Resources for Discovery, Design Ops, and Design Systems
As the first UX hire at a tech start-up, I came into an environment that did not have UX experience or processes in place. In fact, most of my career has been spent in start-up-esque companies in varying stages of design maturity. If you’ve found yourself in this situation, this can be a challenge. Maybe I’m a masochist, but it can be a fun and rewarding experience, too.
If you’re interested in the results / to see an example, you can see more specifics in Discovery from Zero, Design Ops from Zero, and [coming soon] Design Systems from Zero.
Discovery
1. “Prototyping the path: how Slack builds products with customer love” by Ethan Eismann
Being a well established company with a product that I actually enjoy using, I wanted to hear about Slacks’ Product Principles, their process for coming up with them, and their real-life application in the work.
Slack Product Principles:
Don’t make me think
Be a great host
Prototype the path
Seek the steepest part of the utility curve
Take bigger, bolder bets.
“The only way we can get to the truth of the matter is by actually experiencing a prototype of the thing we have an idea about. If we don’t have that…it isn’t necessarily wasted time, but it’s also not super valuable time, especially if you want to make a decision on what’s right and what’s wrong.”
He also says that the Slack of today, he considers to be a widely shipped prototype.
“Prototypes are questions, not answers…they are hypothesis.”
2. “Putting Joy on the Roadmap” by Jenny Wen, Mihika Kappor, and Kee Yen Yeo
This talk is rooted in building joy in products we design. To avoid the feeling of “Everything I love is a P2,” there’s a ton of great thoughts on getting explicit — because things that are explicitly agreed upon are harder to cut during a discovery and build process (including joy).
Examining if the work is really delightful, or just a familiar pattern that is supposed to be efficient.
Explicitly defining what “delight” means for your brand.
3. Inspired by Marty Cagan
Reading this book, I learned again that I am deeply mistrustful of anything a big, silicon valley, venture-capitalist type of person says. Especially if it relates to their success. That said, I found a ton of insightful and thoughtful information to consider that’s helped me further develop my Discovery skills, including:
Discovery Principles that are explicitly and deeply defined
148 pages on Product Discovery techniques, mindsets, and goal-setting
Observations along the lines of “every company that has done X that I’ve worked with has succeeded more than companies that don’t”
My mistrust and taking everything in this book with a grain of salt meant that I deeply considered more than I might have otherwise — including choosing to both ignore large sections of the book while working on adapting/adopting others.
Design Ops
1. “Design Delivery: Not New, but More Important than Ever” by Pelin Kenez
While time is spent on how specifically to use Zeplin to achieve quality design delivery, there are some great pieces information that can be applied more generally, including:
Design Intention
Inclusive Collaboration
Automation & Scale
“When sharing screens, feedback is usually arround visuals: colors, whitespace, images, padding, [etc.] … but what we should actually want feedback on is “How will my design achieve our goal?” “
An image of Pelin Kenez during her 2021 Adobe MAX talk.
2. “Rituals of Modern Product Teams” by Yuhki Yamashita and Shishir Mehrontra
Yuhki Yamashita and Shishir Mehrotra go through a lot of content at a rapid pace. It’s all great, and my hand hurt aftwards from hand-writing notes so quickly. One overarching theme is making sure your meetings and collaboration time only fall into one of three buckets:
Cadence
Catalyst
Context
“ “Every great company has a small list of golden rituals” [Bing Gordon]…
They are named…Every employee know them by their first Friday…They are templated.”
The rituals they mention come from a wide range of companies: Figma, Coda, Amazon, YouTube, HubSpot, coinbase, Pixar, Stripe, Zapier, and more.
Design Systems
1. “Building Culture, Collaboration and Trust Through Design” by Hayley Hughes
For Design Systems, Hayley Hughes has become one go-to source to answer the question of “I understand how to do this, but how to I do it well?”
She goes seriously in depth on how to not only apply these to the Design System, but also how to get everyone onboard to building three key items into the system and operations:
Resilience
Understanding
Inclusion
“People need to have include mindsets and tools: handbooks, plug-ins, [etc.] that are integrated into their work flows that encourage positive behavior.”
2. “Your Next Component” by Dan Mall
In this talk, Dan Mall, Founder of Design Systems University, tackles the two buckets of clients that come to him for Design Systems help:
Design System Ghost Town (There is technically a robust system in place, but no one wants to use it)
Design System Graveyward (Everytime an attempt is made to make a design system, it fails)
“Whether you’ve have a design system for years that hasn’t gotten adopted, or you’re starting from scratch today…you can be successful.”
He also goes through his five tips to get a design system adopted (watch the video for the full details!):
Assemble the north star
Collect feature teams’ roadmaps
Interview potential design system customers
Schedule product/feature walkthroughs
Useability test component with product partners
“We want people to write in the margins…The design system is not just the textbook…It’s the textbook plus the notes in the margin.”