Do you want real design task? Help product to make it

Once when I was in the village, my uncle, Slava asked me what I was doing. You’re old enough, he said, already 25 years old. You have to do something. I replied that I was working as a product designer in Moscow. He nodded and was silent for half a minute. Then he asked again: “So, does this mean… you draw everything which is in our phones” “Yes,” I said to didn’t try to explain. He took a Nokia with buttons out of his pocket and gave it to me, saying, come on, show me what you’ve drawn on it. This “messages” icon or the one with the phone directory?

Hhis story happened a couple of years ago, in 2018. And it should have been just a funny anecdote, but I suddenly realized, that it’s become the norm. Even my product owners sometimes think that product designers are just people who just draw icons for the phone directory and choose the best selling colour for a button. Because of that their tasks sound like “Let’s make this button bigger because users don’t notice it”

So how can we make product owners set tasks like “I want to increase Retention of our app, let’s think how we can make it” without “move this button to the right” and “make green greener”?

By trial and error, I designed a list of question which helps me to clarify the issue with the Product Owner and prevent any possible misunderstandings.

The list will help you to ease communication with Product Owner and help the PO to understand what to expect from a designer

First stage. User

A question “What user’s problem are we solving?” immediately helps to change our point of view to users side. And this question helps to avoid turnkey solutions and returns to goals.

Ask your PO:

1. How is our user solving this task right now?
2. What result we are is expecting for the user?

Answers on these questions are helpful to create objective evaluation criteria of final result So you will get a strong position at the approval discussion.

But the main point of this stage is to avoid turnkey solutions and start to think about our hypothesis and how to check them.

Second stage. Business

This is the clearest stage for PO. Because it is about their duties in the company — earn money and develop their branch of the company. Start to speak in their language to understand their true motivation.

Having understood, what justifies the feature, you will show new ways of solving the task, and your arguments will be more convincing and clear.

Ask your product owner:

1. Let’s imagine that everything has worked perfectly. What have we achieved? What has happened with the business?
2. What difference do the figures show?

The goal of the stage is to collect business parameters of the case. It will help us to use arguments based on business needs and make our position stronger.

Answers on this question are the next part of collecting objective evaluation criteria of the final result.

Third stage. What is happening with the product?

The basis of a good solution is an understanding of your product and your users. Often it takes a lot of time to collect all data you need. But almost always answers to this question are closer than they seem to be. Your PO knows the answers. Ask them and you will get almost all of the information you need:

1. Who’s our competitor?
2. Where can we get product analytics and documentation about events?
3. Are there any product researches? Where can we get it?

The goal of the stage is to gain as much data as we can, understand what is going on with the product and how it was developed.

Fourth stage. Deadlines

Specify how many time we have to find a solution. This is necessary for planning our activities.

Ask your PO:

1. When do we want to release the feature?
2. When the design should be ready?
3. Are our deadlines flexible?

Sometimes we don’t have enough time to do the research, generate new solutions and choose the best one. We have to just do our job as fast as we can. This types of tasks are easy to determine By the anxiety in PO’s eyes. So if it’s intense and it seems like you’re close to failing the deadline, don’t use this question list.

But if you have enough time you should plan your work. So it is the main goal of the stage. It will help us to avoid a situation when developers are ready to code, but the design isn’t ready.

Fifth stage. Technical limitations

On this stage, we will collect information about the system’s possibilities, to not waste time on a spaceship which will never fly.

Ask your product owner:

1. For what devices do we want to release our feature? Web, mobile any other?
2. Are there any technical limitations?
3. If we improve an existing process, how can we find the way to check it? Are there any test data?
4. If we have a backend, how can we get documentation of responses?

The goal of the stage is to collect all technical limitations. It will help us to make a solution which could be built in a reasonable time.

The last stage. Contacts

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of communication in product development. So you have to ask how to make it as easy as it could be. So collect all contacts and figure out what ways of communication are the best for this case.

Ask PO:

1. Who can answer any question about the product? About the system?
2. What is a convenient way of communication? Chats, emails?
3. How can we approve a design in our team? Who can approve it?

All list to ease your copy-paste

User

1. How does our user solve this task right now?
2. What result we are is expecting for the user?

Business

1. Let’s imagine that everything has worked perfectly. What have we achieved? What has happened with the business?
2. What difference do the figures show?

Product status

1. Who’s our competitor?
2. Where can we get product analytics and events?
3. Are there any product researches? Where can we get it?

Deadlines

1. When do we want to release the feature?
2. When the design should be ready?
3. Are our deadlines flexible?

Technical limitations

1. For what devices do we want to release our feature? Web, mobile any other?
2. Are there any technical limitations?
3. If we improve an existing process, how can we find the way to check it? Are there any test data?
4. If we have a backend, how can we get documentation of responses?

Contacts

1. Who can answer any question about the product? About system?
2. What is the convenient way of communication? Chats, emails?
3. How can we approve a design in our team? Who can approve it?