Product Design Exercises

There is an ideal design process we all prefer to adhere to:

Discovery - Design - Test - Iterate - Implement - Learn (go back and go through it again).

However, the truth is that we don't get to do all stages of this process for every project. There are various reasons why we might only do some parts of the process. These may include tight timelines requiring us to skip some steps, feature updates that don't always need a big discovery step, or joining a project partway through the journey.

Rather than demonstrating one project all the way end-to-end through the entire process, I've chosen to share examples of exercises I've done at different stages of the product design process.

Product Canvas

We use the product canvas in the discovery phase of a project. Working together with our product partners, we help them to focus on what the project is all about and what the business goals are for it. By the end of the session, we're left with a clear sense of the problems we're solving, the goals we're hoping to achieve, and the desired value we want the product to deliver.

The above example was carried out in Mural for an accounts receivable tool.

Outcome-Driven UX Metrics Exercise

We use outcome-driven UX metrics during the discovery phase of design. In this exercise, we shift the focus of what success might look like from business OKRs to our clients - the people using the product.

We ask: "If we do a great job on this new product or feature, whose lives will get better, and how will they improve?" We identify specific people who are representative of each user group and take time to understand how our product will solve their problems.

The above example was done in Mural for a project where the design team and our partners (product, tech, journey owner) were the intended users.

Stakeholder Interviews

Sometimes need to get input from a variety of stakeholders during the discovery phase of a project.

Stakeholders may be subject-matter experts (SMEs) who can provide necessary information to inform design direction. We sometimes interview them 1:1, asking a series of questions to help define the problems to solve as well as the stakeholder needs for the solution. Sometimes, we run workshops with a larger group of stakeholders all together.

The above example is a snippet from a much larger Mural board where I took a group Product Owners through an exercise designed to identify their biggest priorities for the RBC Mobile app content strategy in the coming year. We categorized their answers into themes and then used these to prioritize.

Competitive Analysis

This is an example of a quick market scan I performed to understand how banks across Canada and the United States name various sections of their sites. We were considering renaming one of the buckets in our navigation, and this exercise was intended to help us understand how our competitors are handling similar content. I grabbed screenshots and grouped them thematically. Based on the findings, I made a recommendation for nomenclature on our site (not pictured in this image).

User Testing Synthesis

While conducting user tests, we take notes using stickies in Mural. We colour code the notes as we go, using green for things that were well received, red for things that aren't working, blue for opportunities to improve the product or the specific flow we're working on and yellow for ideas.

Once all the testing is complete, we lay out a mural with each section of the test and compile all the feedback we got from each of our testers into one space. We then group the stickie notes into themes, which begins to paint a clear indication of strength of the signal for feedback we received. If there are a lot of notes on the same topic, trends emerge. From the grouped themes, we can make decisions about aspects of the design that require modification. We can then prioritize which updates we implement now vs. leaving for future releases.

Our teams have begun using AI to help with extracting themes from testing findings. We drop transcripts from recordings and our notes into the AI engine and prompt it to summarize the findings. This speeds up the process tremendously. However, we still need to carefully review the findings to ensure there are no mistakes and that the prompt has given us outputs at the correct level of depth.

Mentorship Activity

I meet with my direct reports for a bi-weekly 1:1 session. The purpose of these sessions isn't to discuss the specifics of the work they're doing. It's to check in on how they're feeling as well as any issues they're facing. I use this mentorship Mural to guide the discussion and document things to refer back to in the future.

I always start with highlights and lowlights - to share something they feel good about that happened since we last met and then any challenges they've faced. We then discuss how they're feeling from an interpersonal dynamics perspective.

The mentorship meetings are an opportunity to discuss their goals for personal and professional growth. We discuss where they'd like to head in their career and how I can help to support them in these endeavours.