{"id":13781,"date":"2017-12-05T17:01:38","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T17:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marvel7077.wpengine.com\/?p=13781"},"modified":"2017-12-05T17:01:38","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T17:01:38","slug":"product-designers-guide-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marvelapp.com\/blog\/product-designers-guide-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Product Designer\u2019s Guide to\u00a0Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I have a lot of friends who work in Growth, but I never really knew exactly what they did. Whenever our conversations turned towards \u201cgrowth stuff\u201d, I would always just smile, nod, and occasionally contribute a, \u201cthat\u2019s really cool!\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like I was clueless. I mean, I had an idea of what \u201cGrowth\u201d meant \u2014 growing users, making money, right? But honestly, it sounded pretty boring. And I never thought it\u2019d have anything to do with design, which was what I was really passionate about.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to now. I\u2019m a few months into a Growth Designer role at Evernote, and it\u2019s safe to say I now know a lot more about growth than before. I\u2019ve discovered that not only is it not boring (surprise!), it\u2019s actually a super fascinating field to be in as a designer.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re growth-curious, but still find Growth Design to be a little mysterious, like I did, (and no worries if you do \u2014 it is a \u201cgrowing\u201d profession, after all), here are 7 things I learned that maybe could be helpful.<\/p>\n

1. Figure out what the **** \u201cdesigning for growth\u201d actually\u00a0means<\/h2>\n

If you work in tech, you may be familiar with the term \u201cGrowth Hacking\u201d \u2014 previously a startup-exclusive title for people who were responsible for finding ways to \u201chack\u201d the system to grow users and make money. But as \u201cGrowth\u201d in general has evolved, the \u201chacking\u201d part has faded away, and more processes and best practices have been put in place. Nowadays, designers are getting into the game as well, and lately more folks than ever are adding \u201cdesigning for growth\u201d to their resumes. But what exactly does it mean?<\/p>\n

Every company does it differently, but I\u2019ll go off my own experience at Evernote. Here, I work closely with Growth Marketers, Product Managers, Analysts and Engineers on designing and optimizing various parts of our product to move key metrics\u2014whether that be monetization, engagement, retention, or acquisition.<\/p>\n

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Moving growth metrics can sometimes feel like moving mountains<\/p><\/div>\n

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That means I work on flows like signup, onboarding, and checkout, but also partner with other designers to improve experiences across the board and increase engagement.<\/p>\n

Everything I design is an experiment \u2014 not ready to roll out until proven successful. Defining these experiments is another huge part of my job: thinking through what to test, how to test it, and how to measure success.<\/p>\n

2. Think in experiments, and be\u00a0agile<\/h2>\n

So what\u2019s the process? We work in one week cycles. Our team huddles together to define what we\u2019re going to experiment with in the beginning of week, review those experiments in the middle of the week, and analyze the results of previous experiments at the end of the week.<\/p>\n

Why one week? The decision was deliberate. Traditional 2 week sprints are good for churning out work fast and iterating towards a clearly understood goal (e.g, launch of a product). But our work in growth is less defined. We work towards moving metrics, rather than meeting product deadlines. So our process is characterized by the ability and willingness to change direction fast when we learn new things. This lends itself much better to one week cycles, in which we evaluate what we accomplished each week to decide what to do next week.<\/p>\n

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Are you the type of person who is used to designing a single large product or feature that takes weeks to conceptualize, design, and implement?<\/em><\/p>\n

I was. And transitioning into the Growth Design role was definitely a bit of a shock. Now, any given week I could be working on 3 feature or flow experiments, and some user research and copywriting on the side. The good news is, I still get to work on the cool stuff and the gnarly problems. I just learn to churn out ideas faster, experiment on them, and get results back so I can iterate more efficiently.<\/p>\n

3. Think like a psychologist (or a pseudo\u00a0one)<\/h2>\n

Like any other kind of design, Growth Design is all about human psychology, but perhaps even more so than usual. When you\u2019re thinking about how to convert and engage users, understanding underlying motivations and subconscious biases is doubly important.<\/p>\n

At Evernote, we do that by making sure our quantitative knowledge is always backed by qualitative user research, and that we combine the two to drive and inform our design decisions.<\/p>\n

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We also read a lot of psychology books and articles to help deepen our understanding \u2014
\nThinking, Fast and Slow<\/em> by Daniel Kahneman is a personal favorite \u2014 and base our experiments on tried and true psychological principles.<\/p>\n

4. Expect the unexpected<\/h2>\n

But experimentation is as much about failing as it is about succeeding. No matter how confident we are in our pseudo-psychological theories, our experiment results always have a way of putting us in our place.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t tell you how many times an experiment has come back showing something we completely didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n

That greatly simplified redesign we thought would make the page cleaner, reduce users\u2019 mental loads, and convince them to buy? Nope. Turns out users wanted more information to help them make a decision.<\/p>\n

