Going through this process Cars Guide was able to revamp a bunch of different pages and achieve the desired business effect in terms of SEO, page views while keeping user centricity.
Carsguide had been subcontracting design before this as they had really high expectations of how a design process should be a quality gateway on its own right. After going through this process the Head of Carsguide was happy to return to the in-house design team to take care of its most challenging design issues.
This process is an iteration of the Design Thinking ‣ process I rallied my team with in the past, but adjusted to the company culture and processes, with the main difference being the cadence. Carsguide particular approach had peculiarities that impeded a back to back design sprint approach, and instead we did multiple overlapping design sprints that started at different points. Below is an example of one.
<aside> 💡 "It doesn't matter how well you solve a problem, if it is not the right one."
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When stakeholders ask for features they typically do as in "I want you to do X solution for me". Putting that person in a risky position, since he might have not clearly identified what the problem is. Out of all the tools out there to perform root cause analysis is relentlessly asking "why?". And when I do, I try to do it in such a way that I facilitate the answers to these questions.
When a stakeholder ask me to add a button, I typically ask questions like:
<aside> ⚠️ I've been using Strategyzer's Test Cards for a while now, and they seem to do the job for me and others that work with me. But I have noticed they have some problem with the labeling, it's not straightforward for everyone to use them (i.e. Test and Metric sections are typically filled interchangeably".
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Straight after getting the Test Card done, I jump into exploding the card into a flow of tasks and steps.