[Panel] One user to bind them all? Products, teams and bounded contexts
Jul 30, 2020
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The podcast delves into the concept of bounded contexts and the challenge of maintaining autonomy for different teams while serving the same user. It also explores the importance of brand consistency and understanding user journeys. The distinction between UI and UX is discussed, as well as the significance of shared motivation and goals within a team.
Understanding user personas and their specific needs is crucial for designing and implementing products and services.
Consistency in branding and user expectations builds consumer trust and loyalty.
Service experience teams play a vital role in ensuring a cohesive user experience by bridging gaps between different product feature teams.
Deep dives
Teams and User Journeys
The podcast discusses the concept of teams and user journeys and how they are interconnected. They emphasize the importance of understanding different user personas and their specific needs and how this impacts the design and implementation of products and services. They highlight the need for teams to have aligned autonomy and work together to fulfill the user's intention, ensuring that the entire user journey is cohesive. The discussion explores examples like Amazon and Spotify, where teams focus on specific aspects of the user experience, such as searching or playlist creation. It is crucial to strike a balance between consistency in branding and user expectations, while still considering cultural and market-specific differences. Overall, the conversation underscores the significance of having a holistic understanding of the user and considering their entire journey to create a seamless and satisfying experience.
Consistency and Branding
The podcast delves into the importance of consistency and branding, particularly in relation to user expectations and trust. They discuss how a consistent brand image can foster consumer trust and loyalty, especially in industries like finance. They highlight the role of design systems and the need to balance consistency with flexibility and customization for different user archetypes. The conversation also touches on the value of a coherent user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) while cautioning against the conflation of the two. They emphasize that UX extends beyond UI implementation and includes the entire user journey. They suggest that teams should collaborate to ensure that the designed experiences align with technology choices and fulfill user expectations while considering the cultural and market-specific variations.
The Role of Service Experience Teams
The discussion explores the role of service experience teams in achieving a cohesive user experience. These teams focus on the overall user journey, looking beyond individual product feature teams, such as search or playlist creation. They ensure consistency, usability, and support throughout the entire user experience, bridging the gaps between different teams and functionalities. The discussants highlight the need to consider different customer segments, user personas, and market variations when creating a holistic and consistent brand experience. They acknowledge that achieving this level of consistency across products and services can be challenging but is crucial for building trust, especially in high-stakes industries like finance. They also emphasize the importance of collaboration and communication between different teams to align intentions, deliver a seamless user experience, and ensure that the implemented technology supports the overall designed experience.
User needs should drive the development process
The podcast episode emphasizes the importance of prioritizing user needs in the development process. Building a product should focus on fulfilling the user's desires and expectations, rather than solely focusing on internal goals or efficiency. By understanding the user's journey and considering their needs, teams can deliver a better experience. The episode highlights the importance of collaboration and dialogue within teams to ensure that decisions are made collectively and with the user in mind.
Achieving consistency and optionality in product development
The podcast discusses the challenge of achieving consistency while providing optionality in product development. While teams should have the autonomy to make decisions and find solutions that work for their specific contexts, it is important to have consistent elements, such as colors, button types, and design patterns, to maintain a cohesive product experience. The episode highlights the need for communication, collaboration, and shared understanding between teams to ensure that the different parts of a product work together seamlessly and deliver a unified experience to users.
In the last meetup, Krisztina found something Jessica said interesting to dive into: "We are talking in DDD about Bounded Contexts and independent teams and applications, but then we all coupled by having the same user." That statement led to an exciting dialogue by inviting Dawn: "It is not so much coupling at the user as that sounds as if the user has to fit into what has built but starting with the user in the centre or intersection of the various "contexts". If your context no longer aligns with the user, who are you problem-solving/building the solution for?" Joining us with Krisztina, Jessica and Dawn will be Manuel from the Book team topologies, and together we will explore heuristics to organise teams, and their interaction and design bounded context for fast flow, which each serve the same customer.
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