Bonus Section
Processes and Initiatives
What I did
This is just a small section to show you how I work and what I bring to the team. In my 7+ years of working in several companies with sizes ranging from 5 to 500 people, I have yet to receive negative feedback. I believe the main reason is my constant desire to help. Not just the users, but also to help my team out whenever they need it. Most of the team feedback I received is about how quickly I respond whenever someone needs me and how eager I am to help them out. So here are some of the processes I initiated to help out my team work better and more efficiently, as well as help support my work as a designer and do a better job overall.
How I work
I would like to say that I always have a foolproof 5-step process that works every time, but everyone who has been in the business for some time knows that is never the case. Each project, each team, each company has a different approach. And that approach makes them better in some things and weaker in others.
So whenever I join a new place, I first like to learn more about that approach. I ask each team member for a quick chat, ask them about their own personal method of working, and this allows me to find how I can adapt to work better with each one.
​
And this is something that ALWAYS works. ;)
The design process
As is my approach to each company and team, so is my approach to each product. I use the first month to get to know the product as best as I can. Try to use it as a new user and get a fresh perspective of the pain points and improvements that can be done. That initial introduction and fresh user perspective are crucial for every product. It has helped me see things that the team working on a product for years has failed to see.
Ask for feedback
Within AugmentIT at the time I joined, there was no user feedback being collected whatsoever. Sales were doing their own thing with sales calls and gathering some info that they would pass to the product team trough a Teams chat or keep it in their notes and forget to share it. When I joined, this was a big missed opportunity. The first thing that I did was set up a call with sales and arrange regular meetings. I asked about the client base, I wrote down notes, and planned a strategy on how to set up a process for improvement.
Client profiles
The client profiles were the first constructed elements of a bigger process of gathering and processing feedback. I separated them by industry, added each contact person, and saved some room for feedback from each session. Then asked sales to add me to the regular monthly meetings.
First contact
Now the fun part was beginning. I was added to the calls and was able to interact with our users firsthand. I was able to ask them questions about their work, their daily tasks, their struggles, and their use of the product. So many new ideas were shared, and I've been able to plan so many improvements for the product. This was a major help for the design department.
Feedback channels
Since I did not want to miss anything and did not want to bother our clients too much, I set up channels for regular contact. All of our clients used Teams as a communication tool within their company, so setting up a group with members from each company was super easy. Turns out effective too. Whenever I had a doubt about a design decision or needed specific feedback from a client in one industry, I would just write a message in the channel, and someone always responded.
The Outcome
All of the steps that I set up to improve the design work seem to improve the work within the team. Some of them worked out well, some of them worked out great. But the team noticed some valuable improvements:
​
-
Clients started to reach out more
-
Clients gained more trust in the development team
-
Clients asked for more features to be delivered
-
Clients asked for specific UX expertise from me