PITA 061
If you're Neurodiverse, do you tell people? Do you explain your traits? How do people respond? How's it worked out?
It’s always been great when people let me know that they are and what their needs are - it’s established a great baseline for how we establish rapport
What is the difference between ‘I work in a different way’ and adjusting for disability?
Experienced people using the autistic or neurodiverse labels as an excuse for being asses. Not a blanket accusation - it’s about hiding behind the label as an excuse in certain specific cases. (Asses come in all shapes and sizes.)
Mixed success with a WORKING WITH ME user guide - everyone providing a guide. Seen it go well in some cases and poorly in places that couldn’t care less. Worked better where it’s run as an open sharing session, more of a group conversation. What’s worked best is when the team has agreed actions off the back of it.
Establishing product mindset when you don't have enough PMs to go around
Espouse it outside of the PM role - anyone can talk about WHY are we doing this, HOW will we measure it, WHY this over that, Experimentation, etc… UX, Dev, Delivery or Business people can fulfill this function. How do you encourage it across the organisation?
Try to push it down from leadership, or up and across with a Community of Practice
Creating spaces for people to share cultural best practices
Leverage the PMs you have to mentor other teams or act as a consultant. Avoid using product language wherever possible. Help them refine ideas - asking things like Who is going to use it? Makes a massive difference.
Training in basic things - Discovery techniques, Metrics, etc - can be really great for others across the business
Drop the discipline labels - start talking about activities & capabilities; work together about who has done this before or is interested in doing so
MD of Pixar kept a backlog of small problems that anyone might be able to solve - he gave these tasks to new joiners
Tips/resources for design stuff when you don't have any designers...?
There are some great design systems out there. Lloyds, NHS, UK Gov - that you can use as a starting point. They’ll get you from A - D, not all the way to Z - but it can be very useful and a great start.
Follow Vitaly Friedman’s LinkedIn
LukeW | Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks -a Web design & usability book by Luke Wroblewski this guy is the OG of forms in particular. If its forms
Using a design system, even if rubbish, to get everyone on the same page and have a common starting point
I'd also recommend something like: Home | Laws of UX , but only useful if you know what you're trying to design for
Tools that helped make something good enough - better than a Figma prototype:
Just because you have a design system doesn’t mean that the UX architecture underneath it is any good!
I will always advocate for prototyping whatever you are exploring, half because it’s a good thing to get people/teams invested and involved in designing. In browser prototypes are great. Usually quick enough to put together and even throw away. The harder bit is how you canvas feedback to iterate.
Tips for growing supply for a new product with low demand (2-sided marketplace)
Understanding the pain points - Discovery
Upping the incentive for suppliers
Go wide on the problem statements, then invalidate them 1 by 1
Write down some numbers on success/failure and when we might kill this idea - did you size the opportunity correctly? Are people ready for this?