In my experience, teams in AI-related products often struggled with similar challenges: they were newly formed, focused on building quickly rather than perfectly, and had rapidly evolving processes. While UX addressed basic requirements, the sheer novelty of the new technology often satisfied internal users.
As AI changed and improved, our users began having higher expectations, requiring more complex features. When I joined the teams, we weren't prepared for this, as foundational processes hadn't been fully established.
I realized that a significant portion of our blockers stemmed from the cooperation between UX (now me) and the front-end developers.
I decided to use my expertise to improve the UX of our processes, ultimately speeding up our work and enhancing its quality.
1. Discover
To understand our current state, I took the following steps:
- Audited our current way of working: the design process, handoff procedures, and meetings.
- Interviewed the team about their general feelings regarding our cooperation.
- Sent out an anonymous survey to front-end developers (to understand their challenges, gather suggestions for improvement, rate the effectiveness of our meetings).
2. Define
I analyzed all the results to understand our main problems:
- Communication difficulties between UX, front-end development, and business.
- Unclear decision-making processes.
- Lack of detailed designs for smooth implementation.
- Inability to reuse components due to inconsistency.
- One Figma file used for several products.
3. Develop
I planned possible solutions for each problem and explored which would have the biggest impact and could be introduced quickly.
4. Deliver
Meetings
- Working with the Scrum Master to develop an effective meeting setup (fewer participants, focus on UX instead of business).
- 1:1 meetings between UX and front-end developers on individual functionalities.
Task Tracking
- UX engagement in Scrum and accurate task tracking.
- Figma established as the source of truth and main space for discussion about new designs and changes.
Design
- Introducing one design system (Material UI) for all products.
- Replicating the current live state in Figma.
- Detailed new designs that make them easier to bring to life.