Contributing to a company’s product design is extremely important in today’s day and age.

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Here are some ways design helps software companies succeed.

• A designer is a voice for the user. We understand the personas that are inside of the product and can account for all of the situations they will face.
• Design can cut down the time it takes to complete a task.

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For example:

A designer may be tasked to make the process easier by adding another user to the system. When before, in order to add another user the designer needed to enter their email manually. But after working with engineering and building in machine learning methods, the designer has the ability to design a prompt to notify the user that their known emails, a part of their google SSO (Single-Sign-On) they used to sign on, are available to add by recommendation.

Instead of having the user enter email by email for hours on end, the company has now made it easier for them to add multiple contacts by a click of a button. This builds trust with the user, gives their time back, and allows the company to charge just a bit more for a subscription.

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A designer...

• can also internally work with engineering teams to adopt a design system that makes building software fast and efficient, as well as consistent.
• manages a design system is what organizes components into a central repository and enables development teams to utilize these components to build out features in the UI. 
• with a background in software development designers can also work with back-end engineering teams to identify areas in the product that can give a better experience to the user.

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For example:

• Time to load a page
• Internal error communication, like giving the user a specific reason as to why something has failed
• Analytics, graphs, and charting with data from an API
• Working with current or potential customers to understand the needs of the product and what they expect from it. What the company can do to make their lives easier.

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These can be in the form of:

1. Usability Sessions
2. Customer Success Calls
3. Support tickets
4. RFEs (Requests For Enhancements)
5. Most important of all is tracking value from both quantitative and qualitative KPIs from the company.

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For example:

• Is this feature working?
• What feedback have we received from customers on how to improve this feature?
• How does this feature add cost benefit to the company?

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There are many ways design can help companies build thoughtful and targeted products.

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Cheers to the future of design!

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Let me know your thoughts! Message me on LinkedIn

-Anthony

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