What Happens When You’re Brought in Too Late?
UX is not always the fix. How to turn ‘polish requests’ into systemic design change?
Many companies where a proper design process isn’t established yet, treat their designers like emergency department in a hospital.
They only consider them when a fire breaks out, and the designers are considered as extinguishers who can help them SOS.
This can also happen in fairly established organizations, who realized too late that they need designers in their company.
I have worked in some of such companies, where the platform was legacy-coded by developers decades ago, and in 2020s their product could barely keep up.
And when they realized that their customers are churning faster than your ex who discovered a dating app, they do what any other company would do in that situation — bring in the designers.
And that too, they start with only one. Why, why do they do that? I don’t understand. I mean, while hiring developers they always hire at least a bunch of them at once, because they know one person would be overloaded. Right?
So, why does the same logic not apply while hiring design? Why not bring at least two designers where there are already 10 developers working? I’ve heard this from many designers who joined fairly large organizations, as — design-team-of-one.
And they were burned out faster than they would put out the fire for which they were hired.
And that’s natural human response. Isn’t it?
While many companies consider UX to be a patch, it is not. It is not an afterthought, rather it is something much deeper than that.
UX has to be incorporated from day 0. You can’t make all the decisions and then ask the designer to just turn your idea into a Figma file. That’s not UX, if you’re labeling it as one.
But on the other hand, when design is made a part of the overall product strategy, it does wonders.
To all those founders and CEOs who want to hire the designer from FAANG, ask yourself —
1 Will you be able to give them the freedom, independence, and a room to experiment — that they get at FAANG?
2 Would you include them in those boardroom meetings that none of your past designers have been a part of?
3 Will you listen to their advises and actually implement them? Over pretending to listen and forgetting about them the moment they walk out the room?
If the answer to all three of the above questions is a resounding ‘no’, then no, you don’t deserve a designer from FAANG. You can’t justify that hire. You can’t give them the room to breathe. If you are hiring designers only to show that to your investors, you’re doing the wrong hiring.
Late Stage UX Involvement
If you think a late-stage UX involvement can save your product from sinking, you’re wrong. Here is what ‘too late’ looks like —
1 Developers have already implemented the first version, and now the designer is asked to make it pretty. Or add in some UI magic.
2 Product market fit is a list of assumptions that are forcefully baked into the actual product. No research was ever done, and it clearly shows.
3 Users? Who are those? The CEOs relatives have agreed unanimously that there is a demand of this app, so it is getting released.
And here are the three reasons why that happens —
1 Misunderstanding UX as ‘cosmetic fix’. UX is something that your product ideally should start with, and not end with. UX is the beginning, not the final polish that you layer on top of a bad product.
2 Agile doesn’t exist, but waterfall process has been termed as ‘agile’ in the organization. They are misunderstanding ‘fail fast’ by launching everything into the production fast, and failing.
3 Business wants the features to be shipped this weekend, so they’re getting shipped this weekend, who cares about what the users want?
Good products are killed by bad politics, and bad products can’t be saved by good design.
The Consequences
There are serious, irreversible consequences for such malpractices, and the first one being —
1 Missed opportunities — Where design would have opened the doors that no one else can, rushed product decisions are missed opportunities, in real. Design would have involved users, solved the right problems, framed the right solutions, and prioritized the right features, but none of that was done. Only last-minute UI fixes were rushed, like a patch-work on an already broken foundation.
2 Bloated dev cycles due to last-minute design involvement — When you audit and see the results, you will be shocked to know how development cycles get bloated because of last-minute design requests. Including design at the end doesn’t fix anything, but it breaks many things.
3 Frustrated designers, poor UX and churning customers — What you get at the end of it all is: designers who are frustrated beyond repair, UX of the product that is broken and that further leads to users who run to your competitors.
4 A reactive culture — You also get a reactive culture where design is treated as execution, and not strategy. Design is seen as a ‘list of jobs’ to be done, instead of including it in the product strategy itself, and treating it as a part of the process.
