The emergence of product-led growth has driven the excellence and maturity of the role of the growth designer. So, what is a growth designer, and what can be the value of growth design? Let's take a look at the interpretation of this article.
You may also have started your career as a traditional "UX designer". While the discipline is still going strong, it has evolved into product design, with designers taking on greater responsibility.
In today's world, designers must make smart and informed decisions that not only keep their clients happy but also help businesses thrive in times of economic uncertainty. In this article, I'll expand on its value, explore its evolution, and provide actionable recommendations in the form of 5 principles and accompanying action items.
1. What is a growth designer?
Growth design isn't as new as it sounds. I remember my conversation with Lex Roman in 2018 when I found her basic article in which she explained who a growth designer is. The basic definition remains the same:
A growth designer is a full-stack product designer who knows how to connect user needs to business goals, validate assumptions, and achieve impact on business metrics.
Seeing this definition today, I was inspired by the concept of 10x engineering and tried to apply it to the design. A growth designer is at least a 5x designer who combines strong skills such as:
[1] Product Design + [2] Data Analytics + [3] UX Research + [4] Impact Prioritization + [5] Execution and Iteration Velocity.
If a designer can achieve this combination, it can be a priceless "team" for any business.
Since 2015, with the advent of product-led growth, this principle has become popular among companies like Slack, Dropbox, InVision, Pinterest, Intercom, and more. These companies are starting to build growth teams and experiment with new business models, virality, and engagement, with the main goal of getting users to stick with the product and thus earn more revenue through a self-service model.
I joined Miro in 2017 as the company's first growth product designer. In my role, I am responsible for design as an individual contributor, including acquisition, activation, engagement, monetization, and community-led growth. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to learn many lessons through hundreds of experiments and to hire and develop talent within the company. Today, I lead a versatile team of 10 Growth designers who support Miro's entire self-service business.
In this post, I will share 5 principles that can help any designer enhance their skills and competitiveness in the market. Whether you're looking for a new job or looking to transform your current job into a more rewarding experience, these strategies will help you find joy in your daily activities and make a real impact on your role.
2. Why do we need growth design now?
This year has shown us that growth design is a demanding discipline. Companies looking to find someone who can multiply the success of their business and make a greater impact with limited resources, you can find hundreds of open positions for that position.
In the recent report, The State of User Experience 2023, you can find the following:
Within the design discipline, the rise of the growth designer role (designers who focus on acquiring new clients and bringing in immediate revenue) suggests that companies are more pragmatic about their return on investment (ROI) when making hiring decisions.
ROI is a very important factor this year. Traditional UX design used to have a much broader scope to envision the best future: starting with great fundamental research, working its way through double diamonds, and finally redesigning and steadily evolving as a whole. I'm afraid we won't have this luxury in 2023.
The biggest question facing businesses this year is how to deliver business value with fewer people, less time, less confidence, and more uncertainty.
Let's take a look at some of the data that showed us some ROI references even a few years ago. In this wide-ranging essay by Ronny Kovahi, you can find interesting facts such as:
- Netflix believes that 90% of the content they try is wrong;
- In his experience, Airbnb's search change success rate is only 8%;
- Only about 10% of Google's controlled experiments result in business change.
How often do you analyze this ratio of your products?As a designer, do you often try to experiment with your designs before investing more time in execution?This year is the perfect opportunity to start doing so to maximize your value and the success of your business.
Before we start putting this into practice, let's review the evolution of growth design to make sure we're extracting the best value from it.
3. The Five Principles of Growth Design Multiply Your Value
1. Start with the data and understand your assumptions
At the beginning of any project, we have multiple design assumptions. Continue to think critically and dig into the data curiously before seeking a solution. At the start of the project, ask the following data questions:
- What are the key business metrics we're optimizing for, and how will we measure success?
- What are the guardrail metrics in mind, and what risks do we need to mitigate?
- What do we already know about user behavior in this journey, and where are the biggest drops occurring?
