Is speed a competitive advantage in design?
The world is changing rapidly, so design and product teams need to evolve not only their processes, but also how they think. Zuckerberg famously coined the phrase “move fast and break things” and this is becoming even more true as time moves forward.
Product designers (previously UX) have always cared deeply about quality and craft, and this is still important today. But not at the cost of speed, there are a wide range of ways to optimise for speed in the design process, I’ll cover some practical ideas in the next few weeks.
Product builders sometimes care about speed but may miss the reasons why it’s such an important advantage.
Why is speed such a competitive advantage?
Previously I proudly proclaimed that quality and speed are on a scale requiring us to decide where on the scale we want to land. This reminds me of the old advertising triangle with cost, speed and quality on the 3 corners, you can optimise for any 2 but not all 3.
Its 2024 I’ve adopted a different perspective that speed and quality are not mutually exclusive, and its possible to optimise for speed without sacrificing quality. What it requires beyond a process engineered for speed is to optimise your thinking for speed. Firstly tools, figma and others provide deep speed features from shortcuts to design systems and components its possible to move very fast at scale and quality. Mindset is equally important, a constant reevaluation of the tasks at hand. Is this the optimal way to complete this task, how might I get the same outcome in 20% of the time. Pareto is the King in the land of speed and impact.
Ultimately if design can provide speed, they are showing rather than telling - why they should have a seat at the table.
What do you think?
↘? Design Manager ↘? Design Lead and UX Practitioner ↘? “Together, we can use design to encourage users, customers, sales teams and each other, to become brand and product evangelists.” ↘? 30+ yrs and still learning.
3 个月I agree about speed, when exploring. However, let’s not forget, quality needs to be broken down into pillars. Some issues are arguably: - A higher priority to fix, than others - Quicker, cheaper and easier to fix, than others If left for too long, it’s possible to build up an unhealthy level of design and development debt. Which can ‘on occasion’, become more costly and timely to fix later. During quarterly planning, I’d personally recommend, working with the wider stakeholders. To ensure a % of effort and time is allocated to prioritising and resolving quality issues, each sprint. Guess my main point here, is at least create a plan for resolving quality concerns. #designquality
Master of Product Design
4 个月Laura Baker ! ??