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4 minute read
By Noam Carmel, Product Designer at Entor
When you think about a designer role in a growing B2B SaaS company, you’re probably thinking about the most aesthetic person in the office, always committed to color schemes and font sizes on every screen. Don’t get me wrong, I do (just ask the team at Entor how I react when a slide has the wrong shade of Purple in it) – but our role as product designers is much bigger than that: we’re the ones turning raw feedback, many times feelings our users can’t even fully put in words, into experiences that deliver more than they could ask for. It’s about meshing vision, listening, faith, and true passion to what people say about our work that should get us there - and from my honest point of view, here are 10 tips that I find helpful:
1. Treat Feedback as Gold
Each piece of user feedback is a treasure full of insights - we have to have the most basic respect for each piece of feedback as a real challenge and a chance to do better. You know the product people that say ‘Oh, that’s because they’re using it wrong?’ – well, they are the ones doing it wrong, most of the time.
Whether it's a small suggestion, a compliment, or a critique – each piece helps us understand our users better. Acknowledging and valuing their input is the first step in a design process that truly caters to their needs.
2. Developing Robust Feedback Channels
Access to feedback channels is crucial. Whether through in-app prompts, detailed surveys, social media engagement, or customer calls, the goal is to make providing feedback a seamless experience for users. This diversity in feedback collection ensures we gather comprehensive and varied insights. At Entor, for example, we spend hours on the phone with our customers and users across the organization truly shadowing their use of our platform - in addition to monitoring calls, support tickets, and written correspondences. This is a crucial part of the Entor offering, too.
3. Dedicating Time for Feedback Analysis
Regularly reviewing user feedback is as important as any other design task. This involves not just reading through the feedback but analyzing it for patterns, pain points, and potential areas of enhancement. Scheduled, in-depth reviews allow us to stay aligned with user needs and expectations. We use our own Entor technology to surface the most repeating themes and use that as a base to start a creative process of addressing any gaps and potential growth areas.
4. Empathy is where you wanna be
As a product designer, my mantra is empathy. Put yourself in the users' shoes to understand their pain points and needs. This will be your compass in designing solutions that truly resonate. This empathy-driven approach ensures our products are truly relevant.
Sounds generic? Try this: when you hear feedback from a user, try to describe back to them what you heard them saying in different words. Make sure you understand them correctly and also make them feel heard and understood. Then, validate what they just said by telling them how it makes sense to you.
5. Prioritizing Feedback for Maximum Impact
As you can imagine, that's where we’re ‘eating our dog food’: in a world of feedback from many users and customers - it’s hard to understand what you should prioritize. The way to approach this is to understand the maximum impact we, as product designers, can bring: what needs are shared by our key accounts? What themes are repeated in support tickets and customer calls? And what is their impact on our key metrics as a business - be it revenue, renewal rates, usage metrics, or our desire to expand into a new vertical or territory? Using the Entor technology - you can easily answer these key questions and align your work with the most impactful initiatives.
6. Facilitating Cross-Team Collaboration
Taking ownership over the user experience means owning how we take feedback into account: Feedback integration is a collaborative effort. Regular discussions with product managers, engineers, customer success teams, and other stakeholders ensure a holistic approach to the user experience. This cross-functional collaboration enriches the design process, leading to well-rounded and effective solutions.
7. Embracing Iterative Design Through Testing
Design is an iterative process. In other words, it means my work is never done… Utilizing customers’ voices to create prototypes and conducting usability testing allows us to refine our product based on user interactions. This cycle of testing and iterating ensures that the final product aligns closely with user expectations and preferences.
8. Give credit, and enjoy incorporating the feedback!
Transparency in how user insights shape our product is essential. If you use the input of a customer in your process - let them know, make sure they enjoy the impact they had on your product, and let them be proud of it. Informing users about the changes made based on their suggestions not only enhances the user experience but also builds trust and loyalty. This communication reinforces the idea that they are valued and impactful.
9. Encouraging a Culture of Active Listening
Active listening should be a skill cultivated by every team member. It’s true that the Product Managers probably think they built it the best way, and your developers might be certain they made it work in every scenario - it’s on us to let them see (kindly) the positive impact that listening to users and considering their suggestions can truly help them be better. Training and encouraging the team to deeply understand users leads to more insightful decisions. This culture of active listening ensures that users are at the heart of all of our endeavors. Invite others to your sessions with users, give them a shout-out when they listen, and change things. You won’t only make the product better - but also your entire company.
10. Balancing User Feedback with Product Vision
It’s easy to say an enthusiastic “YES” to every suggestion - but at the end of the day we are a tech company that leads with innovation and our users don’t always know what’s possible - so, while listening to them is a big part of the job - it’s also a balancing act: while user feedback is invaluable, balancing it with the overall product strategy is crucial. Ensuring that changes and enhancements align with the broader product goals maintains coherence and strategic direction, creating a harmonious user experience that supports long-term product success.
As Product Designers our mission extends beyond creating visually stunning products. It's about crafting experiences that speak directly to user needs and preferences, while also pushing the entire company forward. I hope these quick tips will be helpful for your work and that you find at least one tip to implement in your work tomorrow morning.
Our entire team (and me personally) are here to help you be the best listeners possible and make product feedback into an amazing product experience.
Oh, and yes: you should still make sure you use the right shade of purple! 🙂