Understanding priority (or the next step to go from UX to Product Design)
Why your UX suggestions might be getting ignored
Everything around this past year has signaled that UX needs to change (and upskill). One path that still seems available is to become a Product Designer.
Last week, you learned about the first step in the journey: understanding value. This week, you’ll learn the next step: understanding how teams prioritize work.
For many UX Designers, priority is based solely on usability. A high-priority issue is when the user encounters a usability issue that derails progress, like a 5-step checkout process in modals.
In reality, teams sometimes prioritize less severe usability issues for several factors, like Reach.
Here’s why that happens.
Limited resources and the importance of communication
“The decision about whether to fix a design flaw should certainly consider how much use it’ll get: it might not be worth the effort to improve a feature that has few users” — Jakob Nielsen, N/Ng
On some level, we know that our team doesn’t have all the resources in the world, yet we don’t think like that when we recommend things.
In many ways, each recommendation is a little island. If we find ten usability issues, we present each issue without considering prioritization.
Designers will say, “Here are 10 usability issues, and these 3 we’ve rated critical priority.”
But they won’t say, “Here are the top 3 usability issues that I think we need to prioritize.”
The major difference, which causes a lot of friction, is that the first option ‘informs’ our team (i.e., provides all this information to process), while the second option ‘communicates’ with our team.
Some might say, “Well, this isn’t my decision to make, it’s my team’s.” You’re only partially correct with that.
The second statement recommends a few options, which start a conversation with your team. You’re not ordering your team around. As the usability expert, you're advising them of the best course of action.
These recommendations are necessary to help guide action without grinding everything to a halt. Otherwise, you’re asking someone who saw the data five minutes ago to devise a plan of action.
That, more than anything, leads to many hasty and poor decisions.
However, some of you may feel uncomfortable prioritizing one choice over another. That’s where the funnel can help.
The funnel, or understanding reach and roadblocks
This is simply a way of quantifying different steps of a user’s workflow to see where problems or roadblocks occur.
For example, imagine that for ‘task #3’, the user needs to search for a product. It consists of the following steps:
Land on the home page
Click the search bar at the top left of the screen
Type something and search
Land on the search results page
Click a product thumbnail for more details
If we were to map this workflow onto the funnel and pair it with Analytics Data, this is how it might turn out:
We don’t always need exact numbers for this (although it helps).
The main idea is that by showing that problems happen early in the workflow, we can show that an issue should be prioritized.
If you had Analytics data showing 1 million people landing on the homepage and 220,000 clicking on the search, this might be all the convincing you need.
But let’s say you don’t have access to that data. You can still use this idea but must estimate things using the RICE prioritization method.
The rice method, or estimating the quantitative impact
The RICE method is a Product Management tool that can be incredibly useful for UX Designers to learn about priority, even if it’s only an estimate.
Understanding why helps you answer this type of question.
Which is more important to fix, an annoying issue that affects every user or a critical issue that affects just a few?
Answering this question is critical if we’re forced to think about priority. To do that, we can calculate a RICE score:
Reach, or how many users are affected by a problem
Impact, how severe the issue is
Confidence, how much Data do you have about the topic
Effort, how long it will take.
For many designers, this is a modification of another tool you may have encountered: the Impact/Effort Matrix.
The only difference is two additional factors: Reach and Confidence. Because we’re only estimating Reach, we can categorize it as follows:
Everyone/a lot of users are affected by this (4 pts)
Some users are affected by this (2 pts)
Few users are affected by this (1 pts)
I’ve written an entire article on how to use both the RICE prioritization method and the funnel, so let me show you the result of this prioritization:
Calculating RICE: (R * I * C) / E
Our “Clicking on search” usability issue: (4 pts (R) * 4 pts (I) * .8(C)) / 1 (E) = 12.6 RICE Score
Our top 3 usability issues, by RICE Score:
“Issues with Creating an Account” (25.2 RICE score)
“Clicking on Search” (12.6 RICE score)
“Checking out” (8.4 RICE Score)
Learning to prioritize things beyond the severity of usability is the first step to advancing your UX design career toward Product Design.
UX doesn’t live in isolation: what actions do you prioritize?
Usability severity isn’t the only factor that drives people to take action. Constraints like time, budget, and personnel are often more critical in determining what gets fixed.
This is why it’s necessary to understand the viewpoint of the Product Manager through priority.
By empathizing with and understanding the viewpoints of your team members, you can go from being a Designer in the corner to someone who collaborates and gets people on board with your design.
So, if you’re struggling to make an impact, try learning a bit about the other factors that drive your team to take action.
March and April’s Data Informed Design cohorts are now live! March is specifically designed for professionals in East Asian timezones
Kai Wong is a Senior Product Designer and Data and Design newsletter writer. He teaches a course, Data-Informed Design, on how to become a more effective communicator through the power of using Data.