Implementing UX and product strategy at a start-up

Context

• CrowdSurf is a live-streaming startup app in it's beta phases
• When I joined it was focused on live streaming with friends, now focussed on a more niche fan engagement model backed up by user research
• I am their first UX lead and designer and with there being no Product Owner my role often spans quite widely across business and product strategy as well as executing the UX and ensuring consistency across the digital brand identity
• I report directly to the CEO but also work closely aligning teams across marketing and engineering

Challenges

• A lack of understanding about what UX is and how it can help across the board
• A lack of UX strategy and cohesive roadmap that would help hit commercial goals and our user goals
• A lack of understanding of the ideal target user
• A lack of alignment across teams
• The product lacked a cohesive UX strategy and design system
• Minimal brand identity and application across digital touch-points
• Limited user research opportunities due to COVID-19
• Communication and collaboration obstacles being fully remote
• A pivot from live streaming to fan engagement
• Multiple work-streams and users (B2B, B2C, app, console and website)

Creating a better understanding of UX across the company

• Introduced and got buy in across the teams for cross-discipline UX practices like Monday morning what's on, critiques, stand ups, friday finishers (debriefs + design sessions) and encourage ideation to be multidisciplinary
• Quickly introduced a UX discovery to UI implementation process that showed the difference between UX strategy and brand/UI (although I'd encompass all within the user experience!) and had everyone talking the same language, resulting in much more realistic time frames for creating, testing and iterating before handing over to build
• Created product strategy documents and personas based in research that highlight a misalignment and recommendations
• Highlighted a mindset we called 'The Connection Seeker' which ultimately helped shape the pivot to fan engagement and allows us to have prioritise features and which assumptions to test better
• Showed how powerful and quicker/cheaper prototype testing can be by experimenting with different tools that would be suitable for a video app

Creating consistency across all touchpoints

• Created a single source of truth design system across all products
• Developed the brand identity for a digital product, that would work for accessibility but also brand recognition
• Annotated design systems, created video walkthroughs to to ensure proper implementation in engineering
• Looked into alternatives to Wix for interim marketing needs such as Webflow, to make sure we had design control but also easily manageable with limited engineering timelines
• Created social post templates in Figma and tutorials to help efficiency and consistency of the marketing team and their assets

Creating a more collaborative workspace whilst remote‍

• Introduced the team to tools such as Miro and FigJam as ways of creating work in progress spaces that we could all collaborate on
• Ran ideation sessions both remotely and in person to get the team involved and increase confidence using the tools

Creating a better plan to hit MRR and provide product market fit

• Tested product direction through research and provided suggestions otherwise
• Worked with our Senior User Researcher and wider stakeholders including marketing and engineering to create a plan for qualitative and quantitative testing throughout beta phases
• Ran workshops and created documents to highlight internal problems where roadmaps and commercial goals were not aligned
• Ran workshops to collaborate with the Founders, Commercial, Marketing, Engineering to help align on on roadmap priorities

Learnings

• The way you present work internally may differ for various stakeholders. Sometimes a call is better, sometimes a video walkthrough, sometimes documenting user stories, sometimes all of the above
• Allowing teams to understand the why behind decisions
• Being a little 'scrappy' if you need to, to test and iterate quickly
• It's really important to speak up for the user if you feel strongly about something, and especially if you have research to prove your point, even if your voice isn't the loudest in the room
• Collaborating across marketing, comms, engineering from the start and throughout in a controlled way
• Sharing work with founders and bringing them along in the collaborations especially in a small team

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