Measuring, Defining and Improving Productivity: The Design Productivity Blueprint

Empowering groups and people to do their finest work is an ongoing concern for Spotify’s Design Platform workforce. With that in thoughts, we labored in partnership with digital product consultancy Elsewhen to reply, how precisely can we measure — and in the end consider and enhance — designer productiveness? And within the spirit of sharing with the broader group, we contemplated, can we create a brand new instrument for design groups and their leaders to assist them develop their very own workforce’s definition of productiveness, measure it and enhance it?

Measuring productiveness for a inventive position is a treacherous endeavor. First, there may be figuring out tips on how to pull it off technically, then you definately want confidence that you just’re measuring the appropriate factor, and lastly, you don’t need to add undue strain on designers, who get pleasure from autonomy. 

It’s moderately clear what can be the unsuitable issues to measure. For instance, it will be a mistake to simply depend the variety of screens, parts and even options a designer creates, or the time it takes them to supply every one, so we have to determine the metrics that it does make sense to measure.

The Partner, The Challenge, and Managing Change

We recruited a co-conspirator to assist us outline and examine productiveness, and find any alternatives that may emerge consequently. Being faraway from the organisational day-to-day, and with deep expertise in resolving comparable challenges for different firms, Elsewhen have been ideally positioned to objectively interact with designer workflow points.

Together we might then share and flesh out the alternatives that emerged, which may develop into programmes of labor in their very own proper sooner or later. What follows is a breakdown of our course of, which you’ll be able to observe as effectively at your organisation, together with a toolkit we’ve printed to the Figma Community that can assist you accomplish that, and an evidence of tips on how to get probably the most from it.

You can entry the Figma toolkit right here, however we advocate that you just learn by way of how we tackled designer productiveness, earlier than diving in.

Establishing your definition of design productiveness

So you’re on the lookout for methods to assist your workforce do their finest work, and to take away any boundaries from them doing so. You want to have the ability to outline your required outputs and behaviours and set up them as a north star. You additionally must carry the designers themselves into the method early on, as they are going to have opinions on the place the issues and alternatives lie.

We pulled collectively a cross-disciplinary working group of designers, design system engineers and prototypers to determine a definition of productiveness. We then validated this definition by way of interviews and our blueprint session. We aligned on a closing definition that may information us when contemplating modifications to the best way designers work. 

The definition of designer productiveness we co-created with the workforce was:

When you’ve established your definition, it’s time to place it into motion and determine on a set of productiveness measures. You’ll do that collectively along with your workforce within the Figma toolkit. Consider {that a} good measurement is one that may be tracked and stay related over time, throughout completely different components of the workflow. With these key metrics in place, you possibly can then decide which one to prioritise and sort out first.

Determining what you need to measure

We established three core metrics by way of which to measure designer productiveness:

1. Time spent finishing routine duties – right here we imply that we’re fascinated by creating an atmosphere through which designers can spend extra time on collaboration and luxuriate in extra inventive time.

2. The variety of, and the time misplaced to bottlenecks – we knew there have been bottlenecks that have been slowing down designers. We additionally knew that after we recognized them, we may organize them and begin tackling them one after the other. 

3. Design system adoption – that is key to make sure designers have a trusted supply of fact, that they will confidently depend on. While not a basic measure for productiveness, we used adoption as a proxy for measuring and growing our inside instruments.

Your personal metrics could fluctuate from ours, and that’s okay. However, it is necessary that the metrics outlined are easy to know and clear to everybody, and can assist your workforce make actionable, measurable modifications.

Understanding your workflow

Now that you already know what you’re monitoring, you’ll want a blueprint of the present design course of. At Spotify Design, groups are absolutely autonomous, which signifies that the design course of will fluctuate barely from one workforce to a different. We wished to create a illustration of the completely different workflows throughout the organisation, and we used this as each a jumping-off level and a reference level for any modifications within the workflow. Part 2 of our toolkit – ‘Capturing Designer Workflows’ offers a simple strategy to generate your workforce’s personal blueprint.

