Udemy Course: Complete Web & Mobile Designer in 2023: UI/UX, Figma, + more by Andrei Neagoie & Daniel Schifano.

Episode 21: Working with Clients

Introduction

Although, at the beginning of this course, how to work with a client was briefly discussed. But this Episode properly sheds more light on things to do in the process of working with a client.

Before you start a project, you want to understand why you are starting a project. This means you want to understand what the problem is and why we should get a solution for it.

𝟏. Product Alignment Canvas

Product Alignment Canvas is a different approach to starting a project. It sounds a little scary or intimidating but let's dive in.

Product Alignment Canvas is about asking some basic questions about why we should be doing something and also learning a bit about our assumptions based on our users and other things.

Essentially, what we want to do is to get everyone who is involved in the project in the same room. That can mean the product team, client, stakeholders, users, etc.

Now, the product team probably consist of yourself, maybe other designers, developers, product managers, QA, and the client. There are so many people, but the people who determine the success of the project should be in this meeting.

You could have users in this meeting. Users could be existing or potential users, but generally, they are not. And you don't have the timeline to probably get a user in a meeting like this, so you would need to make a lot of assumptions and we'll get to how to validate those after.

All, these people are going to contribute to the success of the project. So much information and expertise is what they hold. This means there is a sense of opinion on the subject matter that you need to pull out of these people.

So, you want to practice your facilitation skills, because what we're going to be doing is asking a lot of questions and we would be brainstorming.

𝟐. Product Planner

There is a Figma Plugin called "Product Planner" that helps create different templates to suit what we need, like a brainstorming template (product and planning or management planning template)

Under this Product Planner plugin, we have a couple of predefined tools like; Assumptions Grid, Product Roadmap, Kanban Board, Gantt Charts, Retrospective Documents, Workflow Chart, Persona Template, Project Overview, Customer Journey Map, Project Documentation Template and much more.

As we can see there are several parts of a Product Alignment Canvas, The goal is to explore, understand and move forward.

What we want to do is, get to the bottom of the requirements and what we need to do for our project. This means that we need to understand what success will look like in all different aspects, whether that's the business aspect, whether that's based on users and that's why we're coming together to brainstorm here.

At the beginning of any project, you generally know very little things about;

Who the users are? why do they want this? what are we solving for? and you generally don't have much time to be up and running, we often need to literally hit the ground running.

So what we can do is to use Figma to remotely gather information from all participants involved in the project or do it in person which is the most recommended practice.

To do this physically, you will need:

• A Whiteboard.

• The most important people in the room.

• Some Post-it Notes.

• Markers

• It will be great to have a Note-taker to help.

One incredibly important thing is to have somewhere where you can jot down all your risky assumptions.

𝟑. Project Goals

The reason why we have to set up this way is so that every member of the team can bring their thoughts/contributions to the table without having to raise their hand or talk out loud about it. This is because sometimes people are shy or when there are more dominant voices in the room like the CEO, people just keep quiet and don't express what they truly believe is the best for the project.

To be able to air out the opinions of every member of the team, we can hand over sticky's to everyone; so they can put in their contributions. Then we can collect it all together for proper arrangements and ask questions about them to group similar goals.

𝟒. Target Users

The next important part of the canvas is the target user section. There are often two types of users: the end-users and stakeholders.

The goal is to identify the groups of people whose cooperation will be required to make this project a success.

These groups are united by common goals and concerns which include varying roles and occupations.

• End-users are the most obvious target users, which means they are the users we think about the most because they are the primary audience for using the product we are trying to build.

Their concerns help us understand what may hinder successful usage and offer an opportunity to address them.

An example of an end-user could be a Job Function e.g. a Mechanic.

Then, If we are thinking more specifically about our product, an end-user would be like a Shopper. That's even vague, to dig even deeper, we can say a family shopper, i.e. someone who shops for their family.

Another angle to target users could be the method of use of our product, e.g. Mobile Users or Desktop Users.

After getting/listing out our target users, we can start thinking about the end-user goals to see how we can help alleviate their frustration and pain points.

• This is how we get to know the things we are trying to make better.

• What limitations we are helping them overcome?

• What type of device would they use to likely perform their task?

Then we can look into the end-user's concerns. Like what would make them hesitate to take on a new application.

• What ill consequences are likely to happen with this application? Examples could be Irrelevant Results, Application Stability, etc.

• What competitive level should this reach to be the preferred choice for this problem?

𝟓. User Journey Map

In our User Journey Map, we are going to use all of the resources we have had before to make a visual representation of the steps a user needs to take to complete the goal of the product.

𝟔. Risky Assumptions

This is a point at which the team has the opportunity to help each other reduce the risk and uncertainty involved in the success of the project by calling out all the information during this canvas we are hosting.

𝟕. User Story Map

What is a User Story Map? User Story Map is how we consistently help either (clients or our product team) to release small incremental portions of value with the ability to launch at any time and know when the product is viable.

User Story Map is a product planning method that helps the product owner and the team focus on end-users business outcomes when planning what to build and why to build it.

The journey gets better 💪...

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