How can one designer work with more than 30 developers?
How can one designer work well with 3 Product Managers and 5 Product Owners, across multiple geographies?
Visionplanner is growing fast and understands that well-designed products are more likely to win in the market. But it is not always easy to expand a design team, especially when you find product-market fit without any designer on board.
Last year, Visionplanner has seen growth and has expanded the team substantially. Within 1 year I went from working with 2 PMs and 1 PO (In India) to working with a team of 8 Product Owners/Managers and more than 30 developers.
In order to scale design, I decided to create and communicate a new process for UX and UI design in the company - one that would ensure good design with the existing design bandwidth.
This project was initiated in December 2018 and is on-going.
I worked with a fellow PM and the Engineering Development Manager to first clarify the roles, as well as outline the key deliverables of the roles.
Additionally, I clarified the terms so that everyone was on the same page. So, instead of using 'Mockups' (which could be ambiguous), we use either 'Wireframes' or 'Hi-fidelity designs' to clearly distinguish between an early stage ideation and a later stage design.
Defining the roles, responsibilities and deliverables of the People involved
After defining these, I laid out the process as a flow, with the deliverable of each stage serving as the input for the next stage.
The Development Process - from Market to Workflow diagrams
The Development Process - from Wireframes to Design and Development
The key here was to get the Product Owners to agree and get trained on making the initial wireframes using Balsamiq. This way, they are forced to think visually and about the details of the customer interactions.
The early results of this project are positive. The development manager decided to buy Balsamiq for JIRA plugin to help the POs make the wireframes and communicate them to developers. The new POs in India took enthusiastically to getting their hands dirty with visual flows. The new PMs also have more appreciation for UX in the early stages of the development process. They clearly see how early UX involvement improves the product outcomes.
Creation of wireframes has improved communication across the board - from PMs to POs to Developers.
While the initial results are promising, as the company scales, this system will show stress. The management realizes this and is looking to increase design bandwidth.