Helping the business reach their goals through user-focused solutions is the overall objective when it comes to product design.

Good design is a key factor in business success.

Those who are aware of the impact design can bring are more likely to improve customer satisfaction and provide a greater experience for the people using their product.

The key element for achieving this impact is effective collaboration.

Let’s get into some of the ways that design can work closely with other areas of the business to get results.

Product Direction

It’s difficult to design a solution for a problem that hasn’t been identified.

For product design to be an effective tool for the business, there must be the desire to solve a particular problem that satisfies the needs of a specific set of people. This is a key ingredient for the success of a company, since without customers, a business could not operate.

Design plays a key role in helping to discover which problems to tackle, and which areas would provide the most value for both the users and the business once a solution is delivered to the world.

There are many techniques we can use during this discovery process, but the most important element is the close collaboration between business stakeholders, product, design, and engineering.

Crafting a clear product direction starts with understanding a few key facts:

• What the business currently offers

• How end users interact with the product

• What the long terms goals of the business are

• What the pain points are of existing customers

From here, the designer will often run workshops with internal teams to get answers around goals and objectives. This is complimented by user research to understand the problems people are facing.

Working closely with product managers, designers can then determine where the commonalities lie, and prioritise which problem to solve that brings the most value to everyone involved.

More on stakeholder collaboration below.

Engineering

A strong designer and developer relationship is essential to delivering high quality products.

In my time designing digital products, I’ve learnt that collaboration with engineering teams goes far beyond simply sharing visual assets via a design file.

Inviting the wider team into early discussions and ideation sessions gives others a chance to contribute to the solution, and can potentially save time in the long run by facing any technical concerns early on.

By working side by side from discovery through to delivery, design and engineering teams can build mutual respect and lasting relationships that often result in greater outcomes for the business, and of course the end user.

Even the day-to-day conversations around implementation can be improved by agreeing on consistent terminology for the common components used to create your product experience.

A great way to start building this relationship is for designers to invite engineers along to observe user research sessions, so they can get a first hand appreciation of how people actually use the products in their typical lives. This often creates a shared sense of empathy for the user across the team.

Stakeholder Collaboration

Understanding the needs of the business is a crucial component when solving problems through design. The way we do this is through early and regular collaborative sessions with key stakeholders across the organisation.

To make sure everyone gets the most out of these sessions, we focus everything around getting to the core of why we are doing something.

• What are the goals of the business?

• How do these align with our customer needs and pain points?

• What do we know already, and what do we need to understand before making design decisions?

As designers, our goal is arrive at answers to theses kinds of questions as a group, and agree on a clear set of objectives that we can use to inform research strategies and ultimately, the design direction we take forward and test.

Marketing

When you start to promote your product offering to the world, showing an accurate representation of what people will get is key for building long term trust with customers.

This all starts with a close relationships between product design and the marketing team.

Whether it’s fast paced promotional videos, in-depth walkthroughs or even product snippets for ad campaigns, having someone who can give guidance on the most appropriate design assets to use is essential.

Making marketing teams aware of future product updates is a part of the role that isn’t often talked about.

Whether you have a full service marketing setup or a product focused marketing function, as designers, we collaborate well in advance of a major release to ensure those teams have clear visibility of the customer impact it will bring.

This is also a good time to ensure everyone is clear on terminology and any industry-specific language that would help to improve those early conversations with prospects.

Sales

Customer insights are everywhere. You just need to know where to look.

One area that can be overlooked is speaking with your internal sales teams.

Getting insights into how people feel about your product offering can really help us to improve their experience.

A great place to get these insights is through the sales department. Members of the commercial team are often on the phone with clients and prospects, discussing their problems and how your product can help them. This is a goldmine when updating your product experience.

As designers, we can use this information to spot trends and opportunities that we take into account when designing future product updates.

User insights don’t always need to come from the typical research methods. Speaking to those people in your company who are closest to the customer can be incredibly valuable to the design process.

By working closely with sales teams, we as designers can get a direct route to speak with customers. Having these conversations first hand can really compliment the overall research findings, resulting in an improved product experience for all involved.