I recently had the chance to collaborate with one of the leading healthcare startups in the UK. During my time there, I joined a 7 people squad focusing on the scheduling feature composed of a product manager, an engineering manager, 3 front-end developers, 2 back-end developers, and myself as a solo product designer.
Working with this size squad on a particularly complex problem (how to create and allocate thousands of shits in a matter of seconds) can be challenging. Therefore, I would like to share 4 tips that helped me enhance our collaboration and, most importantly, helped us enjoy the process.
I prefer to avoid a packed calendar full of meetings; however, I encourage you to take advantage of this tip and book one or two more. Book an hour (it might take less) to constantly meet, align & repeat as soon as you are done with your onboarding.
How does it look in practice: I decided on my first week to book 2 times per week sessions, ideally Monday and Wednesday, with the engineering manager and product manager. These were sessions where we could go deeper into what we wanted to achieve than during regular ceremonies. I would use these sessions to align expectations, share design concepts, progress or iteration, and, most importantly, collect feedback.
You've been into your design for weeks now and, like Gollum, you call them: my preeeecious, but hey, nobody saw them and weeks of work... that's much work... sharing and getting feedback early in the process does not only help you to align with the team; it also reinforces your design and creates trust with your team (and not only with your PM and EM)
Again, you want to avoid creating too much noise and book endless meetings with the whole Squad to share every idea, but you also don't want to disrupt the planned ceremonies. Therefore, I am using loom videos to help the entire Squad keep track of the design. I prepared quick videos for the team on a new flow or the iteration of the flow. These allowed the team to get on the same page and have more fruitful conversations during the regular ceremonies.
Having developers in your file, checking your design, and dropping comments might give you anxiety, but trust me, this is actually a benediction. Having your design challenged early on will help you reach a better solution. Let me give you a concrete example:
As I was working on how to integrate a new feature I was working on into the current product architecture, I faced some severe blockage from my PM when proposing to follow the complex-to-implement solution. However, that was until one afternoon, I booked a quick meeting with the lead front end and exposed the two options we were facing. In less than 20 min, we built a design and technical argument to convince the engineering manager, and guess what? It worked!
We repeated this situation for several aspects of the feature, which ended up much better than what it would have been working each other in our corner. So next time you have a concept or an idea that you believe is worth presenting or discussing with some experienced team member, just do it!
Have you ever presented a design decision not being challenged by at least one or more members of your product team? I am not talking about the size of a button but critical user interaction decisions. We all have.
Time pressure, complexity, point of view or experience are all factors within the team that can be used to build valuable argumentation on which design solution to pursue. One argument I experienced the dev team will never go against is qualitative and quantitative data you can bring from the user.
The dev team is not participating in interviews or usability tests, so they might sometimes propose a pragmatic solution to a specific problem instead of what your design suggests. Also, as they will be the ones developing it, arguing against it might be complex. Share the why and back it up.
As you might have to get it by now, good collaboration with your team resides in excellent communication. Make sure this communication is transparent and structured. Also, remember to collaborate; it is not Design Versus Development. Finally, share your work! Share concepts to align with PM and EM, show your design to involve, and get feedback from the Squad. This is how you will solve complex problems, design great solutions and have fun along the way!
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