Product & Engineering Partnership at Paytm Labs
Led the Activities and Packages UX teams to evangelize and shape our product development processes.
Role
UX Director / Lead
Industry
Payments & SaaS
Link to site
https://paytm.com/
In December 2020, the Activities and Packages UX teams became part of my design org. The Senior Directors for Product Management and Engineering (my cross-functional peers), wanted to know how their teams could work better with my teams.
The ask from partners
Can you provide clarity on the different roles within the UX team and how we can best collaborate?
How does UX partner across domains to drive a shared understanding and progress?
Leadership huddle
I gathered the two Senior UX Managers who managed the Activities and Packages UX teams directly (and who reported to me) to prepare a response to the prompt. It was important to build this new cross-functional relationship right.
We phrased our response as, "How UX, Product, and Engineering can work together to create amazing customer experiences."
Evangelizing the Double Diamond design process
Our approach was to create case studies that illustrated how UX (including Content Strategy, User Research, and UX Design) follow the Double Diamond design process from concept to developer handoff.
In December 2020, the Activities and Packages UX teams became part of my design org. The Senior Directors for Product Management and Engineering (my cross-functional peers), wanted to know how their teams could work better with my teams.
The ask from partners
Can you provide clarity on the different roles within the UX team and how we can best collaborate?
How does UX partner across domains to drive a shared understanding and progress?
Leadership huddle
I gathered the two Senior UX Managers who managed the Activities and Packages UX teams directly (and who reported to me) to prepare a response to the prompt. It was important to build this new cross-functional relationship right.
We phrased our response as, "How UX, Product, and Engineering can work together to create amazing customer experiences."
Evangelizing the Double Diamond design process
Our approach was to create case studies that illustrated how UX (including Content Strategy, User Research, and UX Design) follow the Double Diamond design process from concept to developer handoff.
We included case studies that showed how different types of problems required different interpretations of the Double Diamond design process. We showed general examples from Activities and Packages, and some specific examples where it was important for content strategy and user research (and not necessarily just UX design) to lead the Double Diamond design process. I'll provide an example of one of the case studies:
Packages 2.0 case study
Packages 2.0 was a re-invention of the existing Packages line of business. This required that the Discover phase of the Double Diamond design process was particularly strong.
For the Discover phase of the Double Diamond design process, we conducted extensive foundational user research (both quantitative and qualitative) over the course of several months, and combined it with analysis from the strategy and analytics leads in order to catalyze design thinking workshops that were attended by cross-functional leads.
It was important for us to understand traveler needs and how users interact with our packages products, so that we could map traveler needs to business opportunities, and prioritize which features to work on:
It was important for us to understand traveler needs and how users interact with our packages products, so that we could map traveler needs to business opportunities, and prioritize which features to work on:
Product focus areas
We mapped product capabilities to opportunities and risks, which allowed us to identify and address early gaps in team thinking. This allowed us to build themes that de-risked future product and engineering investment.
After the design thinking workshops, we were able to move on to the Define and Develop phases of the Double Diamond design process:
Product focus areas
We mapped product capabilities to opportunities and risks, which allowed us to identify and address early gaps in team thinking. This allowed us to build themes that de-risked future product and engineering investment.
After the design thinking workshops, we were able to move on to the Define and Develop phases of the Double Diamond design process:
After the design thinking workshops, we were able to move on to the Define and Develop phases of the Double Diamond design process. Within Define and Develop, the team's tasks were to identify the problem focus, define the work plan and roadmap, create solution explorations, and conduct validation research.
After the design thinking workshops, we were able to move on to the Define and Develop phases of the Double Diamond design process. Within Define and Develop, the team's tasks were to identify the problem focus, define the work plan and roadmap, create solution explorations, and conduct validation research.
Within Define and Develop, the team's tasks were to identify the problem focus, define the work plan and roadmap, create solution explorations, and conduct validation research.
Co-creating the roadmap
The cross-functional team built the initial scope and roadmap together so they could develop a clear understanding of which problem areas to pursue solutions in first.
