Ever wondered what’s going through your teammates’ minds? Projects can be full of highs and lows, and sometimes it’s easy to mistake a sidelong glance during a review for a something more sinister, or feel put off by over-enthusiasm at the kickoff.
Ever wished you could just take a sneak-peek inside their minds? It’s your lucky day, because through the power of the interview, we will do just that! I chatted with a product designer, a scrum master and a UX researcher to get the scoop on how they think about project phases, what they love and hate, and some of their typical thoughts at each stage.*
*Disclaimer: Qualitative research sample of three may or may not be indicative of your particular teammates’ thoughts and opinions. Difficult team dynamics are often best explored with open communication, and lots of cake.
Ever googled design or development process diagrams? There are so many variations and schools of thought, it’s easy to get bewildered. Our trusty trio had different ideas about where the project begins.
Forming Phase
Your teammates might be thinking: ‘What exactly are we building here?’ or ‘Ok I have a good feeling that I know enough to get going!’ ‘I’m so excited – think of the possibilities for what we can learn and build.’
Caroline Cocchio, a scrum master, highlighted the importance of a team forming phase, where the team is getting together and aligning with each other and the client (where applicable) to understand the goals of the project and who the users are. During this phase, there are often ‘aha’ moments as the team gets immersed together in what they are working on, allowing them to grasp the opportunities and objectives of the work.
Research Phase
Your teammates might be thinking: ‘What’s it like for the user? How do they experience it?’ ‘ Oh this is so painful for the person, but I can understand why we can’t solve for that.’ ‘Oh, I didn’t know they were using it like that!’
For the designer and researcher I spoke with, some kind of research phase is a crucial next step. Ricardo Vazquez, a product designer, was even more emphatic about this, “All design projects must start with a research phase – it’s critical to the success of a project – from that phase we will be able to establish our metrics, understand who we are designing for, areas of opportunity.” For Jen Chow, a UX research lead, the upfront context gathering and research are also a space for empathy and understanding the problem space from a customer, business and tech perspective.
Caroline echoed this in her characterisation of what comes next, saying she thinks about the next stage as digging into the big picture; it’s about trying to understand the user journey and roadmap for the product, and really putting yourself in the shoes of the user to understand their ideal experience.
Design Exploration
Your teammates might be thinking: ‘I wish this was feasible on our project.’ ‘Man, so many excellent designers out there just blowing my mind.’ ‘Let’s get it out there and put it in front of people and see what they do.’ ‘ How can we create a bare bones, but still testable version of this concept?’
Once the user research and big picture roadmap is in place, the designing begins. Depending on their roles, people characterised this phase in slightly different chunks.
Ricardo included an upfront ‘design exploration’ phase, where the goal is to examine competitors, and go wide to explore inspiration from adjacent and opposite places. Ricardo’s passion and commitment to this phase is common in designers. “The exploration phase is my favourite, as it allows me as a designer to think about the design in a more free way. I love knowing what I can and can’t do. Knowing the limits around design and feature. I’m able to go crazy to be honest! You’re not accountable to your users, all your accountable to is just the work. It becomes a really fun playground.”
Jen also talked about the excitement of the exploration phase; where many possibilities are uncovered through activities like card sorting, mind mapping and prototyping. In this stage of the work, focus for Jen is on being scrappy while also being effective at testing assumptions and hypotheses. This part of the phase is a satisfying challenge to tackle in collaboration with designers and other team members.
