How can Design teams use ProdPad?

ProdPad isn't just a place for Product Managers, but as the home for all ideas in the product backlog being validated and specc'd before they are pushed to the delivery tool, such as Jira, it's a place for other colleagues heavily involved in the product process, including Designers. It’s important for product designers to test, learn, iterate and pivot – the same way any decent, outcome-focused product manager would work. And ProdPad helps to work in this way.

Here's how our Design team uses ProdPad as part of their design process.

Firstly, they look at the Roadmap and specifically the Ideas on the cards to work themes of related work, so that we can split the tasks between the team effectively. When deciding what work to be prioritized, they have a "Needs Design" workflow stage, which they use to see what Ideas on those Roadmap initiatives need their input. They use the information set out in the Idea description/business case/value to understand why the idea needs to be worked on and for context of the work to be done. Additionally, they look through all of the linked customer feedback for that idea, so that they have an understanding of why the Idea exists, and the differing customer expectations, as while the idea summarises the feature, it is important to understand how it will benefit the customer and why they are asking for it.

After this, once they have completed their discovery/designs/user testing etc… and are happy with the design, these are captured either as images or as a linked wireframe in the Designs tab of the idea. They then either write the specs ourselves using the functional specs or if someone else has written them on our behalf e.g. a Product Manager, then they review them to ensure they are accurate.

And of course, whilst all of the above is happening, they are contributing ideas based upon design patterns or interesting things they’ve seen elsewhere, capturing ideas from user testing sessions, inputting feedback on behalf of customers when they shared things in user testing, and finally, they are often looped into various discussions happening in the app, so the Discussions feature is in use basically on a daily basis.