06. Delivering Better Products Through Better Relationships

06. Delivering Better Products Through Better Relationships

The thing that’s more important than designing great products is delivering great products.

Here’s the thing about software. It’s generally pretty straightforward. You type the right string of characters in your IDE. Out comes the software. Assuming you typed it all out correctly and you referenced all the right functions, no typos, not much should go wrong. 

So what makes software hard? It’s the people!

Now I know software isn’t technically easy. I don’t want to diminish the work of all you brilliant software engineers out there. But I think most software engineers would probably agree with this point at least: that people make the already difficult job of building great software more difficult.

Now unfortunately for us UX designers, we need all those people. Those people take our fancy well-thought-out, well-researched, well-tested designs, and they help us get those pretty pictures turned into working software. 

Whether it’s product teams helping to move the process along, scrum masters removing blockers for engineers, or engineers typing all that stuff they type, we need them.

I know. Heartbreaking. 

The fact is that if you aren’t the only person on the team, then you need everyone on the team. And your relationship with those people will directly impact your ability to get the end users the software they need to solve their problems and improve their day. 

So let me ask you a question. 

Are you constantly fighting with your engineering or product teams? Do you feel like you’re constantly getting left out of conversations you belong in? Do you feel like your team doesn’t trust you when you do get a chance to speak up?

If you said yes to any of these, then there’s a good chance your relationship with your team isn’t all that hot. And if it’s not all that hot, well… you already know what that means.

Let Me Tell You a Story

Meet Jan

• Jan has a debilitating disease.
• Jan uses two different apps to track her condition.
• Jan just wants an app that’s easy to use. 

Same Hard Skills. Different Soft Skills.

Fred and Aimee are both great designers, but Fred always seems to be left out of important meetings. 

Fred can’t influence his team and has ended up having very little impact on the final product after his handoff.

Aimee is able to influence her team and has a much larger impact on the final product. 

What made Fred and Aimee so different? 

Jan just wants software that works.

So this is kind of a basic example. And it’s betting on the fact that the rest of your team is great. And if the rest of the team is great and you do those things Aimee did, you’re going to be a hell of a lot further along than most people. 

Building Strong Relationships Has a Lot of Benefits

So this silly example was pretty basic. And it touched on some of the major benefits of making sure we are building these important relationships with our teams. 

One of the biggest benefits of making sure we build these relationships is we build trust. Every good relationship is built on trust. It opens up every other benefit we see from great relationships. 

When we build trust, we become trusted partners. It goes both ways. When that happens a lot of the issues we hear other UX professionals talk about become less of a problem, and it leads to a lot of really great outcomes. 

First, we tend to get less pushback when we present ideas, designs, or thoughts.

Our teams tend to include us earlier. We get included in the big-picture discussions. We learn about constraints and goals early on. We get more time to do the job right and we have an opportunity to influence early and often. 

We then help to build a shared understanding sooner. We help influence decisions sooner. We get that seat at the table we’re always asking for. 

But the problem for a lot of us is that we do everything Aimee did and we can’t deliver great products because we work with a team of Freds.

How to Build Relationships

So what do you do when that happens?

Well here are some things that I’ve found over the years. Try these out and see what works for you. Note that every team is different with different personalities, and different dynamics, etc. So try it out, but experiment. See what works for you. 

Something I think is really important, especially early on is getting to know everyone on your team. This might be easier in person, but you can still do this remotely. 

When you first join a team schedule a 1:1 with everyone. Do 25 min so you don’t take up a full half hour. It shows you’re being courteous of their time. It shows that you respect them, right off the bat.  

Spend time getting to know them. Talk a little about yourself. But ask them questions. Don’t spend the whole time talking. Let them talk. Find something in common to connect with them. This will make small talk later easier. That small talk is really important for keeping the relationship going. 

You can also use this time to ask them about expectations for your role. What do they expect from people in this role? 

Maybe ask them how the previous person worked with them. Maybe ask if it was a good relationship. What did they do wrong? What did they do right?

You want to start this working relationship on the right foot. Set expectations early. 

Really, I think s lot of the conflicts we have at work are due to misaligned expectations. So set those expectations now. 

Maybe spend some time talking about the things you expect to accomplish in this role. Talk about how you can help them and the team. 

If you expect to be invited to different activities this might be a good time to talk about how you should be there and what value you expect to bring. 

