Our design approach

In working with the G&A team, we’ve developed a few design practices:

• Get others involved: We want the people affected by design decisions to be a part of making those decisions. We’ll often review designs with G&A staff, hold regular usability tests with people who use the NRM G&A application, and host design workshops within and outside the team.

• Make design work available to the whole team: We surfaced frictions and unknowns by giving teammates regular access to design work and creating space for people to review, comment, discuss, and contribute.

• Low-fi works: A common goal in our work was to get something down so that we could start talking about it and mark it up with questions. We relied on stock styles to move quickly, left sections blank to open them up for conversation, and were open about what questions we had. We could probably have even done lower-fi work!

The design cadence

• We add design and research tasks to the backlog, and prioritize them with our product owner.
• With design work, we're clear about the needs and people we need to serve.
• As we start working, we'll document questions and unknowns to be transparent about where things may change and where we need more investigation. We'll also document any assumptions or hypotheses we have.
• Once we have the start of a draft, we'll share it with the team and also schedule a walk through with our product owner. The product owner may invite others they feel may be able to answer questions we have.
• We'll then take draft work to people who do G&A work for usability testing or co design activities. This helps us continually test assumptions and reinforce and clarify needs.
• We aim to meet with people who do G&A every few weeks. In practice, it has been less frequent due to priorities outside of design work.