I continue to attend every live design critique, but realistically I won't be able to continue doing that after this year. First, it's something I enjoy. It's a privilege to be able to watch designers apply their craft, their creativity, and talk things out. Sometimes it leads to deep - yet productive - debates about how we can better serve customers in ways that work for the business. Second, my presence provides designers with valuable context on the business, customers, and internal stakeholders, enhancing their ability to create robust solutions and develop systems thinking skills. In my opinion, systems thinking is one of those core craft skills that differentiates great product designers from exceptional ones. Third, it's a mechanism to help the team make sure the framing of any given product problem is as crisp as possible. If a problem is not crisp, the corresponding solution will be half cooked, which means we won't attain the desired outcomes. Aside from driving outcomes, it has the benefit of helping designers develop their product thinking skills. The more of team members have great product sense - not just PMs - the more chances we have to meet the needs of our customers, drive innovation/differentiation, and achieve company objectives.
I'd like to understand how you ensure that product copy is impactful and consistent across the user experience (e.g., app, emails, etc.). We currently do that by having Marketing and Design partner together, but it's not that great. We don't achieve consistency and as far as impact is concerned, I feel Marketing and Design have misaligned incentives. More often than not, the copy sounds like we're trying to sell something to users as opposed to using content to support their experience. My tentative solution is to hire someone who would lead UX Content Strategy in collaboration with the Design System team, but I'm always cautious deferring to hiring to solve a problem...Thanks!
I continue to attend every live design critique, but realistically I won't be able to continue doing that after this year. First, it's something I enjoy. It's a privilege to be able to watch designers apply their craft, their creativity, and talk things out. Sometimes it leads to deep - yet productive - debates about how we can better serve customers in ways that work for the business. Second, my presence provides designers with valuable context on the business, customers, and internal stakeholders, enhancing their ability to create robust solutions and develop systems thinking skills. In my opinion, systems thinking is one of those core craft skills that differentiates great product designers from exceptional ones. Third, it's a mechanism to help the team make sure the framing of any given product problem is as crisp as possible. If a problem is not crisp, the corresponding solution will be half cooked, which means we won't attain the desired outcomes. Aside from driving outcomes, it has the benefit of helping designers develop their product thinking skills. The more of team members have great product sense - not just PMs - the more chances we have to meet the needs of our customers, drive innovation/differentiation, and achieve company objectives.
I'd like to understand how you ensure that product copy is impactful and consistent across the user experience (e.g., app, emails, etc.). We currently do that by having Marketing and Design partner together, but it's not that great. We don't achieve consistency and as far as impact is concerned, I feel Marketing and Design have misaligned incentives. More often than not, the copy sounds like we're trying to sell something to users as opposed to using content to support their experience. My tentative solution is to hire someone who would lead UX Content Strategy in collaboration with the Design System team, but I'm always cautious deferring to hiring to solve a problem...Thanks!
I'm going to be that guy, but isn't copyrighting = copywriting? 😅
Ha thanks, yep, updated