Within Define and Develop, the team's tasks were to identify the problem focus, define the work plan and roadmap, create solution explorations, and conduct validation research.
Co-creating the roadmap
The cross-functional team built the initial scope and roadmap together so they could develop a clear understanding of which problem areas to pursue solutions in first.
Breaking the work down into tasks
It was important to identify what work was absolutely foundational and high priority to work on first, and the team used Trello to break down each focus area into tasks:
End-to-end thinking
The design team made flowcharts to map the ideas out end-to-end across the traveler journey:
This low fidelity experience planning allowed teams to get ideas out quickly, and enable cross-functional partners to chime in early on potential solutions.
This allowed implied interactions or content structures to be examined with low investment.
Now that Discover, Define, and Develop were completed, it was now time for the Deliver phase which included detailed execution & ongoing support:
Going high-fidelity
Polished designs bring the ideas to life. Detailed executions allow designers to specify how the system looks and behaves:
Qualitative research
Design prototypes were then created, and the user researcher validated the approach to the packages modules with qualitative user research. Once the designs are further refined based on input from user research, the team is ready to handoff the designs to engineering to build.
Accessibility checklist
We also make sure designs go through an accessibility handoff checklist which includes:Providing accessibility bluelines (annotations), is a helpful way to ensure that critical behaviors and content are not lost during handoff and convey the expected flow by using content structure, keyboard/focus order, screen reader, and notesDesign with existing EGDS component/patternsAudit whether a component needs additional annotations
Design backlog
Additionally, we keep a design backlog for future roadmap development so we can record ideas and problem spaces as they come up during any phase of the Double Diamond design process. This enables the team to have a shared method for making our customer-centered approach to product development sustainable and repeatable:
A stronger partnership
As a result of the CX team showing their approach to the product development process, we forged a great working relationship that put customers at the center. And the most relevant functions (user research, content strategy, business strategy, analytics, product management, engineering, and marketing) had transparency into the process, and participated in bringing concepts to life from beginning to end.
Getting a seat at the table
Our Activities and Packages CX team earned their seat at the table, and their efforts were recognized amongst the larger UX organization, and several other workstreams.
Breaking the work down into tasks
It was important to identify what work was absolutely foundational and high priority to work on first, and the team used Trello to break down each focus area into tasks:
End-to-end thinking
The design team made flowcharts to map the ideas out end-to-end across the traveler journey:
This low fidelity experience planning allowed teams to get ideas out quickly, and enable cross-functional partners to chime in early on potential solutions.
This allowed implied interactions or content structures to be examined with low investment.
Now that Discover, Define, and Develop were completed, it was now time for the Deliver phase which included detailed execution & ongoing support:
Going high-fidelity
Polished designs bring the ideas to life. Detailed executions allow designers to specify how the system looks and behaves:
Qualitative research
Design prototypes were then created, and the user researcher validated the approach to the packages modules with qualitative user research. Once the designs are further refined based on input from user research, the team is ready to handoff the designs to engineering to build.
Accessibility checklist
We also make sure designs go through an accessibility handoff checklist which includes:Providing accessibility bluelines (annotations), is a helpful way to ensure that critical behaviors and content are not lost during handoff and convey the expected flow by using content structure, keyboard/focus order, screen reader, and notesDesign with existing EGDS component/patternsAudit whether a component needs additional annotations
Design backlog
Additionally, we keep a design backlog for future roadmap development so we can record ideas and problem spaces as they come up during any phase of the Double Diamond design process. This enables the team to have a shared method for making our customer-centered approach to product development sustainable and repeatable:
A stronger partnership
As a result of the CX team showing their approach to the product development process, we forged a great working relationship that put customers at the center. And the most relevant functions (user research, content strategy, business strategy, analytics, product management, engineering, and marketing) had transparency into the process, and participated in bringing concepts to life from beginning to end.
Getting a seat at the table
Our Activities and Packages CX team earned their seat at the table, and their efforts were recognized amongst the larger UX organization, and several other workstreams.
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