I’m going through an iterative design process with a XFN team right now. We know we’re solving the right problem because we get repeadted validation that the value prop aligns to user needs, but the experience doesn’t provide that outcome in an easy/intuitive way. So we iterate and iterate some more, each time finding ways to better achieve the outcomes we’re targeting. This process is messy. You learn that your initial assumption were off so you lean on failure to improve incrementally. It means as a designer you need to be vulnerable…that it’s not about you providing all “the answers” to your team in a beautifully packaged deck/speck. You need to show what’s “behind the curtain” and bring them along during your process. Show your thinking and learn to interpret feedback. Approach everything as a hypothesis, remain curious, explore and share.
Hey Justin, this is great. If you had the luxury to pair this with a quick-prototyping engineering partner, wouldn’t that be the best of both worlds, whether or not actual user testing is in the cards?
Hey Justin! Sounds like a skunk works project, where there is little shared understanding of the domain so constant exploration is key to understand it. Or is this more of a case where the domain is understood, but the viewpoints are very diverse and difficult to organize? OR MAYBE something else completely. How would you broadly classify the problem you're solving?
UI/UX Designer — Okta, Salesforce, Walmart alumni
1moI know this is a pretty large question for such a quick post... but how do you get your business leadership to stomach such iterative "failure"? Coming from a more B2B experience, I've always had trouble showing this without having to consistently "spin" the numbers as a success, even when they really aren't... Would love to know your thoughts.