Your assumptions are the best navigator for the entire design project. The hypothesis can be understood through the available quantitative or qualitative data, and the problem can be linked to the hypothesis. The structure I found in this 2021 article still seems to be handy:
We don't think creators will publish their content because they are concerned about leaking confidential company material.
With these inputs, you can start exploring potential solutions by informing them of your data and assumptions.
Action Item: Ask 1 data question and create a clear hypothesis for your ongoing project.
2. Failure is to learn better Xi: 90% of assumptions are wrong
It is a well-known fact that only 10% of all experiments are successful. This means that if you don't experiment, you'll never know if your design or your team's hard work is worth the investment.
At Miro, our activation experiments didn't show statistical significance for quarters, and after more than 20 onboarding process experiments, we finally found this trend. Even after that, the first iteration of the new approach was unsuccessful, but the second did. You need to fail at least once to do the right thing. And with extra trying, you can do the right thing well.
Effectiveness is about doing the right thing right, not just getting it right. Peter Drucker "Efficient Manager"
Finding out that this 10% of successful change is a real art that requires perseverance and courage to make a lot of mistakes. Create a safe space for this in your company, and you'll master the skill.
Action item: Run 1 experiment and rerun it with 1 new iteration.
3. Use cognitive psychology to inform design
Initially, designers know how to extract the right user problem to solve. The next level is to reveal the true root cause of the problem. As a master of user psychology, Growth.design has collected more than 100 cognitive biases that you can use in your user research to uncover solutions that affect engagement, retention, or monetization.
One of my favorite examples is "Sigg's Law", which states that with multiple options, the effort to make a decision increases. It brings us back to the overwhelming experience on the booking accommodation page, which has the least number of options over time and is constantly improving.
Action item: Apply 1 new cognitive bias to your next design exploration.
4. Optimize the efficiency of Xi
Sometimes, we hide the design from real users, trying to make it better and perfect. If we over-refine the solution for months, we will hinder our own learning Xi.
User testing is a great way to do this, but it's not always applicable. When we put the solution in the hands of the user to explore in a real-world environment, the most reliable and high-quality learning Xi results are obtained. Don't be afraid to cut unnecessary edges to validate it faster.
Action Item: Say "no" to an unnecessary perfection to speed up the action.
5. Measure design success with business impact
In a recent conversation with Willie Tran, Dropbox Group Growth Project Manager, we explored how the definition of a designer's success has evolved. It's no longer just about creating a beautiful and consistent solution – now designers are also judged by the impact their work has on the product. In other words, great design isn't enough; It must also deliver meaningful outcomes for the business.
The Harvard Business Review summarizes the power of impactful experiments and gives many examples, such as:
At Bing, a subtitle change proposed by an employee was considered low priority and was put on hold for several months until an engineer decided to do a quick online control experiment (A/B test) to give it a try. Tests have shown that this change has resulted in a staggering 12% increase in revenue. It ended up being Bing's best ever revenue-generating idea, valued at $100 million.
We have a similar story in Miro. The designers came up with an idea for a sign-up button that had been backlogged for a year. A year later, the team released and learned it had the most significant impact ever on Acqusion. Don't underestimate the value of these quick wins, and don't prevent yourself from executing them.
Action Item: Discover 1 quick win and prioritize it immediately.
3. Summary: How to apply the five principles of design growth?
A growth mindset involves not only specific design principles, but also openness to new ways of working and experimenting. When thinking about your next project, try to think about one of the principles you want to follow and give it a try.
If you're ready to dig deeper and put it into action – start with these 5 calls-to-action:
- Ask 1 data question and create a clear hypothesis for your ongoing project;
- Run 1 experiment and re-run it with 1 new iteration;
- Apply 1 new cognitive bias to your next design exploration;
- Say "no" to unnecessary perfection to speed up action;
- Discover a quick win and prioritize it right away.
This article was originally published by @老J说创新 on Everyone is a Product Manager. Reproduction without the permission of the author is prohibited.
The title image is from Unsplash and is licensed under CC0.
The views in this article only represent the author's own, everyone is a product manager, and the platform only provides information storage space services.
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