@ondesign

Universal Definition of Design 2

2021-03-16T18:45:59.018Z

In the previous post, I proposed the Universal Definition of Design as the management of human attention. I now think that we could take this definition even further and introduce "human behaviour" in the mix.

Having worked as a product designer in the product growth department at Sweatcoin, I have conducted multiple experiments together with my teammates, where we aimed to move the needle on our department's Northstar metric — share of users who invite at least one friend. To do so, we came up with a bunch of ideas every week, selecting one of those to be designed, produced and tested quantitatively with a test group of users. Whilst, expectedly, a bunch of tests showed zero change of the Northstar metric, a few of those actually delivered sizeable results. What could those metric increases be attributed to? Well, design of the product's features.

By changing the flow of messages, elements on the screens and screens themselves (together meaning "redesign"), we were able to get people to make slightly different choices that led to more of those users invite their friends. It therefore occurred to me that product design is about nudging different human behaviours, towards actions that would be useful for the business, but also those that people wouldn't mind conducting too, of course. But surely this not only applies to the design of an app, but also to a design of a chair? The way the designer shaped it stipulates the way the person buying that chair would interact with it, where they would place it and on what occasions will they use it. Same goes for poster, book and any other design, really. As a result, I propose a revised universal definition of design:

Design is the management of customer's behaviour

Universal Definition of Design

2021-01-25T08:46:04.222Z

There are many types of design roles, but all designers, whether they design apps, books or tables, are doing the exact same job — they are managing human attention. I therefore propose the following universal definition of design:

Design is the management of human attention 👀

Driving Human Interaction with Design

2021-01-07T18:24:39.860Z

Over the last couple of years I've made a transition from a graphic and an urban designer, into a product designer. And throughout the last year specifically, I've focused on design for Product Growth — a fast-paced, iterative process of product experimentation, testing various hypotheses aimed at moving the North Star metric. For product growth, it is defined as the rate limiting step of the startup's growth. In our case, we tried to get more users to invite others.

And so my role on the team has been to produce really quick feature designs, be that on the web or mobile app, so as to quickly check if our hypothesis can be confirmed. The nature of the product growth process is one that assumes that most of the tests will fail. However, in the process, the team should be able adjust its course by noting down the learnings from failed experiments. That way, this process should eventually lead to some big wins. And we had a few particularly prominent ones.

One experiment that stood out to me has been the optimisation of the app's main sharing funnel. I have long thought that our invite funnel was too lengthy and included unnecessary choices. And as a result, I had an idea that we could make it shorter and alter the choice architecture for more users in this funnel to choose to invite friends. So here's our funnel before:

And this is our test invite funnel, after:

Thhe text in the second screen would be typed up by a console. I wasn't a big fun of the solution but the team insisted and it was OK for the sake of a test.

The result was pretty solid: we got a 25% relative increase in the share of users who end up inviting friends following this funnel. And this got me like REALLY impressed. I made fairly minor visual changes to screens, but altered the architecture of the flow — essentially, the updated design made more users interact with the app in a way that we wanted them to. As a result of their interaction, the key metric was moved, by which we measured our success.

And I started extrapolating this idea further. Aren't books designed to be read? Aren't chairs designed to be sat on? And, ultimately, isnt' Instagram designed for users to be infinitely scrolling through their feed? Of course, one could break down these interactions even further, or indeed add more layers to what design should do, but I would still claim: design is about and should focus on fostering an interaction, with those who are considered to be the audience of this piece of design.