UX strategy in practice: a report by Yuri Vetrov at UXPeople

    Report by Yuri Vetrov from the UXPeople conference.

    Hello everyone, my name is Yuri Vetrov (@jvetrov), from Mail.ru. Today I will talk about the UX strategy. UX-strategy is a certain need, which is long overdue in design. Previously, design was a kind of tool for solving basic problems, but today it is becoming more important for products, much more critical, penetrating the level of “product management”. I will tell you what it is in my vision, how it happens in Mail.ru, and try to explain where we are going, in Mail.ru, and, it seems to me, in the profession.



    Presentation of the report: www.slideshare.net/jvetrau/ux-people2013-yvetrovuxstrategy
    Full video: uxpeople.ru/video

    In an ideal world, product design is done at the very start, immediately everything is done in accordance with ideal processes. However, in life everything is somewhat different - at the start of a product it is much more important to prove that it actually exists as a product. It is more important to grow an audience, apply the concept to find your niche, your approach. It happens, by the way, that there is no money at all - a startup has a minimum budget, which is spent on the most critical. Because there is sometimes no time left for design. If we take well-known brands as an example, then the first version of Windows in 1985 looked something like this, was not understood by users or the market, and as a result, it sold less than 500 thousand copies. Now they have 90% of the market and space circulation.



    Or if we take Android - when they started, in 2007, everyone mocked them. In 2009, they had less than 2%, and again, everyone mocked them. Now everyone knows where they are. Why it happens? Because at the start of the company, profit growth and audience growth are much more important than the quality of the product, much more important than how it is made in terms of the quality of technical implementation and the quality of design. One must first prove that the product, in principle, has the right to exist in the market. Then comes the understanding that design is important. The reasons for this may be different. For example, competitors have intensified for whom everything is fine with the design, or there is a negative public opinion about the product, or a bad feedback from the user, or the outflow of users begins, or it just becomes fashionable to engage in design.



    In the experience of Mail.ru, it has about 40 products, many of them have tablet and mobile versions, in total we get 200 projects. There are about 20 in our division. For all products, the monthly audience is over 100 million users. All this ultimately imposes its limitations - it is dangerous to change something too abruptly and you need to think ten times before you do anything.

    I share three levels of UX maturity based on our experience and that of many other companies. The first level is operational , the design team in this case solves the problem of creating artifacts. For example, designers are told to create a layout, they draw it, give it back and that’s where their work ends. The second level is tacticalwhere designers are already part of the product team, working closely with developers, testers, managers and other specialists. The third level is strategic , it already implies the influence of the designers themselves on the final product.

    The design strategy allows you to solve business problems and achieve the absence of an abrupt level of quality, when one project is done well, the next is bad, etc. For all this, it is important to know what the maturity of the UX is in the company and what the maturity of the company itself is.

    Understanding the maturity of a company is very important, because this is the environment in which you will work. The company can be characterized by three main components: resources, processes and priorities. Resources in the most basic sense are money (a budget that can be spent on some basic tasks, at least to maintain the project’s performance and some audience accumulation), people (specialists who will be involved in design, their qualifications and availability are important here) , time and credit of trust. The latter indicator demonstrates how much management trusts the design team and listens to its ideas.

    The second important component is processes . The first process is the initiation of products , where does the need for their creation come from. The second part is development, it is important to understand how work is organized in the company and in what environment you will work. It is also important to understand what artifacts designers will transfer to developers. The third stage is quality assurance . It is important to understand whether the team has an influence on this process, for example, to delay the release if serious problems are found in the design and in the UX. The fourth process is marketing. Usually it happens in two ways, this is the department that draws banners, flyers, etc., that is, it deals with maintenance, and the second - when marketing is part of the product team, when it penetrates deep into the product - for example, take Apple where all this is tightly integrated. It is also important to understand how promises made in marketing correspond to the reality of the product. The fifth stage is support , that is, at what stages and in what form the company helps the user of the product. It is important that the designer participates at all stages of the work.

