1. More Targeted Problems to Solve
“Redesign Youtube.” “Create a recipe app for millennials.” “Design a health app.”
In classes and internships, my assignments typically spanned months in time and covered every step in the design process. The deliverable could look like 30+ screens.
Now, at work, I’m given more targeted problems. In a past assignment, I focused on this sample document section — just a small piece of this entire page.
My PM, Mike, revealed to me that more users clicked on the gray boxes within the document, which triggers nothing, than on the “Create Document” button, which triggers the desired next step.
A poor user experience if you expect something to be clickable and it isn’t, sure, but also how can we funnel more users into creating their document?
We landed on this:
When a user tries clicking anywhere on the document, the tool tip pops up exactly where a user is suppose to “Start”. Yup. That’s it.
While our solution seems simple, the thought process behind it was not.
Not too long ago, I would’ve thought that 3 full days on a simple pop up was overkill but the more experience I have, the more nuance I have to contemplate to get to the final solution.
Also instead of creating experiences and screens from scratch, I’m usually designing on top of or within current designs — iterating to optimize our product. This requires understanding constraints and how to more naturally integrate something new into something existing.
2. More Cases to Consider
“Should we have rounded or unrounded corners?”
In college, I focused much more on how designs looked than how they behaved. Even considering the UX, I’d mock up what was suppose to happen but not what could happen, the expected default version but not the exceptions and edge cases.
This meant that, in college, had I designed a dropdown field I would’ve stopped here:
I acknowledged the dropdown’s:
- Shape
- Border radius
- Border width
- Border color
- Font family
- Font size
- Font weight
- Icon
But… what happens after the dropdown has been clicked?
What happens after a choice has been selected?
What happens when the user wants to go back to double check their work and… “Wait, what was this state referring to?”
What happens:
- If an option is 40 characters long?
- If the user forgot to make a selection?
- If the user made the wrong selection?
How will this dropdown change if placed on a mobile screen, on a different colored background? Will users with accessibility issues be able to see, read, and click into it?
This is just a teaser of what our design team has had to ask in creating our new design system:
And there are constantly new cases or inconsistencies we’re discovering — a reminder that design, too, is a living being that changes and grows.
3. Compromising with Business & Engineering Goals
“Ads make it look so cluttered.” “Lets have these really cool animations as you scroll down.”
In college, I was like “Okay, there’s the business side and the engineering side too…I know…” But I didn’t know-know, ya know?
Design has to improve the user experience but it also has to benefit the business and be worthwhile enough to be developed by engineers.
At work, I helped redesign our Document Library. Given a page that mostly does the job already, how do we make a convincing enough case for updating it?
By splitting it up.
Because if at any step, the design fails —we can still pull back without engineers having invested too much effort, without the business having invested too many resources. Overall, less risk.
So the design will be rolled out in stages. In fact, the first update isn’t even noticeable at a glance because it’s a change to the behavior of the search bar.
If we find that users are more easily able to find and create the document they want, then we’ll give the UI a makeover:
We also have designs mocked up for the other pieces of this page but they’ll only get rolled out if certain metrics are achieved— an unthinkable concept for the college-designer-me…
4. Getting Hit with the User Feedback
“Nice presentation! Does anyone have comments or questions?”
👆That’s usually where it ends for design projects in schools or internships. But in a company, designs don’t just end with a prototype. Developing and releasing designs to actual users is just the beginning of a feedback loop that guides the iterative process.
I thought this could be best illustrated as a meme, and this is the first meme I’ve ever made. Wow. I am both proud and embarrassed by this feat:
Let me break it down for you…
Designing What You Want
You know what I want? This, this right here:
Quirky animations. Tasty colors. That sleek sans-seriff font. But alas I am not representative of our main user base…
Designing What the Users Think They Want
Users can be passionate about what works and what doesn’t work, mostly what doesn’t work. They love suggesting features they themselves would want. They might say things like,
“I like minimal design, no clutter.”
But also,
“Why is the button hidden? It should be easier to find.”
As designers, we’ll try our best to cater to the user — that’s our job— but it’s also our job to determine the right balance.
We need to ask: How much of a problem is this problem? Is it just a passionate few making it seem like a bigger problem than it actually is? And if we change this one thing, how will it affect the rest of the design? Is it worth it?
Designing What You Think the Users Want
Brittany, another Formswift designer, iterated a ton on this landing page for our new product.
We conducted many user interviews on it and the design evolved based on feedback. Even then a lot of assumptions had to be made around what information the user should see, in what layout, in which order, and how much.
Designing What the User Needs Based on the Actions They’ve Demonstrated by Using Your Product
Once that landing page went live, you know what ended up happening?
Only a couple people even scrolled past the fold. Almost all users clicked the “Start” button right away.
So more appropriately, the landing page should’ve looked like this:
Ha.
I’m (mostly) joking! But I hope you get the point.
Even as designers, who pride ourselves in user empathy, it’s easy to get caught up in the “ideal” user — one who will read through every single word, stare at every single illustration, and comprehend everything before moving to the next page.
But by utilizing feedback, we can create a stronger solution that takes into account users’ realistic behaviors and tendencies.
With all that said…
My “preachings” are my own learnings in disguise. I say my “own” but these learnings couldn’t be fully realized without my team — Mike, Brittany, Ronnie, and Elisa.
This is not an exhaustive list and experiences will undoubtedly vary. For context, this is the point of view I’m coming from:
- 🐻 I graduated from UC Berkeley, which offered no design major but a growing number of design classes and extracurriculars that I took part in. I had several summer design internships in the Bay Area.
- 🎉 I just passed my 1 year mark as a designer! I’ve taken time to reflect on learnings and observe patterns (which hopefully show through in this post) but I understand there’s a lot I still don’t know.
- 📑 I work at FormSwift, a San Francisco start up. We work on online legal and tax documents, e-signing, PDF editing — the whole shabang.
Congrats to the new wave of designers!
Your world is gonna get rocked! 🤘I think our #design channel says it best:
