Process

Myself and the rest of the global design leadership team flew in to CPH to:

• Unpack designer's experience using the previous design principles.

• Identify the strengths and shortcomings of our existing principles.

• Reflect on the new company strategy and vision.

• Capture the input and feedback of product design, content design, user research, design engineering and product leadership

  
  

Establishing the principles

Myself and our Director of Content Design took the responsibility to drive this effort and deliver the new design principles based on the outcomes. I was responsible to create the documentation of the design principles and deliver an effective format. Besides that I also invested in creating a rollout plan.

The documentation of design principles

The information has been structured in a specific way to help explain the principles, and highlight how they can be adopted practically in our product teams.

Principle name

• Communicates the overarching concept in a single noun

Definition in theory

• Explains what the principle means in general terms (not directly related to Brandwatch)

Definition in our practice

• Explains what the principle means for us in Brandwatch, and how our squads can apply them

• Structured as 3 bullet points, each one relating to a broad stage in the design process:

  • Discovery

  • Delivery

  • Validation

Example standards/outcomes expected

• Highlights possible baseline successes when the principle is applied correctly

Rollout plan

People need to understand how to use principles in their work, so I prioritised education already in the Confluence documentation. We broke down the "How to" to 3 main phases – Prioritise, Document, Explore.

Design principles are a language. It takes time and practice to master, therefore we had to use them every step of the product development lifecycle.

Exercises

Activated design principles in our design critiques straight away. Since it is intimidating to give feedback through a principles at first, we introduced virtual hats to make it a fun exercise. This has helped steer the focus and enabled learning to be more efficient.

I asked every product designer to bring the tool to their teams and host workshops where they can collectively reflect on how the principles relate to their projects and product. This enabled every team to make aligned and effective decisions that deliver on the user and business needs.

Tooling

We are a remote first company, so I wanted to make something that creates a real connection between this tool and the people using it. I designed physical cards that could be on their working desks so it is always at hand and not, yet another Confluence documentation.

Next steps

We are now collaborating with our user research team to set up measurables for our design principles. So we can learn and connect their impact to outcomes.