More and more agile teams began to value good design, to the extend to actually hire in-house designers to be part of the team. However there is often an unspoken tension between the product manager and the designer: who get to define the user experience? An agile product manager is thinking in terms of user stories, which doesn't always align with the design specs. Vice versa. It eventually boils down to: How can design practices become an integral part of an agile team? Between PM and Design, there may be many disagreements on features and priority. But let's start with a common ground: solving the user pain. Eventually I stopped writing design specs, but to help the PM write better user stories. In this session I'd like to share practical lessons on Design/PM collaboration to bring the best out of both. About Shanfan Huang Drawing. Coding. Learning. Making. Exploring. Dancing. bio from Twitter Shanfan Huang is a product designer at Pivotal Labs, an agile development consultancy that helps the clients transform their way of building software. She aspires to bring Lean UX practice into agile development teams.

1. Shanfan Huang | @chitchy
- ProductCamp Boston April 09 2016 -
From Design Specs
to User Stories
Product Designer
A Path to Agile Collaboration

2. var Software.DevelopmentTeam = Software.Developers
.append(ProductManager)
.append(Designer)

3. Who can woo the developer?

4. Wireframes:
The backbone of the user experience

5. Wireframes created by the product manager:

6. Wireframes created by the designer:
http://www.emerce.nl/achtergrond/social-sessions-10-diy-tips-om-engagement-
verhogen

7. Designer:
“Look at my beautiful
clickable prototype with all
the annotations specifying
the intended user interaction
and interface behavior!”

8. “Mmm, you’re cute.
But too chunky.”

9. Things to Avoid:
Monolith design depicting too
many details about the future

10. User Stories:
The Usher to the Product Implementation

11. Product Manager:
“Everything is broken down into
the (prioritized) user stories.”

12. “The backlog! No-brainer, I like it!”

13. Scenario A:
The designer finds it hard to read without the context…

14. Scenario A:
… thus hard to cooperate

15. Things to Avoid:
Design without the context.
Design as an afterthought.

16. Scenario B:
The Product Manager gets in “passive cooperation” mode…

17. Scenario B:
… retrofitting stories to the design.

18. Things to Avoid:
Describe the UI in the story.
Neglect the reason behind.

19. var Software.DevelopmentTeam = Software.Developers
.append(ProductManager)
.append(Designer)
It’s not really about who woos the developers...

20. … but who woos the customers.
var Software.DevelopmentTeam = Software.Developers
.append(ProductManager)
.append(Designer)

21. We’re a team.

22. A PM’s View of World
A Designer’s View of World

23. Collaboration 1: Align the Big Picture
User Research & Co-Design Workshop

24. Develop the personas, business blueprints
and user scenarios together.
Co-design high level wireframes to integrate
the best of all the brains.

25. Collaboration 2: Improve Design Agility
User Stories <- drive -> Design Specs

26. Design has long been a waterfall practice,
not suited for pivoting course;
Agile is invented to combat the
uncertainty and change.
http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/mcdp1.pdf

27. Example 1: Accommodating rapid design iteration
Version 1 Version 2
Version 3

29. Things to Try:
Explain the user intent upfront.
Describe the user task that fulfills
the intent - and keep it open.

30. Example 2: Acknowledging Stopgap Solutions

31. Highlight the problem
Leave the solution open

32. Things to Try:
First, REALLY think like a user.
Then, acknowledge the project
limitation.

33. Closing thoughts:
Forget about the design specs, collaborate in real-time
PMs can help Designers to ground down to
the execution
Use the (intent - task) user stories to
steer the implementation
Designers can help PMs to visualize the
big picture
Use the living persona and user
scenarios to guide the overall
product direction

34. Closing thoughts:
Use the user stories and wireframes to start conversations.

35. Shanfan Huang | @chitchy
Thanks!
Product Designer
(Discussion Time)