Between our interviews, Friday gaming sessions, and hosted events like Ladies Wine & Design we end up regularly talking to a lot of designers. We chat with designers from different companies, industries, and even people who wouldn’t classify themselves as designers but have the intent to create experiences that better people’s lives.
There’s often a common thread in these chats — namely design and its role at the companies these people work for. It’s not uncommon to hear “Design isn’t respected or valued” or “Nobody understands the value of user research” or simply “We don’t have a seat at the table”.
You’d think after the advent of Apple’s 21st century success, tech companies would all now understand the value of a user’s experience. Not so, which is why an organization like Battlefy which really puts their users first is truly a rare sight.
There are 3 very real forces that govern the value of a designed product. These can be roughly mapped to:
These forces are always pushing and pulling, making trade-offs and vying for precedence. I’d be hard-pressed to find someone who disagrees with the existence of these forces, and yet — if everyone agrees, how is it productive that the people who are in charge of the desirability of a product (designers) are treated as second-class citizens?
At Battlefy, we understand this. Product managers do not manage designers. Designers are not simply in charge of making things usable. Product managers and designers are thought partners, each representing a different part of the triangle (Human Desirability & Economic Viability) and fight for the importance of their responsibilities in reference to the larger goal (delivering the best product possible in as short a time as possible).
It’s not uncommon to hear our designers flexing their “fun & delight quota”, a management-level design-driven policy where designers are able to reserve a small percent of scope each iteration for delight elements that make our users happy. Sometimes we even go against what we know is feasible because we know it’ll be awesome — and when we show the devs, they’re so hyped about what we’re building that they get it done anyway.
Product managers expect to be challenged on the problems they present, and work collaboratively with designers as thought partners to stress test logic and product strategy. They do this because with the right design partner, their ideas and strategies are molded, refined, and improved —and the whole team wins.
Another common water cooler topic we chat about with other designers is design process. Interviewees always ask us what it is and whether it’s set by management, some third party consultancy, or an internal democracy.
The reality is, it’s none of these things. And the reason is, we believe enforced process is a sign of mistrust. After all, that kind of checklist process is usually used by management to ensure that people make consistent decisions and avoid mistakes. If we truly trust our people to make great decisions with great judgement, we wouldn’t need to prescribe a top-down mandated process. That’s what we do here at Battlefy.
We trust our people to make the right decisions for the company. We trust our designers to choose their own process. We trust our people to work from home when they need to, come to the office when they feel it’s more productive, and check in with the team when they know they may not have the full picture.
That’s not to say that people don’t need coaching and guidance, but by-and-large our goal is to get our team to the point where everyone who has boots on the ground is making great decisions on their own. On top of that, they’re making great decisions because they themselves have great judgement — not because guardrails have been mandated via process by management.
We don’t mandate user journeys with 3 levels of emotional discretization, we don’t require wireflows with color legends depicting states. We’ll make suggestions on how to use card sorting or an information taxonomy to help arrive at the best solution — but we’re always expecting designers to push back and find other ways to get the goal done better.
A recent competition on Battlefy. I could make a stretched analogy here with squads but I won’t.
So when people ask us about our design stack, we’ll tell them we use Zeplin, Sketch, Adobe CC, RealtimeBoard, Invision and the lot — but we’re very careful to explain that we aren’t tied to any of them. We want a group of trained designers who can think through every decision and understand what tools are necessary when, not specialists who can only use Photoshop and are at a loss when Sketch is a better fit for the job.
Continuous improvement is one of our core values here. Everyone is borderline obsessive about being the best at what they do, and the more senior folks on the team obsess over how to get everyone to be the best team at what they do.
Lunch & Learns are a frequent occurrence where people regularly share learnings with the rest of the company. We buy food for everyone so lunch is on the house, as we know that by levelling up our skills we indirectly level up our product and subsequently our business.
Separate from those we have #learn-and-share channels on Slack where people frequently post insightful articles they’ve been reading about. What usually follows is a barrage of heated opinions around whether we should agree or disagree with what the author wrote.
We believe debate is a great way to make ideas and ourselves better, and designers in particular have their decisions challenged by pretty much everyone. That scares some people off, but in our minds if that’s the way to get to the best ideas, then it only makes us better!
We’re gamers trying to help other gamers. If you play games you’ll know what I mean — we’re a pretty hardcore bunch. Picture the emotional intensity of a high stakes game of League of Legends — and translate that to product design. We’re here to win, and to win we need to care about the people who we’re solving problems for, the product we’re designing, and the business we’re trying to build to sustain us.
Our hard work and sometimes long nights pay off when we hear comments over social media about players appreciating the time we put in to make their experience that much better. Every piece of feedback propels us, and at the end of the day we go home wanting to be proud of what we accomplished with our time.
For those unacquainted with software development, it may seem really rudimentary — who goes home not caring about whether they accomplished something that day? Why would anyone work in a job where people aren’t passionate about making a difference?
But the hard truth is that, from our own careers at least and the careers of many we talk to — it’s a more common occurrence than you think. It’s rare to have a team as obsessed about their mission as we are. Sometimes all you need is a few good people who give a damn, and that can make all the difference.
We’re looking for product designers who share our values, care deeply and passionately about their work, and want to make a dent in the fast moving world of esports. Designers who fret over unpolished details, sweat over the impact we’ll have, and believe Portal 2 was the best game ever made. Love for Portal 1 is mildly tolerable.
If that sounds like you, drop us a line and we can chat over a game of Smash Ultimate. See you at Big Blue’s starting line.
Respectfully yours,
The Design Team at Battlefy
