Product Designers Should Hit the Road

Here is an inspiring story of a great man.

On certain days, Sumant Moolgaokar an architect and leader at Tata Motors used to drive away from office during lunch hours, while his colleagues used to lunch together. There were interesting rumours about his sudden disappearance during lunch hours.

However, he used to utilize this time to visit a nearby dhaba and have conversations with truck drivers on the highway. He understood the needs and problems of the vehicles, first hand. The whole idea behind his lunch time disappearance was put to good use to improve Tata vehicles by conversing with the vehicle drivers first hand.

The Tata SUMO car was named after Sumant Moolgaokar as a tribute for his passion to improve Tata Vehicles. If we notice the brand name, Su stands for Sumant and Mo stands for Moolgaokar.

Move away from the desk and hit the road.

When was the last time you put on the shoes of the user, literally?

I mean literally and not just figuratively.

Product Designers need to vicariously live the experience of their users. I know we're not the user. Don't shun the idea. Let's explore the possibilities here, with an optimistic outlook.

Let's say you're working for a consumer product in the logistics space, that helps in connecting local truck drivers with people who want to move personal goods. They could be moving houses, automobiles within a city or anything for that matter.

The product designer should take that trip with the truck driver, sit through the journey and observe, make notes through out the journey and understand the improvement areas. Stop talking and observe. Also making notes is an art, you don't want to make the truck drivers feel like the subject of an evaluation.

Second, act as a truck driver and run a few loads (considering you know how to drive and in this case even have a commercial driving licence) Well, that's not practical, right! Anyways, you could act as a truck driver, fire up the app and start receiving bookings, accompany the driver and greet the person who booked the vehicle. Observe the emotions during onboarding. Literally, take the driver's place and receive the person, help in loading the goods and start observing the other side of this experience.

If you're operating your product across large geographical regions, I would recommend such trips every month or every quarter, across locations, terrains, states and cities. A truck driver in a hilly terrain does not work like the one in the cities. As designers, we need to understand various environments of the personas.

There is no guarantee that your persona pinned at your office, would have the same environment and would go through the same scenarios. Well, does this physical environment change, impact the user experience of a digital product? Of course, yes! In this context, we need to understand how fuel consumption, goods safety, local law compliance and damaged assurances work in hilly terrains.

Context is everything in design.

Can the user interact with the app on roads that are dangerous to drive? Who takes responsibility of accidents due to app based interactions during transit?

Only when you live the vicarious experience, you can build a product that blends into all potential environments of your product's market.

Now, it's time to live the experience of an individual booking the truck. As product designers, we need to live many lives.

Note the challenges faced by users while booking, during transit and arrival. Make plenty of notes and this will feed you to design better products for both parties, bringing in a smooth experience for all.

Talk to customer care, cancel bookings, order under high stress like low batteries, dim lighting, heavy sunlight, across mobile platforms, lower cellular signals, and download the product with low data. You'll understand how users experience the booking process in a real environment. Not everyone has your board room wifi and lighting.

At times, you and your personas might not be a direct match in terms of demographics.

For example, you work for a cosmetics eCommerce product and you know you can't live the experience as you have never bought or used cosmetics in your life. A good match from your design team and the user demographics make it easier to blend and observe. This works, best for team based field activities.

Staring at laptops, trying to design for a figment of your imagination with your colourful Figma design systems will not take the product anywhere.

Product design is all about the user experience in context. Product designers need to be where the action is.

If your product's user is on the road, be on the road, if they are in the Airport, lurk around to experience their lives. If they are at the malls, using your product, do some miracle shopping. There are numerous ways to step away from the desk to live the vicarious experience and design better products for your users and differentiate from your competition.

Another trick is to apply the same principles to live the competition's experience and share stories this intelligence with your teams to build a superior user experience for your product.

Move away from the desk and hit the road.

Write to me if this worked for you.