Own the product when you design

Over the past 2 years of being into user experience design, and adopting the user-centered approached these are some of the learnings I have had, to design effectively. In fact, this can be implied to any other fields that you work in:

• Embracing ownership: When working take ownership of your work so that you are trying to bring an impact on the lives of people you are designing for. The kind of ownership where you should feel good while delivering.

Credits: Freepik

• Following a user-first approach: A user-first approach goes a long way towards product success. Follow a user-first approach and analyze the business and technical side to it as well in parallel. Following empathy as a life-skill rather than a designer skill. Always think if you were the user what were the things that you would have expected or liked to have in that scenario. This broadens your field of thinking.

Credits: Freepik

• Going deeper to understand: Apart from doing the user research (which is key), thinking from a user’s point of view also needs deeper industry or domain knowledge. You can infer the data about your user’s pain points but you cannot relate to it closely unless you gain deeper knowledge about the field you are researching. Wherever necessary dive deeper to know more so that you can bring out something extra and valuable which wasn’t even envisioned earlier.

Credits: Freepik

• Creating a habit of exploring more: The more you explore, the more ideas spark inside your mind. For example, if you have the habit of exploring multiple types of applications, even if the application is in no way related to the product you are working on, you might get an idea inspired by it, which can be implied in a different approach in your product. Inspiration is not copying someone else’s work but creating something new influenced by the approach or idea. This needs the practice of exploring more and more products.

Credits: Freepik

• Remembering to empathize with the stakeholders: Bring curiosity of knowing about the vision and goals of your stakeholders and the product-market-fit. Discussions with the stakeholders on what they envision about the product and to help them with valuable inputs on the product roadmap. Try to know more about their vision of the problem they are trying to solve, what are the factors that influenced her/him about the idea, etc. Make their vision yours and whatever data you collect from the stakeholders, use them to expand your knowledge by doing self-research. When everyone is on the same page about a unified product vision conflicts between various teams minimize and everyone can contribute towards a better product for the users.

Credits Freepik

These are totally based on a combination of my experiences and the way I prefer to approach work. You can always apply these if you find them useful. Would also like to hear your opinions about these so that I can also learn from others.