    It is also important to understand the principles of the company - what are the powers of the participants in the work process, and what is their responsibility. It is important how the tasks are coordinated, how performance is evaluated and monitored, plus the organizational structure is important - how the company is divided into products, departments. Another important point - most organizations at the start are small teams, where everyone participates in the work process as a whole. But as the company grows, specialization is already beginning. Therefore, it is important to understand at what stage the company is currently located and where it is going.
    Finally, each company has a policy - it implies how you communicate with other departments and take into account their interests. If you help some employees to do their job well, then they will help you in the future.

    There are also four levels of designer understanding of their role. The first is a simple solution to development problems , when the designer simply draws any artifacts and gives them to the higher management. The second is when the designer begins to solve user tasks , thinking about them, understanding what the consumer needs. Thirdly, when a designer begins to solve business problems , understanding the needs of the company, what she wants to achieve and how to solve the problems she faces. The fourth stage, the most interesting - when the designer can ask the company:
    “Do you really need to solve this particular problem? Maybe you need to decide another? ”
    . The higher you rise in these levels, the more you are in demand in the market and more valuable in this company.

    It is also important to understand that in a company some general processes may be ineffective, in addition to design. And even if you build the perfect chain of layouts inside yourself, then giving them out, you may run into bad developers, or marketers, or someone else. Then in your small world everything will be fine, but then everything will be wrong, which will ultimately affect the quality of the product itself. In this case, the designer will have to intervene in other processes, seeking from other employees the perfect fulfillment of their duties. That is, you will have to change not only your design process, but the whole company.

    For example, at Mail.ru, we never post things about which we can say “they drew and spoiled everything”. We only post what we already have working links to. If we were able to achieve something good, then there is something to boast about. If you couldn’t, then you need to work better.

    The third, very important component of the company is priorities . This is where the company goes, how it chooses these areas and why they are just like that. Just because if you do not solve the problems of business, then over time you become unnecessary and are abandoned.

    There are several key contexts that influence the choice of parities. The first is the search for a market, a product for it and a business model. At this moment, the company is constantly changing, experimenting, looking for the approach that allows it to accumulate a user base and profit. At this time, it can be hard to think about deadlines, because it may happen that your product hypothesis did not work, you have to throw out all the developments in a week and go in a completely different direction. Relatively speaking, the tasks of creating something you do not need at this stage, but you need an active part in research, in the study of the audience, in tracking the effectiveness of current solutions, and the rapid creation of product versions.

    The next context is the growth of profits and user base, when the niche is already groped and the product begins to grow with some features, and also receives any new distribution methods. The third stage is when everything is good with growth and the need to retain users grows, when competitors have strengthened, and you need to somehow rebuild them. It is required to increase the total number of products, the quality of services, the visual quality of the design. The fourth context is the effectiveness of work on a product portfolio. This is when your company already has many services, there are many different departments, and they must work somehow in a coordinated manner with each other, and the products must be connected, and you need to work to ensure that all this in a single bundle is good. Finally, the bad context is when a product is in crisis and you need to save it. Again, in such a situation, you need to forget about some ideal processes and so on, first, finding the source of the problem, and secondly, the solution that will allow you to get out of there. Another critical point, on which many organizations are pricked, is that you must have a certain “advocate upstairs”, that is, a top manager who understands that what you do helps the product and business, and he stands up for you and you are drawn forward. Because situations are very common in the style of "saw that the design is fashionable, let's play, play, received not what we expected - let's break up." And so many quite large companies are piercing this. It is important that the “man above” understands that your work is important, and if he does not understand this, it is important to convey the depth of importance to him by all means.

    All that is said above is a checklist of the company, its “portrait”, which is important to understand before you start to do something on design. In addition to this checklist, there are other models of company maturity that will also be useful to study. One of the most famous is the Ichak Adizes life cycle model . It shows quite clearly how the company "lives" and allows you to establish at what point in its life cycle you are now.



    The second key point is understanding how mature your company is and what path you must take in order to influence the product and so that your results are not lost “inside” the company and that your development goes exclusively upwards. The first stage is chaos, when design at a company is done haphazardly, and the goal is to solve design problems, even if formally - at least in some way. The final quality - on the principle of "how lucky." The developers at this stage cope on their own, perhaps the first designers appear who will not be interconnected, and also, perhaps, outsourcers will connect. This is such a stage at which some companies trample for a long time, some endlessly, and some jump at all.

