Talking UX and product discovery with the Prague tech community
productboard recently collaborated with Projector to host a UX and design meetup at HubHub, a sleek coworking space that houses our Prague team and other up-and-coming Czech startups.
Over 70 people showed up to chat about all things UX and design, network with the growing Prague tech community, and enjoy delicious Pilsners and sliders. They left with new insights on how to leverage learnings from users to make better product decisions, as well as how teams can execute difficult product redesigns while still maintaining an excellent user experience.
Let’s dive deeper into the event’s two great talks.
The feature lifecycle process: How to build the right things
The first speaker was productboard’s very own Product Designer, Zdeněk Kunčar.
Zdenek talked about how the productboard team ensures that they are building the right features. He also shared the discovery process used by the team to deeply understand the problems users face.
Understand
- The teams consolidates user research, feedback, and requests and identifies insights that will inform prioritization and design
- Different perspectives from PM, design, engineering, CSM, and other cross-functional teams are gathered and taken into account
Define
- The problem statement in multiple products and areas are defined
- A “storm of ideas” are researched that could potentially solve the problem
Ideate
- The team comes up with different ideas for solutions to the problem they are trying to solve
Validate
- The understanding of the problem and solution ideas are validated with users via testing, prototyping, and more
Solution
- The problem is clearly defined and the whole team understands the problem space
- There is full alignment across cross-functional teams around what is being built next and why
- Though design critiques and collaborations with team members throughout the company, the team figures out how to build the solution the best possible way
Along with introducing this process, Zdenek provided a real-life example of a feature one of the teams at productboard is currently working on. When everyone was clearly aligned on the right problem, they were able to validate and prototype solution ideas that later evolved into a feature that makes the user experience within productboard much smoother for customers.
Attendees were very curious about how discovery works at and within productboard, and Zdenek answered a flurry of questions from the audience. It sparked a great discussion that continued informally over food and drinks afterwards.
How teams can execute difficult redesigns while maintaining an excellent user experience
Denis Rojčyk, Senior UX Designer at Kiwi.com, took the floor after Zdenek.
Transitioning from Zdenek’s topic on deciding what to build to how to build it, Denis shared a story of the successful app redesign that he led at Kiwi.
Product redesigns are usually released without warning. Though the intention is to improve the user experience, the suddenness of the change often confuses users rather than providing immediate value.
When redesigning their mobile app, the Kiwi team wanted to mitigate confusion around big changes. To ease users in, they decided to introduce updates gradually rather than all at once.
Denis described how the team started by unifying colors across the whole app. Typography came next. Components were built little by little to slowly replace what was originally there. By relying on a UI kit as a source of truth, they were able to easily experiment with different layouts until they found their sweet spot.
His story is a great example of how teams can keep the user experience in mind during difficult redesigns.
More events to come!
As a fast-growing startup focused on product management, we love talking about all things product and tech. As things ramp up, we will continue to expand our community and host meetups in Prague and beyond. We also have lots of talks lined up this year that are specifically for the developer community.
If you’re interested in joining any of our events, or if you want to join forces to host an event, feel free to drop us a line at [email protected].
