Empowering Collaboration: Streamlining Design Processes at Kiwi.com

In the swiftly changing world of software development, effective teamwork among design teams, product managers, and developers plays a pivotal role in delivering smooth user experiences. I was asked to take over a dedicated design team tasked with crafting internal platforms crucial to the company's operations.

With three talented designers, one researcher, and backing from around 50 interdisciplinary colleagues spanning design, research, and content creation across various teams, our primary focus was refining and enhancing an in-house tool tailored for Kiwi.com's support agents, who tackled a myriad of customer tickets daily. This tool stood as the backbone of our support infrastructure, handling a diverse array of user inquiries across numerous domains, each overseen by dedicated developers and product managers.

Furthermore, our scope extended beyond this main project to include the creation and refinement of smaller, niche internal tools tailored to highly technical users with specialized requirements. However, despite our dedication, we faced several challenges that hindered our effectiveness and alignment with broader product goals.

‍Problem Statement

Upon assuming leadership of the design team, several pressing issues came to light, hindering our effectiveness and alignment with the broader product goals. While these challenges were pervasive across many projects, it's important to note that some projects fared better than others. These challenges included:

1. Agency Mode Operation: The team operated in a disconnected "agency mode," receiving requests from product managers without being adequately involved in discussions and planning. As a result, we lacked a comprehensive understanding of the decision-making process behind feature selection, leading to suboptimal outcomes.
2. Lack of Integration: Our team struggled with a lack of integration within the product teams, resulting in a diminished voice in crucial decision-making processes. Without deeper integration, our insights and expertise were not fully leveraged, impacting the quality of our contributions.
3. Absence of Design QA: Designers were not afforded the opportunity to provide quality assurance (QA) for designs before features were pushed into production. This oversight meant that potential design flaws or inconsistencies could only be identified post-launch, leading to inefficient iterations and compromised user experiences.
4. Usability Research Timing: The focus within the domain leaned heavily towards usability research post-feature creation, neglecting the crucial phase of discovery research at the outset. Consequently, features were often selected without a comprehensive understanding of user needs, resulting in missed opportunities and underwhelming outcomes.
5. Fragmented Feedback Sources: Multiple sources of valuable insights existed within the organization, yet they were not effectively synthesized to provide a holistic overview of current feedback. This fragmentation impeded our ability to prioritize effectively and address critical user pain points.

These issues came to light through a series of workshops conducted within our team and in collaboration with stakeholders from the domain. Leveraging tools like FigJam, we meticulously documented and analyzed the outcomes of these sessions, paving the way for strategic brainstorming and solution ideation.

Solution

In addressing the identified challenges, our approach centered on leveraging the successes observed in better-performing projects and implementing strategic interventions across multiple levels. We organized our efforts into several key areas, namely problems with inclusion, research, insights, and understanding of user-centric design principles.

1. Realignment of Responsibilities: Recognizing the need for better inclusion and domain expertise, we implemented a restructuring of responsibilities. Each designer was assigned primary ownership of two main domains, ensuring deeper involvement and understanding of domain-specific requirements and challenges.
2. Redefinition of Meetings: We overhauled our meeting schedule to foster better communication and collaboration. This included bi-weekly design syncs for critique and domain updates, bi-monthly meetings with responsible PMs for triaging insights and feature planning, and monthly cross-domain meetings to share progress and achievements. Quarterly retrospectives were also introduced to evaluate our initiatives.
3. Triple Leadership Model: Embracing a triple leadership model, we ensured diverse perspectives in key discussions. Meetings involving insights, features, feedback, or planning included representation from project managers, designers, and responsible development team leads, facilitating early identification and resolution of issues.
4. Increased Collaboration: For larger features, we implemented weekly syncs involving the entire team, including designers and PMs. This proactive approach enabled us to address potential issues during development stages, minimizing post-launch adjustments.
5. Creation of Handbook for PMs: To address knowledge gaps and streamline processes, we developed a simple handbook for PMs that mapped our design process stages to the stages of the Path to Production process. This resource provided a high-level overview at a glance, clarifying the roles and deliverables of designers and researchers at each stage, enhancing collaboration and understanding.
6. Centralized Feedback Management: Recognizing the importance of consolidating feedback sources, we designated responsible individuals for different feedback channels and established a process for triaging new insights and ideas in Jira. This centralized approach ensured that all feedback was captured and prioritized, mitigating the risk of valuable insights being lost in the backlog.

Results

The implementation of our initiative yielded tangible results, positively impacting collaboration, planning capabilities, and domain understanding within the team. During a company offsite, we introduced our initiative to the broader team through a comprehensive presentation, sharing our newly created plans and strategies. The positive feedback and recognition received from colleagues exceeded our expectations.

We discovered that similar problems were observed throughout the domains, and we were praised for providing a plan to address them. This validation underscored the importance and effectiveness of our approach. Even during the offsite, we began implementing changes to meeting schedules and realigning responsibilities, which were met with enthusiasm and cooperation from team members.

Following the offsite, the full implementation of our plans resulted in a noticeable improvement in cooperation, planning capabilities, and overall understanding of the domain. The newly structured research initiatives prioritized discovery research, allowing researchers to focus on uncovering user needs more effectively.

The revamped meeting schedule facilitated more impactful discussions, with each meeting having a clear agenda and purpose. This optimization led to more productive and focused interactions among team members.

I am delighted with the positive changes we have been able to enact and am optimistic about future outcomes. The collective effort and commitment from the team have laid a strong foundation for continued improvement and success.