How do you design when your company isn’t sure what the roadmap looks like?
Many companies (and design teams) are shrinking back into becoming scaleups. Here’s how to survive
“If that company signs this contract? Well, we might have to stop everything and build something else.” A Product Manager told me, giving me a peek behind the curtain.
Design is about bringing clarity to ambiguous situations: we take vague ideas for features and bring them to life. But what happens when the roadmap is unclear?
A designer might have signed on at a mid-size organization, but layoffs might now be forcing them into ‘startup life’ as companies make do with less.
In smaller organizations, especially startups, design teams often lack a clear path forward.
When a single client represents 20% of your revenue, or losing one contract renewal costs millions, roadmaps become volatile. Priorities shift overnight based on sales conversations and client demands.
The reality is that designers who appear to be waiting for direction are perceived poorly, even when uncertainty is beyond their control. That’s why I was laid off from my first startup job.
Here’s how to stay productive and add visible value when the path forward isn’t clear.
Design work isn’t always wasted: it’s de-prioritized
In most situations, a volatile roadmap is about one key thing designers aren’t great at: priority. Most of the time, you’re not asked to build a completely new feature for a single potential client.
Companies usually don’t want to create “Everything Apps” based on the whims of individual customers.
What’s usually more common is that the priority of specific features gets rearranged due to customer needs.
Something that was once a low priority suddenly becomes a top priority because a client requests it. Or the top-priority issue becomes deprioritized because a customer cancels their contract.
In that case, then the design work isn’t (always) wasted: there’s a chance that you will revisit this project in a few months.
If that’s the case, and you find yourself working on a feature that might get deprioritized, there’s one underlying question you should always consider:
What will save me time, work, or effort in the future?
Essentially, your designs are “meal prepping” that you might reheat later. Then, if you’re working on this feature six months from now, and:
You/Your Family/Your Pets are sick
You have 6 other deadlines to tackle
You’re trying to finish stuff before vacation
etc.
You can reheat your leftovers to save time in the future.
Taking the time to write down your thoughts, document your design and research, and organize requirements can be a big help in the future. As someone who works at startups, where priorities can and have changed overnight, this can be a lifesaver.
However, that’s not the only thing that you should tackle.
Design debt: take care of internal things that you can explain
“I don’t want to get to a case where the CEO comes to one of my designers, and basically says, What are you working on? And it’s just like, why are you working on this when it’s not laddering up to what those business goals are?” -Venessa Bennett, Global UX Director
These uncertain times seem like the ideal opportunity to address design debt.
You may have broken design system components, numerous duplicate design pages, or similar issues around consistency.
Tackling this debt seems like a good idea, but there’s one thing to be cautious about: your team might not be familiar with design debt, which can cause issues.
However, I’ve heard PMs think design debt is about “making Figma prototypes run faster”.
As a result, “tackling design debt” is like saying “I’m doing nothing but messing around with designs.”
One of the things I’ve learned, talking with 15 design leaders around the globe, is that the reason designers are undervalued is that we struggle to translate what we do (and why it matters) into terms the business understands.
This is one of those times when this may be a problem.
So you may want to explain what you’re doing in specific terms, like:
“I’m fixing issues of consistency across our entire application (with Cancel/Submit positioning) so that users don’t accidentally abandon tasks like checkout because of swapped buttons.”
“I’m correcting basic issues that our users are filing customer support tickets about, so that they can work on other more important things.”
“I’m doing some work to avoid us getting slowed down later, and ship quickly in the future.”
Tackling design debt, but ensuring you know how to explain it in case the “CEO walks by”, is a great way to get additional value out of things.
When you have a moment, do some user research
User research is currently incredibly challenging to do on demand. Doing it at the exact moment when your designs are done, Engineering is getting ready to build it, and ensuring you have enough time for user feedback?
That can be a monumental effort. So do it when you can.
Businesses are currently questioning the value of user research, considering the costs and benefits. That’s why these lulls make a great time to do user research.
When the ‘cost’ is spending time while many people are waiting around, and the benefits might help us design something that users will buy?
They’ll be much more willing to consider it.
Perhaps only a few minor things have changed since the last time you talked with people. Or perhaps you hear great insights that cause you to avoid a huge design mistake.
In any case, it can serve as another data point that reinforces our current position and what we need to do to achieve our goals.
This is the year of design efficiency (and uncertain futures)
Currently, organizations and departments worldwide are seeking to justify their value.
The value that designers offer is clarity in times of ambiguity. However, that often means not just identifying the right things to work on, but also getting your team to understand their value.
If you’re sitting around twiddling your thumbs while everyone else is working, it doesn't look good.
Even if you’re actually hard at work, if your business doesn’t understand it? It’s not seen as high value activity.
But if you’re able to not only stay productive, but also discuss how this benefits the company in uncertain times? That will allow you to showcase your value, even when the business isn’t sure where it’s going next.
Are you encountering this situation at work? Book a call with me: I’d love to know more.
Kai Wong is a Senior Product Designer and Data and Design newsletter Author. He teaches a course, Data Informed Design: How to Show The Strategic Impact of Design Work, which helps designers communicate their value and get buy-in for ideas.