Using the instrument, we advise that you just interview your designers and any engineers, product managers or others who work intently with these designers. For every particular person interviewed, ask them to decide on a generalised workflow equivalent to ‘create a new product feature’ and full a workflow map. To assist people to precisely map and perceive workflows, they’re damaged down into:

• An outline of the completely different duties 

• An clarification of the time spent on a process

• The completely different groups and/or folks concerned, and the character of their involvement

• The instruments used

• Perceived ache factors on the completely different levels

With this, you’ll emerge with an image of a normal circulation, higher perceive the variations between the groups, the important thing ache factors, and among the alternatives for enchancment. Having a number of variations of this blueprint means that you can:

• Understand the extent of autonomy throughout groups and design of us

• Construct a generalised evidence-based model of the blueprint

• Identify productiveness blockers in mild of your Productivity Definition

• Create a dwelling artefact and a degree of reference for ongoing enhancements to the designer expertise at your organisation

Grouping insights for motion

Your findings will likely be completely different, however within the curiosity of sharing, our insights match into the next wider themes:

A transparent theme emerged round collaboration between designers and engineers. Closer collaboration between designers and engineers resulted in smoother and extra pleasurable tasks.

Spotify Design gives a broad vary of design assets, however consequently some companies have been at risk of being overwhelmed, whereas others have been much less well-known by new designers and underutilised consequently.

Spotify Design has constructed and maintains a powerful design system. Of course, a design system is simply pretty much as good as its continued adoption and documentation because it grows. Working on engagement, significantly from engineers, and bettering documentation is essential to a design system’s continued success.

Spotify Design lately made the transfer to Figma, and designers actually favor it. As it’s a comparatively new instrument nevertheless, we have to iron out the creases in engineer handoff and speccing. The problem is to steadiness autonomy inside the design course of with the necessity to create constant, digestible specs that anybody parachuting right into a Figma file can perceive.

There have been explicit points round how designers have been approaching movement that was actually slowing them down and wasn’t very best for engineers both. Designers encountered challenges translating the dynamics of movement prototypes into manufacturing code. 

The instrument itself, and the way it works

Hopefully, the instrument itself ought to be self-explanatory when you’ve learn this text. There are additionally pointers within the Figma toolkit that can assist you navigate it as you observe the method, and we advocate familiarising your self with it earlier than working any workshops. That stated, to get you began, right here’s an summary of the construction of the instrument.

The instrument is made up of 4 fundamental components, and a closing part that can assist you share your findings:

1. Workshops — Define Designer Productivity as a bunch in your organisation and uncover tips on how to measure it

2. Interviews — Understand your particular person designer workflows and map them out

3. Synthesise — Build a service design blueprint to explain a standard designer workflow, and determine your issues and alternatives

4. Productivity Canvas — Share your productiveness findings with the broader workforce, to incorporate them within the course of of creating enhancements

The instrument locations emphasis on bottlenecks reasonably than simply decreasing time spent on the method. This approach you stand a greater probability of creating significant enhancements, by uncovering the most vital productiveness pains and alternatives in your designer workflow. The instrument was created as a part of a wider analysis effort into growing productiveness and eradicating impediments within the designer workflow, and while you’ve run by way of the method and populated your Canvas, your work shouldn’t finish there. You ought to now take into consideration:

• Describing every alternative in additional element: take into consideration every drawback, pulling collectively the proof for it, with a speculation and an experiment for the way you would resolve it.

• Agreeing in your methodology for prioritising the alternatives, after which deciding which you need to sort out first as a workforce.

Armed along with your listing of prioritised alternatives—every with its personal supporting proof, speculation and proposed experiment—you’ll be effectively positioned to examine what a future state of designer productiveness may appear like in your organisation, and how one can finest transfer the needle to get there.