How can you help your Mobile Design team learn from their mistakes?

If you're having trouble figuring out your mistakes, consider this: often, in mobile design (when shaping system architecture, UI, and technology), people overlook the impact of environmental conditions and users' mental stress. Factors like light, pollution, noise, and connectivity issues affect users, but replicating these conditions for testing is hard. It's crucial to recognize users' stress and potential difficulties. While meeting the minimum AA accessibility standard is a good beginning, users may need more help than they admit. Users tend to blame themselves, so assuring them that it's not their fault but a mobile UI issue is crucial for helpful feedback and improvement.

In mobile design, identifying the root cause of mistakes is key. It's not just about obvious errors like typos, but understanding deeper issues like usability or feedback misalignments. What was our design goal? Were there assumptions or constraints we overlooked? How did testing and validation go? By scrutinizing our process, from assumptions to user feedback, and using analytical tools like the 5 Whys or fishbone diagrams, we can uncover and understand these mistakes, paving the way for better designs ahead

I find that something as simple as going through an end-to-end journey of your experience will uncover many details that may have been over looked. It’s staggering how often I ask someone, “what happens when you submit that?” Or “how do I get back to where I just was?” Or “how long will it take to complete X” and they haven’t tried it for themselves, yet they are designing a solution for the “problem.” Take time to use your product. It’s called “dogfooding,” derived from the term “eating your own dog food” as a means of quality control and understanding the real-world application of your experience.

Don’t forget to learn about the right research needed to get that feedback. Understanding the goals of the project yes, but also choosing and applying the appropriate methods is the only way to get that accurate data you want to share!

Very rarely do you “nail it” on the first try. It’s very important to capture every input and point of feedback about how your experience can either be improved or how your user may be confused about a feature or interaction. Sometimes it can be a simple placement issue, perhaps a different way to label something, or removing something to bring attention to another. Whatever your signals are that come out of your research, collect them all and have a discussion about what they mean and what actions you can take to address them. Do this early and do it often, the more you put into practice the better you will get at identifying the signals and forming your insights.

Team, it's time for our 'Oops to Eureka' session! We're turning our mistakes into masterclasses, using clear talk, cool visuals, and nifty data. No finger-pointing, just illuminating our path forward. Whether through epic post-mortems, time-travel retrospectives, or newsletters more gripping than a detective novel, we're learning and growing together. Every slip-up is a step towards our collective success. Let's celebrate our progress and keep the learning loop spinning. Here's to making our 'whoops' moments our 'wow' moments!

It’s also important to adjust your read out for the audience. Engineers want slightly different focus that’s your product manager or business team. And I suggest with any audience, framing it within a story and providing nuance that will promote engagement and questions about your findings - which you want in order to better grasp what’s important to your audience! They’re human!!

The only way to improve upon your product experience is to have clearly defined objectives, or user stories so that you can progressively optimize it over time. Without these stories, you’re navigating in the dark, and just iterating for the sake of iteration. If you define your use case or your intended actions and outcomes, you can ask better questions, discover better signals, and take more pointed action to further support or improve upon what your are seeing.

Team, it's time to turn our oops into upgrades! We're fixing bugs and enhancing designs to delight our users and boost our skills. Think of it as a superhero transformation for our projects – faster, stronger, more awesome. We'll prioritize tasks, assign roles, and track our wins. Using agile, design tools, user testing, and analytics, we're not just fixing; we're innovating. Ready to make our designs shine and users smile? Let’s do this!

let's embrace a growth mindset as our secret superpower! It's all about believing we can sharpen our skills and potential through dedication, feedback, and learning. This mindset turns challenges into chances to grow, makes us hungry for feedback, and keeps us going even when things get tough. It’s not just about what we achieve, but how we get there. So, let's celebrate our efforts, share constructive feedback, and keep our attitude positive and inclusive. Remember, every step forward, big or small, is a win in our journey of continuous improvement and innovation.

Reviewing and reflecting is crucial for our growth, both as individuals and as a team. It's more than just tallying up results; it’s about understanding our strengths, weaknesses, and the journey we've taken. This step allows us to see the full picture - what we've achieved, where we struggled, and the lessons we've learned. It’s a moment to acknowledge our efforts and pinpoint areas for improvement. By gathering data, seeking feedback, and asking the right questions, we can make this process insightful. Tools like SWOT analysis or SMART goals can guide us. Regular reflection sessions are key. They're not just check-ins; they're stepping stones to our next big leap!

Step six in learning from mistakes involves gleaning insights from others in mobile design and other fields. Beyond imitation, it's about understanding and adapting their methods and mindsets. Seek diverse sources like books, podcasts, and mentors for new perspectives, best practices, and tips to avoid common pitfalls. Experiment and apply these learnings to your projects.

When providing feedback it is useful to avoid falling back on opinions or statements that could be seen as opinions. To avoid this, frame feedback around 3 things: the situation or scenario (what lead to the error), the impact that the error / behaviour has had, (including your own thoughts and feelings on the matter), and the path forward - gathering the team member's view of the two points above and then working through and agreeing upon a plan to improve and avoid similar mistakes in future.