Process Redesign
Put together a revised process for our central design organization to enable design thinking from the beginning of product development.
Challenge
UX was being involved late in the game on cross-functional projects. UX Leadership tried fixing this problem by rolling out a process that worked well for one product team to the entire design organization. This received a lot of backlash and designers felt that this process didn’t map to how their product teams operated and it didn’t make sense for them. This caused a very slow adoption of the process.
Solution
Designed a process with a fellow talented designer in a way more than 100 designers across the globe felt represented and started leveraging to work with their cross-functional stakeholders. More than the artifact itself I believe our change management approach was what helped get the necessary buy-ins.
This was successful on one team however all other designers felt forced to use it and pushed against it.
Causes:
- Enough dissatisfaction about existing processes hadn’t been created
- The decision was top-down and team members didn’t feel motivated to adopt it
- Value of new process had not been communicated or measured
Iteration 1
Initially, only the designer from the team who had adopted the process was working on refinements. She had not been able to advance much due to too much familiarity with the process. The changes she had made were mainly visual and the process still hadn’t seen much adoption. That is when I was brought in to help with the adoption.
Whiteboarding
I brought in a fresh perspective, helped her and management see the gaps in the process. We then worked to redesign the process. We redrew the process from scratch on a whiteboard.
Working with 100 designers together would have been very challenging. So, I asked design managers to nominate representatives from their teams across geographic locations who understood existing processes, could provide feedback and could influence their teams.
Process Feedback
We presented the process as an initial draft and encouraged them to enter comments on Figma. We made sure we addressed every comment entered.
New Design Process
Based on the feedback, we iterated and then rolled out the new design process. We then handed it out to our operations team.
Outcomes
- Designers and Design Managers started using the new process representation to communicate the changes they had to make with their cross-functional partners.
- Stakeholders who are not aware that I was one of the members who designed the process, bring it up asking me if I have seen the process and how I can help them adopt it.