    The next stage is operational. A certain person appears in the company, a leader who begins to pull it forward. To move to this stage, management must be aware of their problems. This is what was said at the beginning - a negative feedback or an outflow of users. There are obvious problems in the product, which are tied to the design, which is constantly criticized and say that something is wrong with you. There is a leader inside the company, or it comes from the side. The leader shows exactly what the company's problems are and how they can be solved. One of the easiest ways is to conduct several tests in order to assemble a real feedback that proves that the company has problems.

    The next step is the emergence of a team and workflow. A team can be assembled independently, or purchased, or organized in some other way. In the West, it is now fashionable to buy whole startups, as a result of which his team either becomes a separate unit within the company, or is "scattered" in other units. In Russia, such methods are also used and they are becoming more widespread. It is important that the procedure for setting and accepting tasks be set. Many underestimate this, in our experience I realized that this was a key problem, so that everything starts to move. When I arrived, I thought, “Now we’ll build the process in a month”, because I had good experience in building the process and gathering the team before that, and the company believed in me, and everything seemed fine, and the company agrees to do this. When we started doing, we saw that the level has stalled and we can’t let the task down. Because everything seems to be fine, tasks are being set, we are fulfilling them. However, in any of the tasks there are several solutions, because you can solve it on the basis of various input data and various parities. One solution is better for attracting an audience, the other is for the consistency of the entire project portfolio, the third is better for attracting advertising, etc. and the more people connect to it, the more such contexts are given. As a result, you look at the decision pool and understand that it is impossible to choose one thing at all. One solution is better for attracting an audience, the other is for the consistency of the entire project portfolio, the third is better for attracting advertising, etc. and the more people connect to it, the more such contexts are given. As a result, you look at the decision pool and understand that it is impossible to choose one thing at all. One solution is better for attracting an audience, the other is for the consistency of the entire project portfolio, the third is better for attracting advertising, etc. and the more people connect to it, the more such contexts are given. As a result, you look at the decision pool and understand that it is impossible to choose one thing at all.

    Until we were able to fix this process of tasks so that they could be solved with us, it was very difficult. As soon as we did this, the whole process went right away. Therefore, I always try to focus on this.
    There are three main levels of planning: short-term (when you, for example, plan for a week), medium-term (planning for a month or quarter), and long-term (planning for a year or two ahead). At the first stage, it is important to learn how to plan at least for the medium and short term. It is also important that there are some clear, typical processes for completing tasks. For example, how do you solve the problem of fulfilling the concept of a product, how do you do testing, how do you have interface reviews set up, etc. that is, it is important that for any typical task you should have a clear, streamlined and clear process.

    It is also very important to choose tools for your work and to create artifacts, layouts, etc., and to maintain documentation, and to share knowledge. It is important that this toolkit works for you. You can connect outsourcers at this stage, but it is important that they do not solve product problems, but some part of the tasks - for example, you bring them a ready-made concept and they already work in accordance with it. It’s important not to give the food part out, because it is very time-consuming, and you still don’t have at this stage an understanding of what the product should be, which complicates your work.

    I already had the opportunity to look at the process from both the contractor and the customer. I realized that there was an eternal conflict: the contractor's task is to complete the project as quickly as possible, with as little loss of unplanned resources as possible, while the company's task is to make the product as high-quality as possible. Moreover, at the start, the company often does not understand what is needed - it has a certain hypothesis of the product, but no understanding of the details. As soon as the hypothesis begins to turn into something tangible, the problem of alternative paths immediately begins. Therefore, it is better to give out a ready-made clear task.

    It is also important that the process of training and development of final specialists within the company is established. The result of this stage is a team that works great as a production line, delivers excellent results and is able to perform any task.

    When this goal is achieved, you can move on to the next level - tactical. At this level, you are no longer just a design unit, but are an organic part of the product team. The most important thing is integration, when you are included in all development, testing, etc. processes, when you communicate directly with everyone. Not through some kind of manager who transfers your decisions like a buffer and sets tasks for you, but already directly. It is important to communicate with all product managers. It is important that they understand the importance of good design, why you came to this company, why management trusts you, and why you do just that. Then they will support you and come to you constantly. They will not come to you with a solution, but they will say, “here we have such and such a problem, help us solve it.” At this moment, the team has authority and trust, and it does not have to prove with blood every time that this is right, but this is not right. This authority needs to be constantly raised and raised, because it ultimately facilitates future work.