Turning Polish Requests Into Systemic Changes
Now this is the part where I want designers to pay attention. If you resonated with all that I said above, you will now be asking ‘how to break these patterns and change such a culture?’
Well, you can do that, and it won’t happen overnight, but it is surely possible with the right approach and right attitude.
Reframe Your Ask
Whenever someone comes to you with last minute UI change request, instead of pushing back, start with curiosity. Understand the product and dynamics. Ask questions that make the other person think.
Once you do that, the next time they will be in those strategy meetings, they might think to ‘involve you’. And once that happens, you’ve won the game.
Surface The Risks
Instead of saying ‘yes’ to every request that comes your way, create some variations of designs telling them about the risk of shipping their version.
You need to be polite here, and instead of coming up with blatant redesigns of proposed version, come with facts and logic about why would you advocate to do things differently.
Show with evidence how poor UX can affect adoption, efficiency and NPS. Tie your design decisions with business impact, and show how early involvement of design can do wonders for a product.
Zoom Out
Don’t deliver everything immediately, because that will not give ‘you’ the time to think and move your creative wheels. Zoom out, think about the bigger picture and request time for design retros.
This way, you can think through your solution and make sure that it has no loopholes. Additionally, you can also map upstream decisions such as — product straregy, gaps in the roadmap, and highlight that through design.
Example: Suppose if you’re asked to do some UI changes to a feature that needs serious UX improvement from functionality point of view, don’t ship the UI changes and be done with it.
Instead, ship two versions — one with the UI changes that they requested, and another with low fidelity UX improvements, and show with evidence how the UX improvements will reduce or increase the business metrics.
Once you do that, even though in the short-term they will ship the UI changes first, but they will definitely remember the UX improvements you suggested and will implement them whenever they have the bandwidth.
Introduce UX Debt Logs
If you won’t do it, no one else will either. UX debt log does not need to be an extensive Figma file with high fidelity designs.
It can be something as simple as an excel sheet that contains the context of the problem, the level of seriousness from usability point of view, and the estimated time designers and developers will need to fix it.
Based upon these three factors you can assign the urgency to the UX debts.
For example: If check-out flow UX is broken, and it is directly impacting the company’s revenue, that becomes a serious, high-impact UX debt. Even though it takes long time to fix, it needs to be done on priority.
But on the other hand if there is a UX debt with breadcrumbs and navigation within the platform, which is causing some extra time for the users to figure out, that becomes a medium priority UX debt. Of course it also needs to be addressed, but not as soon as the first one does.
Advocate for Earlier Involvement
Through all the above four ways, you can advocate for early involvement. You can create a UX engagement model, where you can show how they can involve ‘design’ easily in the entire process.
It doesn’t have to be extensive, as you can refer to this simple methodology laid out by NN/g — UX Stakeholder Engagement Model.
From Reactive To Proactive Design Culture
Design starts as a reactive department in most companies, but the companies that are successful, have transitioned their design culture from being reactive to proactive.
Look at any good, successful tech company in the world, the one whose product users actually love, and you will discover that design is somehow an integral part of the entire product strategy, and not just a last-minute fix.
Companies where users are actually ‘listened to’, end up surviving the massive changes that are normal in the tech-world.
The Real Role Of UX
To conclude everything — UX isn’t the icing on top of the cake, it is the batter itself. If the cake is inedible, even good icing can’t save it.
For designers, it would be great to advocate for early involvement within the companies, and be the voice demanding a change.
For the PMs, developers and other stakeholders — don’t consider design to be an afterthought, otherwise it will become 10x expensive to fix the sh*t.
Hi, I’m Mehekk, a Senior Product Designer with around 9 years of experience, based in the Netherlands. Follow me on Medium or subscribe my Substack newsletter to never miss a story. You can also follow me on Instagram or connect with me on LinkedIn.
See you around.
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MB ❤️