Guide #018: How to implement design-led product development

From hand sketches, to storyboarding, to quickly pulling together components from a design system, give your project teams the opportunity to engage with visuals early and often throughout the product development cycle. The goal is to quickly gain alignment on the primary concept(s), to encourage engagement by giving teammates something to react to, and to complement written and verbal communications with visual artifacts that gesture toward the future.

When introducing visuals as means of driving alignment, explain that the visual doesn’t necessarily represent the full or final interpretation of the solution. Once alignment is reached there will still be the need for deeper documentation, research, logic diagrams, technical specs, etc. Help your Content Designers, Researchers, as well as business and technical background team members become comfortable with contributing and reacting to visual ideas by inviting them into tools like Figma, Miro, Balsamiq, Lucidspark, etc.

Managers should provide strong onboarding to set the right expectations for new employees joining the team by encouraging their direct reports to bring their own context and ways of approaching problem-solving to the work. If generating visuals early in a project is new for an individual, help them recognize that it will take time to become comfortable with contributing to conversations in this way. Help them see the value of a wide range of visual interpretations, from hand sketches to polished prototypes, and explain that it’s okay to be wrong at first and more importantly strive for an iterative process that brings partners into the fold.