    Then you are already beginning to be trusted by end specialists such as layout designers, developers and testers. They themselves come to you, communicate with you directly in the style of "look: there is a question, help me solve it." After all, everyone knows that simply drawing is not enough, and the most difficult part begins during development. There are always a lot of white spots, a lot of inconsistencies, a lot of problems “getting out” when “pulling” on content, on engines, etc. if there is no person who will help to solve all this, the developers will do it themselves, and it is clear that the results will be quite far from the original vision. At this point, it is also important that long-term planning appears when you look a year ahead. You understand what the team will do, you know where the products are developing, as well as how you will be tied to this development. At this moment, a mechanism should also appear, thanks to which you can be sure that everything that you painted will eventually appear in the project exactly as it was intended.

    Next, you can move on to design principles and standards. When what you are doing can be somehow structured in terms of products and solutions, and build on this basis is already a certain recognizable face and predictable quality. For this to appear, you must have "model products." Such products that you made. Which you like and solve tasks. The critical thing is design technologization. The mobile framework for the mobile web, which we have made, and on which we are now actively collecting mobile web, and it allowed us to redraw and quickly launch more than 10 projects that look and work the same in 2 months. They are quickly developed and quickly updated, because there is a single engine, and if you change something in one place, then the changes are rolled out to all 13 projects. This is good with this - if you are working with layouts or even guidelines, you “run through” each project implementation and see if the layout was correctly laid out, the layout was correct, etc. in the end, you will either get tired or hire superfluous designers who will control all this - and in any case it will be inefficient, useless and long.
    What can be done in this situation is to reduce many projects into large ones, when you have to control not a hundred small projects, but five mega-projects. Thanks to this solution, you can be sure that the implementation of the design will be exactly the same as planned in the design itself, and it will be much more convenient for you to control this implementation.

    It is also necessary to determine the general principles necessary for work - the principles according to which design must exist. You can use bright and juicy projects that convey the "spirit" of design - 10-15 rules that will allow your guidelines to be brought together, and then you can influence how projects are created and why they are created at all.

    An important thing is a knowledge sharing system. When what you learn on one project is transferred to another, when you don’t repeat your mistakes, when the company accumulates and develops all this knowledge. You need tools that will allow you to transfer knowledge about the work of projects from one project to another, so that a common understanding is formed about how the company as a whole works. We are now building similar tools, and this is quite difficult, because both the system for collecting and analyzing data is important, as well as where this data comes from. A knowledge base is created about how users work with products, about competitors, ideas are taken into account there and where they come from. At this point, we can say that product ideas are already coming from the bottom up - from designers to product managers and to management. The final stage is when design is already becoming a means of market differentiation. When it is already an effective tool, when it is through design that a company can increase profits and its importance in the market. A recognizable visual language appears, and product design can already affect the industry as a whole.

    Other UX maturity models are also useful. There are several of them, one of the coolest is the Nielsen model, which has 8 stages, from rejection of usability to a large design campaign. The Bruce Temkin model, which has five levels. A model of a Danish design office, including a lift on these stages. The Macadamian model is very good, where at each stage it is described in detail which skills are in demand from the design team. There is also an adaptive UX strategy model from Andrea Vascellari .

    Unfortunately, there is no universal model, and each specific company will have its own situation. Because, even if the companies have the same goals, the structure inside is always different. And imposing the future on reality creates different situations that will be unique for each company. However, the above model can be a good starting point.

    Summing up, it should be noted that the higher you have advanced in these levels of maturity of UX, the more high-quality product will be obtained in the end. You need to try to focus on long-term goals. Moreover, it will not work exclusively on the design process; other production chains in the company need to be changed.

    Separately, I recall that the link between designers and other employees should be pretty close. It should not be like that, they say, “I am a manager, so do as I say.” Designers and other professionals should work as a team to solve the problem.

    Further - today food designers are very much appreciated, who understand not only one design, but also many related professions. Therefore, it is recommended that everyone not be limited to one design, but to study related professions.

    The whole report can be seen here: uxpeople.ru/video

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