Responsive Design: It’s not just for websites

AP’s Director of Product Design, John Barrow, shares the importance of keeping product teams responsive in an agile world.

AP’s Director of Product Design, John Barrow, shares the importance of keeping product teams responsive in an agile world.

by John Barrow, Design Director, AP

The digital landscape alters industry. At Associated Press, we live it daily as the news industry attempts to embrace its traditional roots yet discover new, useful ways to stay relevant in a socially connected world. This is exciting and frightening. Any industry that is trying to find or rediscover its footing is imposing.

Moreover, it’s daunting to contrive and maintain support capabilities in a shifting organisation. Even defining what “success” means to your organisation might be dizzying. Be adaptive. Understanding your organisation, not merely products but enterprise-level goals, affords appreciation across the array of customer touch points. An efficient strategy to deliver digital products must regard the top down to adequately guide the ship.

Identical company cultures are non-existent, so a one-size-fits-all approach is more or less fictitious.

There are numerous methodologies available but you’ll likely come into yours through trial and error. You may instinctually want to adopt one verbatim. Stay mindful. Identical company cultures are nonexistent, so a one-size-fits-all approach is more or less fictitious. Chances are you will mature your processes over time. The goal is to stay as process-lean as possible at every turn.

As the Director of Product Design at AP, adaptability for me is administering an annual mission statement with simple, understandable and achievable objectives. Defining a mission that’s actionable is critical. It remains fluid and serves as both a reminder of our legacy and of how we’ll adapt in the coming months. Furthermore, it outlays a unified commitment while staying agile. As the team embraces the mission, they can upskill accordingly by learning new technologies or tools.

Educate your organisation on your processes and learn how to “sell” your story. Illustrate your vision in a measurable pilot if necessary by recruiting an internal business partner. We’ve spent more than two years instilling UX into the AP lexicon by proving how knowledge of who our customers are and how they behave empowers intelligent decisions. Including cross-departmental representatives helped make the case and produced an army of advocates.

Our Product Design team is lean and small, with a long reach, overlapping skills and “intrapreneurial” spirits. We’re an in-house “agency” that services one client — the AP. The team is diverse with synchronistic personalities and there is a high level of autonomy along with a culture of peer review. They remain informed across the product landscape and have the opportunity for involvement on projects to which they have not been directly assigned. A creative environment fosters electric collaboration, debate and innovation.

We’ve created a work area that is conducive to creativity. The space is as tactile a space as possible, with an oversized whiteboard, common area, putting green and various games for stimulation. In an office of cubicles, we’ve removed the glass partitions to encourage organic interaction amongst the team. In light of the space, stakeholders from other departments stop by regularly, a practice that opens up cross-departmental communication.

As to the question of outsourcing, we’ve experienced varying degrees of success at AP. There are certainly situations where it’s a smart choice — we fully outsource all QA for advanced automation, for example. However, jumping from vendor to vendor is challenging. There are realities such as time zones and language barriers, but imagine educating a new vendor for each project. Timelines and budgets can quickly get away, erasing any saving that was a lure to begin with. Cost savings ought not be your only factor in making an outsource decision and you should think of partners rather than suppliers.

It is important to think of partners as extensions of your team from the onset.

We often claim to know our own customers and organisations best, but it’s a problematic assumption since we naturally have bias. Engaging with the right partner often broadens the view without the bias and can help inform product roadmaps. Allow unfettered, sometimes unflattering insight of your business that is frequently difficult to obtain from within. Non-biased input derived from research is paramount and, in some cases, priceless. As you work with a partner long enough, you become in lockstep and able to instinctually know where they fit into a project, even during planning stages.

It is important to think of partners as extensions of your team from the onset. Longer term relationships prove best. Ultimately, what you want is for your partner to become subject matter experts, just as you have, as well as being versed in your corporate ways. Embed into your partner — or vice versa — to act as a liaison. Claim a workspace at your partner’s studio and have someone from your team sit there regularly to allow more agility. Direct access to stakeholders can be a dramatic time saver.

We design websites responsively and optimise the user experience across a multitude of footprints, so start taking the same approach to designing your teams. If you stay in tune, remain responsive and agile in your approach and provide an environment that is creative, collaborative and engaging, you will be more apt to survive the tide in delivering world-class digital products.