If they talk about their kids, partners, or dogs, write their names down. Take notes. You can go back and reference this later. You will sound way more genuine when you ask about Timmy’s big ball game instead of “your son” 

Obviously, that is all too much for 25 min. Play it by ear. Don’t be afraid to schedule more time if you think you need it. 

If you’re in person, get out of the office. Go for a walk, go get some coffee down the block. Make this enjoyable. 

Learn the language of the organization. This is especially true if you’re interacting with senior leaders like executives. Don’t sound like a cool-aid drinking robot, but if they use certain terms use the terms too. You want to make it seem like you are part of the team, not an outsider. 

I’m not saying go so far as to sound fake or like a brown noser. You know what’s right here, just go for that. 

If you’re fortunate enough to work with international teams, I would definitely recommend learning a few words in their language. You don’t have to be fluent, but just learn a few key phrases like good morning, how are you, I’m sorry. These can go a long way. 

Learn some of their customs. Learn about their holidays and wish them a happy holiday and don’t bug them when they’re off and you’re working. And maybe most importantly be aware of time zones. Don’t bug them at night just because you’re still at work. 

Keep the Relationships Going

Once you’ve started to build those relationships you need to keep them going. 

One of the hardest things I’ve found being remote is losing that sideline talk. The chat over the coffee machine or the break room. The random conversations you might drop in on when you’re at the office. 

So if you’re remote these things need to be more intentional. 

If you have a team that is active on something like slack, maybe they have different channels for different interests. Where I work we have all kinds of channels fr DIY to landscaping to music to dogs to fishing to bikes. We even have a slack channel where people go and talk about fast food. It’s awesome. 

Now, something a lot of people tend to overlook is the small talk. I’ve especially seen this since going mostly remote. But when we have meetings everyone just stays quiet for the first minute or two and then someone always just gets down to business. 

Don’t do that. Use the time to ask how people are. Ask if they have any big plans for the weekend. Ask how their weekend was. ask how their kids are doing if you know they were sick. You’re trying to get to know them on a more personal level. Remember when you took notes and wrote down all the names of the important people in their lives? It’ll come in really handy here. 

These little side conversations are really important. Everyone is so worried about looking like they’re working hard, we miss out on a lot of opportunities to build strong bonds with our teams when we don’t do these things. 

another good opportunity for relationship building is scheduling regular 1:1 with key people. This doesn’t have to be every week. It could be once a month. You’ll know the right rhythm. Just keep it consistent and remember to keep these meetings fun. Go in with the mindset that you can help them solve a problem. Ask if you can do anything to help them. This will go a long way to building trust and empathy for them. 

Remember all of this is not to be fake about it. If you want to build genuinely strong relationships with your team, you need to be genuine. 

The point of all of this is to build empathy for your team. Ask UX professionals we talk all the time about empathy for users. But we really need to build empathy for our team. 

Too often I see this othering where it ends up being UX designer vs bad developers or UX designers vs bad product people or stakeholders whatever it is. 

I think that’s bullshit. Sure there are really bad engineers or really bad product people. But I think they are generally pretty rare. More often we didn’t put the effort in to understand where they were coming from. Really understand why they are asking for what they’re asking for. Understand what other crap they have outside of work that might be stressing them out. What constraints their under or what pressures they’re feeling fr other teams? 

So the last big thing that I think is worth noting is that in order for us to be trusted partners and foster collaboration, we really need to walk the walk. We need to have an open-door policy that brings our team with us along the way. 

If the UX maturity on our team is low, it likely isn’t because the people on the team hate UXers. It’s most likely because they just don’t know the alternatives. It’s really on us to help get them there and build that UX literacy. 

So how do we do that? We include them!

• Include your important product and engineering people in brainstorming or whiteboard sessions. 
• Get them involved with planning research. 
• Take them along when you do research. 
• Include them in usability studies. 
• Include them in design critiques. 
• Let them see the process and the science behind what we do so they don’t think we’re just drawing pretty pictures all day. 

This will also go towards building the UX team up as trusted experts and partners. This will go a long way toward improving how you work with your team. 

Everyone on the team should really feel like they own some aspect of the user’s experience.

So let them in and see that relationship blossom.

Helpful Links
• Building Meaningful Relationships Can Improve UX | Digital Adoption 101 | Medium