Why The Best Design and Product Teams Decide What, Then How

Creating an awesome design, product and experience is hard work. Making the RIGHT design, product or experience is even harder. The smartest teams first figure out the “What” before they decide the “How”.

Whether you’re designing a new product or experience, or improving an existing one, you have to first figure out What you’re making before you can effectively execute the How.

Defining and agreeing on What you’re doing first gives everyone much better clarity to focus on executing How to get it done.

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People Are the Secret to Great Products

First who, then what. That’s the popular mantra to building massively successful and long-lasting companies. The same is true for crafting beautifully designed products and experiences. You may look to tools and processes for the secret to building a great product and user experience but in the end, the secret is people. Knowing who you are designing and building for and having a team who cares about helping those people will give you the greatest chance of success.

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

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Aurelius Podcast: Episode 20 with Aarron Walter on UX Organization Models, DesignOps and User Research

Episode 20 highlights:

  • What does a high functioning design team look like and how are they organized?
  • The three types of successful enterprise UX organization models
  • How companies like Target, Spotify, Netflix, Google and more are doing designops and great UX design at scale
  • Creating and sharing user research findings across your organization

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Inside Aurelius: Episode 001 with co-founders Zack Naylor and Joseph Szczesniak

In our very first episode of Inside Aurelius, we discuss a number of topics with highlights including:

  • Why we made Aurelius v2 and how we got there
  • How we used user research and customer feedback to completely re-design and re-develop our product and company focus
  • UX design, science and art
  • How Joseph, our CTO took an interest in UX as a developer and how UX can enrich a developers work and satisfaction
  • How and why developers should participate and have a stake in user research

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 2 with Jared Spool

Episode 2 highlights:

  • the importance of framing the problem in UX and product strategy
  • how to tell if you’re designing and building the right features or products
  • measuring the impact and success of UX design and product strategy
  • balancing an understanding of the business strategy to make better design and product recommendations
  • Jared’s most effective way of getting your company to prioritize UX and product strategy
  • who owns the user experience?

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Aurelius Podcast: Episode 3 with Fred Beecher on Design Strategy

Episode 3 highlights:

  • What is design strategy? What is product strategy?
  • Effective design strategy methods and approach
  • Where business strategy ends and design strategy begins and the difference between the two
  • Where design fits into business strategy
  • How design can help you monetize failure
  • Ways that design and product strategy can drive business strategy
  • Practical ways design can help fulfill your company mission

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Aurelius Podcast: Episode 5 with Dan Brown on Design Discovery

Episode 5 highlights:

  • Design discovery; what it is and how to do it?
  • Creating designs as a way to further push the discovery process
  • Striking a balance between “big picture” and “fleshing out the details”
  • Knowing when you have enough information to design
  • Using a common language to share and act on user research insights

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Aurelius Podcast: Episode 6 with Peter Merholz on Product & Design Strategy

Episode 6 highlights:

  • Some history of Adaptive Path and how they got into design and product strategy
  • Pitfalls to avoid when making a product and design strategy
  • How to be more than a UX design “stylist” or “executionist”
  • The role of UX and design in business strategy
  • Differences between UX and product management
  • Design like a lawyer and get everyone on board with your decisions and recommendations

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Aurelius Podcast: Episode 8 with Audrey Crane on UX Design, Research & Napkins

Episode 8 highlights:
  • Audrey’s concept of “give me a napkin”
  • Knowing how and when to step backwards from a prescribed solution to find the problem to solve
  • Working with your team and stakeholders so you can make a meaningful contribution as a designer
  • How we can find, and solve, the right problems as designers
  • UX designers and product managers working together successfully
  • Who owns the advocacy for and voice of the customer?

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I Found a Remarkable Way to Kill Politics in my Design and Product Strategy

Can I get a show of hands from how many people have ever had an awesome idea shot down due to politics or flimsy opinions?

Yep, I’ll bet you’ve been in client or stakeholder meetings finding yourself hit with a bunch of questions and critique about the decisions or recommendations you’ve made. Heck, you might even have a great story to tell and well thought out reasons for why you did what you did. Yet, there you sit, watching all that great work get flushed down the drain right before your very eyes by the highest paid, or the loudest (or both!) person in the room. Often, the discussion turns to things about the product or service that fly in the face of customer needs or even our own company objectives. Watching well crafted ideas get argued away in a single meeting is like squabbling over what to have for dinner while the house burns down around you.

Here’s the good news: killing politics and emotions in your design or product strategy doesn’t have to be an impossible task. By setting clear, well defined goals for your strategy, you can easily sell great ideas, decisions and recommendations without banging your head against the wall.

Download the free 4 point product strategy goal checklist, and we’ll walk through how to use it right here in this post. When we’re done, you’ll be on your way to building a brilliant design and product strategy that solves the right problems for your company and its customers.

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