Formalizing Validation
How might we improve team productivity, promote collaboration, and scale product growth?
Project Brief
Client
Pricewaterhouse Coopers
Role
Product Design Manager
Project
Internal Design Ops
Project Description
Managing a global product design team involves challenges beyond time zones and borders.
As a manager, I needed to establish collaborative guidelines that aligned the creative team and defined an inclusive delivery solution while keeping the process agile.
Why Are We Here?
Our design team spans 13 time zones, speaks four unique native languages, and all individual group members utilize an undefined design and pattern library. As a result, collaboration, feedback, and direction were complex. Our delivery process experienced fidelity mishaps, unrefined patterns, component and design inconsistencies, and an overall lack of clarity with the rest of the product team. Out of frustration, we decided to go rogue and build a formalized design and delivery process modeled around collaboration and inclusion.
Help Us Help You
The design team needed alignment and clarity. In addition, our creative delivery process had massive gaps and needed a design pattern library.
Build a Pattern Library
We created a separate pattern library after our component audit, which helped eliminate UI guesswork and allowed for quick page building and template sharing with the front-end development team.
Identify Problem Areas
After conducting a pattern audit, we searched for patterns and themes; after identifying them, we could add to our backlog and prioritize.
Identify Critical Touchpoints
The design team audited and mapped our current design process, including research, iteration, and final handoff.
Milestones & Goals
Going into this process, we knew it would be challenging to implement or fully participate. So our collective goal was to be small but mighty—a series of minor, incremental enhancements. Just enough to move the dial, and over time, our small wins would amount to significant changes.
Research! Research! Research!
The research team at PwC has created workshop templates to demonstrate the value of research in the UX process, which can be used by anyone, regardless of their role. We help product teams identify opportunities for research and refine processes based on the results.
Create a Pattern Library Using Existing Components
The current design system lacked a general usage guide. Unfortunately, this uncertainty led to confusion as we entered the design process without clarity. So, as a team, we built a pattern library using the existing design system components and created something special for the entire enterprise organization to utilize.
Transparency & Collaboration
Simply put, we wanted to showcase what we could bring to the table and the value of design. Design collaboration is invaluable as it fosters creativity, enhances problem-solving, improves the overall quality of the final product, and, ultimately, results in more well-rounded and user-centric designs, driving customer satisfaction and business success.
Accessibility
Define Research Strategy
Design Delivery Process
We created an inclusive design delivery process to stay ahead of production by outlining key deliverables and responsible parties for approval. This process aligns with stakeholder visions and business goals, allowing dedicated time for research and user testing. The efficient process seamlessly integrates into existing delivery schedules with minimal effort from the team.
Who is Responsible for What?
We lumped our delivery process into three buckets: Tasks, People Involved, and Deliverables. Each item, from Research to Final Deliverables, was marked on this roadmap, defining our entire process. Total conciseness!
Conduct Interviews
UX Strategy/ Research
Journey Mapping
UX Lead
Product Owner
Personas
Translate Data into Design Decisions
Task
People Involved
Deliverables
Design Collaboration
The designers collaborated with the design systems team, forming a dynamic partnership that drove the continued evolution of our design system. By working together, designers brought practical insights and real-world feedback on usability and functionality, while design systems teams contributed their expertise in consistency, scalability, and best practices.
Creative Solutions
This synergy allowed for the identification of gaps, refinement of existing components, and introduction of new features to enhance the overall user experience. Thus, the design system remained robust, adaptable, and aligned with user expectations and organizational goals, ultimately fostering a more cohesive design ecosystem.
Let's Keep it Agile!
For our proposed delivery process to work well with other teams, we had to confirm that it was agile. Therefore, we were careful to avoid introducing a new way of doing things all at once, but instead, we piggybacked our approach on the existing delivery rails.
For the Designers
Remember to always use the design system and component library, log any issues for discussion during our team design review, and conduct a final design review with developers nearing the end of a sprint.
For the Developers
We removed non-compliant design components, ensured no unauthorized frameworks, and established communication lines and rulesets. This improved accessibility and adhered to WCAG guidelines. Additionally, we included developers in design meetings for clarity, leading to a smoother file transition.
For the Scrum Master
We didn't aim to disrupt the agile process but to align with the existing roadmap, charting design handoffs, responsibilities, and deliverables.
Voice of the Product
Building a product in English is challenging due to communication barriers. These all caused substantial impacts on copywriting. Unfortunately, more often than not, copy just appeared, which was usually an oversight by a highly technical developer or Product Owner looking to fill the void. Rarely was there any consideration given to the person who would read the message once an error or instructions were on the screen.
VOP is a team effort!
The plan to integrate copywriting into our system mapping process to improve the user experience. This involves identifying and addressing errors and messaging. Additionally, we created a glossary of technical terms and phrases and ensure user-centric communication. Lastly, we filtered our copy decks through user personas to ensure clarity.
Using AI for copywriting
We used Chat GPT, Grammarly and, PwC's AI generator with the copy for further clarity and proper grammar. We were careful not to input sensitive company information and restrict our use of AI to messaging, alerts, and error messaging.
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Project Takeaway & Metrics
Our process eliminated countless hours of design churn and ambiguity. The design team delivered page comps confidently, and we could allocate more effort to research. The designers could share their process and map it to our design delivery roadmap, allowing clear opportunities for collaboration. We could scale this process at an enterprise level and encourage other design teams to adopt this process.
Collaboration
Design Consistency
