The design approach outlined in the reading, centered around communication and producing shared meaning, is highly aligned with the product design practice I’ve practiced in industry.
One of my first mentors told me that the primary competency for a product designer is storytelling. After years of trying to communicate user insights, product visions, and high fidelity designs, I completely. I also agree with Jeff that creating shared understanding is critical throughout the product development process, although I would add that generating shared investment is equally as important–and a core function of user stories.
A strong product designer produces artifacts that their team can meaningfully react to–poke holes in, provide feedback around and generate ideas from–in order to not only develop a shared understanding but also develop a sense of shared ownership. In this process, I constantly struggle with the tension that Jeff describes in creating an artifact optimized to communicate without seeking to create a perfect artifact. While the later stages of the design process should have a careful focus on craft, the early alignment and iterative output stage discussed in the reading, are centered around a collective sense of context and direction.
The aspect of Jeff’s design philosophy that sits in contrast with my experience is the imperative to build less rather than build more. Rarely are product teams incentivized to–oftentimes goalposts move so quickly that features that should be deprecated are lost from view as the focus shifts to new objectives. Similarly, it can be easy to get caught up in the software of it all and equate that investment in a bigger build will translate to more sizable impact. I think that this is the biggest challenge with stories–it is easy to understand what is demonstrated in them and hard to wrap your head around those parts that are absent, making size and scale a primary focus of many observers.
