Design Process

When I joined AutoSync, the design team suffered from the lack of a defined design process. Designers performed tasks in “band-aid” manners, were skipping tasks altogether, and more importantly, were not aware of their responsibilities in order to create complete solutions to our customers’ problem.

I led the team through a multi-session workshop to understand current problems, set goals, and draft a new design process.

During the first session, the team identified the following key problems:

• Designers felt left out of valuable product meetings

• Designers want better understanding of their responsibilities versus other stake holders

• Designers often have to descope UI/UX solutions due to timeline crunces

• Design decisions were being made by stakeholders without asking designers for a timeline estimate

• Designers didn’t have a clear way to track design-specific road map

Next, we created a map of activities, people, and artifacts that are involved in the product and design process.

We then iterated several times through these ideas and eventually drafted the new AutoSync design process.

Looking back, I believe the hands-on, build-it-from-scratch workshop was equally important as the final artifact. Designers felt heard and encouraged to speak up about what wasn’t working. Together we created something that felt ours, that we can use and keep shaping as our team evolved.