Integrating Design & Research into Product Development

Companies

Amboss (2023)

Contorion (2024)

Location

Berlin, Germany

Collaborators

4 Product Managers
3 Engineering Managers
1 Staff Engineer
1 Staff Product Designer
2 Product Designers
1 SVP of Product

TOOLS

Miro

Maze

GetFeedback

Dovetail

Confluence / Notion

Because Product Design was expected to wear many hats, including user research and user testing, it was important to create clarity on their role and responsibilities within the product trio while aiming to optimize the design process so research is not a bottleneck.

Enhance collaboration within product trios (EM, PM, and Product Design) by establishing project scope requirements, automating the research process and design handovers for development squads.

The challenge(s)

The concept of a product trio was new, the design role had recently changed, development was slow due to long, exhaustive stakeholder feedback loops and initiatives that were not fully scoped.

My Role

Staff Product Designer

MY RESPONSIBILITIES

Align with SVP on goals and expectations for the Product Experience team within the org
Create the workshop activities including audit on existing processes
Facilitate and moderate trio and key stakeholders while defining extended stakeholder involvement
Synthesize new process and frameworks into clear, actionable how-to documentation
Communicate and campaign the new ways of working with extended stakeholders to ensure adoption

What we did

The three activities took place in four parts:

Audit the status quo of the current product development process including opportunity scoping, research and design process
Identify the pains in the current process and define solution ideas including frameworks and tools to resolve gaps
Define a new way of working that aligns to the product life-cycle
Identify which stakeholders and rituals are involved at specific touch points within the product development workflow

VALUABLE LEARNINGS

While facilitating groups that consist of Product Managers, Engineering Managers, Researchers and Product Designers – I learn which artefacts are necessary and who from the leadership team will require extra attention when communicating the outcomes.

By ensuring that the outcomes are documented and shared in org-wide channels, I'm able to highlight the benefits the workflow provides to team velocity and empower junior to senior designers to conduct faster research planning and prototyping.

The IMPACT

Because the five-phase workflow included solution discovery, delivery and analysis – PMs were able to define better success metrics to inform quarterly strategy planning.

Increased framework adoption of Product Requirements Document, UXR Plan etc.

Established rituals for Design<>Engineer reviews and handover

Reduced design debt by introducing a design QA in the delivery workflow