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It takes some getting used to, but I\u2019ve come to love it when unexpected results come back. Because every time my assumptions are challenged, I learn something. And I get a little better at my job.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why whenever we set up our experiments, our main objective is always to learn, rather than to achieve smashing success (although smashing success is nice too). Sometimes sending out variants we assume WON\u2019T work and seeing what happens is more interesting than testing something we think definitely will.<\/p>\n

The more we invite failure, the more we increase our chances of failing towards a home run. If we run 100 experiments and 99 fail, but the process leads us to 1 monumental success, and if that success makes us 10 cents more per user\/per year, and if we roll that experience out to 100 million users\u2026 you do the math! (If you don\u2019t want to do the math, read the next section.)<\/p>\n

5. Learn how to read\u00a0numbers<\/h2>\n

Unsurprisingly, a huge part of Growth experimentation is monitoring experiment results, and that means it\u2019s crucial for Growth Designers to understand numbers and contribute to strategic decisions.<\/p>\n

Part of this is just knowing when a result has become significant. Oftentimes an experiment variant can look like it\u2019s performing a lot better than the others, but before I get too excited, our analyst will say: \u201cIgnore this. It\u2019s not significant yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even when we all agree that a result is significant, knowing that something won and something lost is just scratching the surface. Understanding context and referencing a knowledge base of past successes and failures is key, because it helps us form hypotheses on why<\/strong> certain numbers came back a certain way, and decide together how to answer the ultimate question: Should we roll this out to all our users, roll it back, or do a follow up?<\/p>\n

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Some of you may be thinking to yourself: \u201cI didn\u2019t become a designer so I could do math all day! I freaking hate math!\u201d<\/p>\n

If so, don\u2019t worry. You\u2019ll be working super closely with your Growth Analyst, who will be primarily responsible for actually doing the math and analyzing the data. You just need to make you sure you can contribute to the discussion enough to earn your seat at the table when it comes to interpreting it.<\/p>\n

6. Move metrics\u2026But don\u2019t be an\u00a0asshole<\/h2>\n

But let\u2019s just say we looked at the data, discussed, and agreed that a big red button on a popup you can\u2019t dismiss makes more money. Does that necessarily mean we should implement it, knowing that it\u2019s going to be a terrible experience for our users?<\/p>\n

Ah, the classic designer\u2019s conundrum \u2014 user vs. business. For a Growth Designer, knowing how to balance the two is paramount.<\/p>\n

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No, it doesn\u2019t quite work like\u00a0that<\/p>\n

Yes, our main responsibility is to grow the business \u2014 it\u2019s part of the job title, after all! And you bet we\u2019re measured by how well we do it.<\/p>\n

But \u201cgrow the business\u201d does not equal \u201cgrow the business at the expense of the user.\u201d In fact, Growth and User Experience can, and should, go hand in hand.<\/p>\n

How does that work? Well, it helps that engagement is one of the key metrics of Growth, and good user experience is almost synonymous with high engagement. If a product is easy to use and actually helpful, users will use it. If users begin to use the product regularly, they will also stay. And then, if they find real value in it, maybe they will pay as well!<\/p>\n

On the flip side, bad user experiences that may show short term gain are almost always bad for the business in the long run. We\u2019ve proven this with experiments we\u2019ve run in the past.<\/p>\n

So about that big red button with the pop up? Yeah, don\u2019t do it. Look at the big picture.<\/p>\n

7. Do awesome\u00a0things<\/h2>\n

Doing Growth the we way we do it at Evernote is undeniably a luxury that only few companies have. We\u2019re lucky enough to have a huge (more than 200 million!) user base, so we can run many multivariate experiments and get results back within weeks.<\/p>\n

But even if you\u2019re at a smaller company, you can still design for growth. If your user base is smaller, run larger A\/B tests, (like two versions of homepage or CTA), rather than small micro-experiments. Design with a growth mindset: think like a psychologist and frame qualitative testing in an experiment framework. The Moves the Needle lean experiment map<\/a> is a great tool to use to get started.<\/p>\n

I might be biased, but I think this just might be the most interesting design job out there. As a designer, being able to marry great user experience with killer business results is unbelievably gratifying. So my last tip? If you get the opportunity to design for growth, take it by the horns! And prepare to learn a ton.<\/p>\n

And if any of this sounds interesting to you, we\u2019re hiring at Evernote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Join me and we\u2019ll move mountains together, one piece at a time!<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on May's Medium page<\/a> and included in the Evernote Design teams publication<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a lot of friends who work in Growth, but I never really knew exactly what they did. Whenever our conversations turned towards \u201cgrowth stuff\u201d, I would always just smile, nod, and occasionally contribute a, \u201cthat\u2019s really cool!\u201d It\u2019s not like I was clueless. I mean, I had an idea of what \u201cGrowth\u201d meant \u2014 growing users, making money,… Read More ￫<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":13782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-viewpoint"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n