Supra Insider

#17: Why Products That Sing Are Good for Business with Heather Phillips

Jul 8, 2024

Heather Phillips, Senior Director of Product Design at Slack, discusses making products 'sing', investing in user delight, avoiding design pitfalls, and Slack's team structure for product success. Learn about building world-class user experiences and balancing brand design with product design for optimal results.

53:08

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Episode guests

Heather Phillips

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Investing in user delight leads to increased customer loyalty and differentiation in the market.

Integrating diverse experts in cross-functional teams can drive design innovation within organizations.

Creating a culture of teamwork and collaboration can foster delightful product creation and enhance user satisfaction.

Deep dives

Importance of Designing Products with User Delight in Mind

Building products is likened to making soup - it's not just about following a recipe, one must taste and adjust as they go. Designing for user delight involves creating moments of surprise and delight beyond expected functionality. Heather from Slack emphasizes the need for teams to invest in front-end design to create seamless and delightful interactions. Bringing a mindset of making products sing into the organizational culture is crucial for product success.

Intro

2min

Creating Delightful User Experiences in Product Development

11min

Creating Delightful Moments in Product Design

29min

Avoiding Pitfalls in Early-Stage Company Branding and Product Development

2min

Bridging the Gap Between Product Design and Brand Design at Slack

3min

Collaboration in Design and Appreciation of Slack Features

5min

Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, we’re excited to bring you our conversation with Heather Phillips, Senior Director of Product Design at Slack.

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Before Slack, Heather held multiple design leadership roles at companies including Abstract (where she worked closely with Ben), Designer Fund, RelateIQ, and Yammer.

In this episode, we talked about

* What it means to make a product “sing”

* The benefits of investing in user delight

* How to instill a delight-forward mindset in your team

* Pitfalls to avoid when attempting to level up your product’s design

* How Slack structures its teams to make their products “Slacky”

* And more!

Heather is an incredibly thoughtful design executive who is passionate about building world-class user experiences and has unique views on ways to do so by bringing brand design and product design closer together. We loved chatting with her and learned a ton. We hope you enjoy the episode!

If you’d like to watch the video, you can catch that on YouTube:

Links:

* Heather’s LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-phillips/

* Heather’s personal site: https://www.heatherphillips.com/

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