My Role
Implement a cross-department design process
Delivering strategic UX insights to drive roadmap
Introduce new approaches to design thinking
A ground up design process
In 2013, I became the first UX designer at Focusrite. A company that, at the time, predominantly built hardware.
As we built more and more products and transitioned to making more software, we required a design process that allowed early customer understanding and validated design iteration.
The process was built upon a standard double diamond but incorporated unique elements. Such as a defined checklist for all required items to facilitate hardware development, detailed requirements documents with acceptance criteria, and the generation of software backlogs.
What’s the job?
I recently brought Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) into our strategic research process and have implemented it in a variety of surveys. If you’ve not read up on JTBD before then I highly recommend it.
As a process, it has allowed me to help the business understand what features customers most consider in their evaluation process, and also which outcomes they are searching for are currently underserved.
The chart shows three triangles. In the bottom right are the best opportunities. Towards the middle and bottom left are where there are the least opportunities. In the top right are the limited opportunities or table stakes, or what people expect.
Bring the market into sight
Throughout my career, and more so in the last two years, I’ve worked on exposing opportunities through UX Strategy and Insight generation.
These mixed-method approaches, incorporating surveys, interviews, ethnographic research, and more, have allowed the development of Personas and Segments for us to understand more about our customers. To learn more about the difference between Personas and Segments read my article here.
In addition, I have been a key leader in developing a new Customer Insights team within the business that facilitates research in a cross-functional way with R&D, Cus tomer Experience,Product Management, and Marketing
Developing beta research
Until 2021, beta testing at Focusrite was primarily a bug-finding role. This is hugely valuable in an engineering process but there was surely more to learn?
Working with the leadership of the Beta Testing program at Focusrite, I helped develop new methods of inquiry to gather more user-centric data from beta testers that not only helped us squash bugs but also improve the user experience of hardware and software.
Alongside questionnaires, and feedback interviews, both moderated and unmoderated (via lookback.com) I provided key answers to questions that the development team needed and allowed us to make changes within an agile development process.
Design Sprints
At the beginning of 2020, just before the global pandemic, I facilitated the first-ever GV Design Sprint at Focusrite. This was a crucial part of the development of the Vocaster audio interface.
I brought together team members from various backgrounds and skill sets: Product Management, Design, Marketing, Engineering, and QA. Together this group interviewed stakeholders, created designs, built a prototype, and tested it, all in one week! We were exhausted by the end, but it was the good kind of exhaustion you get when you know you’ve achieved something great. For that project in particular, it became the backbone of all future work.
Since then I have facilitated further design sprints remotely, a new challenge, especially considering colleagues in different time zones. These Design Sprints have focused on new products and services, along with some looking solely at the Industrial Design of a product.
In addition to these, I have facilitated Brand Design Sprints with C-Level execs to better understand our brands and how we may develop them in the future.
I love facilitating Design Sprints, bringing people together and letting them each contribute to all parts of the process, is truly empowering.
Learn more about Design Sprints here.
