TL;DR
I setup the product design discipline as a partner function to Product Management and Engineering. Over the course of 4 years, I grew the team from 3 to 11 designers of various levels of experience and skillsets. I setup weekly design rituals, processes and tools to effectively work as a team. I created an environment where communication and collaboration amongst people were key. From a line management perspective, I worked individually with each designer to help them assess their strengths and weaknesses, and gave them opportunities to gain experience and improve in the areas they were the most interested in.
What
The role of a product designer is a generalist role. Though product designers can have specialties - things that they feel more comfortable with - their role, by definition, is generalist: they’re involved in all phases of product development.
The problem space - to design the right thing
- They empathise with users and identify needs.
- They brainstorm ideas, run workshops to get people to work together & align.
The solution space - to design the thing right
- They structure information and define flows.
- They design interfaces and test them.
The key lies in the word product.
As opposed to specialists who usually step in at a specific time of the project and for a specific & limited task, Product designers have a global vision & strategy for the product. They make design decisions to impact conversion rates and product KPIs. They care for product evolution: phases and iterations, informed by data and business strategy.
To do so, they must understand the business context to inform their design strategy and prioritise work, and they must understand enough about engineering constraints and requirements so they can collaborate better and find the best solutions or workarounds with engineers.
Why
When I was hired, the VP of Product Management informed me of his plan to transform Sony Music PDE from project based deliveries — or “feature factory” — to product development. To operate this transformation, it’s essential to define a product strategy & product metrics, but also to shift the role of designers from specialists UX/UI designers — executing individual design tasks — to product designers involved in the overall product strategy.
What success looks like
From a product design standpoint, the discipline fulfils its job when designers are involved in the product strategy and translate said strategy into a product design vision & strategy for their app:
- Designers are empowered to participate in the product strategy and understand the business objectives that they use to inform their vision and design decisions, short and long term.
- We have defined a product design strategy with principles & tools for the overall PDE product: our Suite of apps (see Solfège case study).
- We have defined specific principles for each app that we apply consistently regardless of the feature we work on based on roadmap priorities.
Challenges
I haven't had any specific challenges within the design team as I've been blessed with working with a bunch of fantastic designers and individuals. Having said that disagreement is unavoidable, but the collaborative culture in the team helped aligning people towards an agreed shared goal.
Advocating for including designers earlier on in the decision process has been a bit more challenging, but through workshops and thanks to the support of the leadership team, we made very good progress and the teams who have adopted this new way of working with product design have been significantly more efficient and more successful. This allowed me to mentioned them as examples of what good cross-disciplines collaboration provides.
How
As a design leader, it’s my role to make space for my team to be able to work in the best conditions. I worked with leadership to explain the reasons behind the shift I was suggesting, as well as a concrete plan with actionable items to move towards that direction.
Design leadership
- I advocated for change in how the company perceived & used product design, and provided process & tools to help with it. To learn more about what I did you can read my Sony Music Suite case study.
As a design manager, it’s my role to ensure that my team understands their role & responsibilities, and that they’re capable of fulfilling them.
Design management
- I setup the function with processes, team rituals & shared tools.
- I created the product design carreer framework that highlights skills & expectations at each level.
- I lead the design system initiative and facilitated workshops for designers to collaborate on UX guidelines and visual patterns.
- I helped my designers levelling up their skills through self assessment and mentorship.
- I helped them connect the dots between their work and the business context.
- I helped them define their own in-app product design strategy based off of the overall product design strategy.
- I hired product designers with complementary skills.
- I designed the product design hiring process & exercises for candidates.
- I made sure that the sum of the skills of all my designers would cover all the design specialties required for the Sony Music Product Design team to be successful.
