This was discussed at a Product Design workshop conducted by HelloMeets at Pickyourtrail office in Chennai. Speaker and presentation by: - Bharghavi Kirubasankar, Senior Product Designer at Freshworks - She started off as a graphic designer, moved into UI design and then transitioned to UX - She has been working with Freshworks for more 3 years and take cares of the end to end feature releases, which also involves research and collaboration -Previously worked at Cognizant Technology Solutions as - Associate-Projects & Programmer Analyst The content of the presentation is around: - Knowing complex problems & defining them - Setting up a solution strategy -Assessing business goals -Defining success criteria -Making design research happen -Making sense of the data - Running a design sprint - Adopting Lean UX principles

1. Bharghavi
Product Designer, Freshworks
Designing for Complex
Business Problems

2. Have you encountered a problem where…
There is no definitive formula
There’s no way to know your solution is final
Solutions that you identify are not true-or-false; they
can only be good-or-bad
There is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error,
every attempt counts significantly.

3. They dont have set number of potential solutions
The problem is essentially unique
Every problem is a symptom of another problem
There is always more than one explanation for the
problem, the explanations vary greatly depending on
the individual perspective.
Designers have no right to be wrong and must be
fully responsible for their actions
Contd…

4. Congratulations! You are facing a WICKED
problem.
The term “wicked problem” was first coined by
Horst Rittel, design theorist and professor of design
methodology at the Ulm School of Design,
Germany.
Design theorist and academic Richard Buchanan
connected design thinking to wicked problems in
his paper “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking.”

5. Source: @pablostanley

6. Activity:
Explain how would you go about designing a bicycle
renting app for urban tier 1 cities

7. Identify the
need
PROBLEM SOLVING
Select and plan the
solution
Analyse
Possible Solutions
Evaluate
Implement

8. How do you know you have solved for the
correct problem?
“Good designers never start by trying to solve the
problem given to them: they start by trying to
understand what the real issues are.
Don Norman

9. Understanding the overarching problem:
USER JOURNEYS
A user journey is a path a user may take to reach their
goal when using a product. It is used to identify the
different ways to enable the user to achieve their goal
as quickly and easily as possible.

10. Let’s try some examples…
Draw a user journey for the taxi booking app Ola

11. Identifying the right problem: The 5 WHY’s
Problem: Computers are breaking down so often
that work is conducted at a crawl
The computers are old and the software is not
acceptable with newer systems
Why?
New computers and software have not been
purchased in five years
Why?
IT support is too small to support regular upgradesWhy?
The manager incharge has not made an effective
case of budget increase
Why?
The manager incharge of IT is new and has not
been trained in manegerial skills
Why?

12. Now let’s try some examples…
Problem: Our churn rate has increased by 30% in the
last quater
Problem: Users are not responding to our NPS survey

13. Formulating effective problem statements
How Might We create a baby warming device
that helps parents in remote villages give their
dying infants a chance to survive
“

14. Now let’s try some examples…
Problem: Our churn rate has increased by 30% in the
last quater
Problem: Users are not responding to our NPS survey

15. The DOUBLE DIAMOND -
DIVERGE CONVERGE method
Time
Alternatives
Finding the right
PROBLEM
Finding the right
SOLUTION

16. Design research: Why is it important?
Poor user experiences inevitably come from poorly
informed design teams
Jared M. Spool
“

17. Overcoming objections: Making design research
happen
We don’t have time
We don’t have the expertise, or the budget
The CEO is going to dictate what we do anyway
You need to be a scientist
You need infrastructure
It will take too long
You can find out everything you need in beta
We know the issue/users/app/problem inside and
out already

18. What are some of the objections you have
come across? How did you solve them?

19. Actual reasons behind the objections…
I don’t want to be bothered
I am afraid of being wrong
I am very uncomfortable talking to people

20. Need vs Want

21. Activity: Minefield

22. GOOD NEWS!
You don’t have to be an expert to solve difficult
problems

23. How do you create most valuable designs
Usability
Feasiblity
Viability
Valuble design

24. The Google Design Sprint model
Source:
https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/
introduction/case-studies

25. Defining success criteria: H.E.A.R.T Method

26. LEAN UX: What is it?

27. Developing a Lean UX mindset
Has your MVP is attained its success criteria, if not
why?
Share the results with your team
Plan retro with your team to understand what went
well and what dint and how to improve it going
forward
Think about sways to bake the feedback into your
design
Influence the desicion maker

28. Thank you!
Contact me
@heybharghavi
www.linkedin.com/in/bharghavik