in green in the screenshot below). Furthermore, I addressed any existing confusions (which were marked in red) by initiating further discussions with other pod members to ensure alignment.
03 - Alignments and Approvals
In the third stage, we presented the changes, suggestions, and questions to our product owners, product senior managers, design managers, and designers to ensure alignment with our proposed enhancements. We actively sought their feedback and incorporated their suggestions into our documents. This iterative process was repeated multiple times to secure their buy-in and obtain all necessary approvals.
04 - Final Presentation
We developed a comprehensive document to assist our pod members, marketing, and business partners in understanding where their feature fits and how they can effectively submit feature requests. This guide outlines the initiation process, detailing the steps involved such as wireframing, content creation, visual design, and page development. Additionally, the document highlights enhancements made to clarify the distinctions between the previous and updated design processes. Furthermore, this document includes detailed responsibilities for each role within each stage of the process, outlining their specific involvement and contributions.
