I came across a great post, “The Redesign of the Design Process” by Jared Spool, that shows the best product or game designs comes from teams of people with a strong market focus. It no longer comes down to having a visionary designer, if that was ever the case.
Spool point out that the process that a team uses to create great designs does not happen by chance. It needs to be intentionally built. The process itself needs to be designed.
What does the user research say?
Although many designers and teams conduct user research, the most successful teams “design” how that research fits into its process. Rather than do superficial, and sometimes counter-productive, research, the most successful design teams are determined about the process of fitting what they have learned into their existing knowledge.
Spool points out, “The user researcher’s role has changed. It used to be about running studies. Now it’s about growing the team’s understanding of their users. In this new role, the user researcher still needs to run a high-quality study. However, the real emphasis is to truly understand what the team thinks about their users. Then, using their well-adapted toolbox of user research techniques, they identify where that thinking is faulty. In time, a great UX researcher guides the team to a more accurate understanding of the user, which means design innovations are more likely to emerge.” Continue reading “How to build a good design team”