5 Ways to Promote a User-Centered Team Culture
One of my favorite things about being a product designer is having the privilege to work with talented product managers, engineers, data scientists and researchers. Collaboration between folks with different skill-sets is both fun and necessary to build solutions for complex customer needs. A common thread that ties cross-functional partners together is the desire to build useful and intuitive experiences for people. I believe it is the role of the product designer to promote user-centered thinking among the team throughout the development process. Here are 5 ways to do so, based on my experiences, aspirations, and guidance from my colleagues.
What is user-centered thinking? User-centered thinking is an approach to solving problems that focuses on understanding people and their needs.
Speak up
Attend meetings in which engineers share in-progress work. Even in a technically-focused meeting, point out how the feature or fix will impact users. Help establish the vocabulary needed to speak from the user’s perspective. Voicing the human impact of the work is rewarding for all and ensures the user experience is a top priority.
Rally around research
The best way to build empathy for users is to have conversations with them and witness their relationship with your product. Encourage engineers, PMs, and other partners to watch user interviews and participate in debrief sessions afterward. Experiencing a user’s pain, frustration, or confusion first-hand creates a sense of accountability and urgency to resolve it. And on the other hand, it’s incredibly morale-boosting to experience a user’s delight. Either way, research is a catalytic experience that all cross-functional partners will benefit from. Carry forward your learnings by recalling anecdotes from research whenever relevant- in meetings, discussions, presentations etc.
Use your artist skills strategically
Offer design help to partners creating product vision presentations and documents. Help with visual polish is appreciated, but more importantly, advocate to frame the strategy from the user’s perspective and include real (or imagined) examples and stories from users. This framing can expose areas for improvement in the strategy, and it helps your team tell the product story in a memorable and meaningful way. Create diagrams and imagery to help the product vision land with stakeholders. These contributions will show your partners the value of user-centered thinking and earn you a seat in strategy discussions.
Workshop it
Workshops are a great way to help the team adopt a user-centered mindset. It’s beneficial for all partners to shake up the daily routine and flex the creative muscle it takes to explore no-constraint ideas. Facilitate a session where all participants feel comfortable to explore ideas and share with the group. Implore teammates to think from the users’ perspective- this mindset will persist beyond the workshop. Make sure to set tangible goals for the session and follow up with next steps after, so the team feels the time was well spent.
Want to facilitate a workshop but not sure where to start? Walt Disney’s Creative Strategy is a great framework to use.
Find allies who share your passion
Many cross-functional partners deeply value user experience. A handful of product managers and engineers have shaped me as a designer, and made work a whole lot more fun, by sharing their passion for great design with me. Find these folks, and nurture friendships with them. Close partnerships with cross-functional teammates throughout the design process can unlock invaluable feedback, given they look at design through a different lens than you. The feedback and involvement in your process will flow the other direction as well- engineers and PMs will come to trust you and value your opinion in their own work- thus, promoting user-centered thinking in every project.
I hope you found this content useful! Happy designing 👋
