Multiple miscommunicated brains can cost you an effective product! And that’s what will happen if you don’t practise product ownership as a designer.

As many internal/external teams are working on one product, they may or may not have a common thread of communication. (did you just get a sight flash of multiple Google Excels? Yes!) The original concept often gets altered & misdirected by the time it’s fully executed, due to lack of ownership and thus resulting in a plethora of confusion amongst team members.

So how exactly can you avoid this as a designer? Here’s how.

1. Take Your Design From Concept To Implementation 

Remember, if eating a pizza is the task at hand, we do not gulp the entire pizza at once.
Instead, we dissect the circle into smaller triangles for a smoother execution (did we just get you hungry? 😉 Similarly, if you were to finalize the visual design of the product, the first thing you’d need to do is define the brand guidelines & then experiment with the visual variations. Take approvals on their preferences and then apply them on a bigger sample set. This ensures more efficiency, lesser scope of misunderstanding due to middle management and fewer revisions, thereby keeping you and the client on the same page

2. Ensure That All Flows Come To A Logical Endpoint

Know Basics About Other Department FunctionsWe know it’s often tempting to create a design-ready product vs a development-ready product. But then, who is to blame if the product breaks after designs have been submitted to the development team? As a designer, you should always deliver outputs in a development-ready format and make sure all use cases are covered. This may seem hectic in the short run, but it goes a long way in building effective/holistic products. Taking ownership from the beginning is an excellent exercise for all designers as it pushes you to probe further & question design possibilities.

3. Annotate & Document Each Component Of Your Design 

Now that you’ve identified the core task, take 10-15 mins to visualize the steps required to complete it from start to finish. This will help review the overall flow of the task as well as probe you into the intricacies required to actually finish it. On concluding this step, you should have a list of dependencies (areas you need further clarity on) so that before you jump onto the flow of execution you can happily eliminate them.

4. Step 4: Keep Your Reference / Framework / Templates Handy

Have you ever delivered a strategic design that turned out completely different from your vision? Probably you didn’t pass on your strategic thinking & they couldn’t relate to the context output (ouch, it hurts right?) Without context, it’s easy for a client/team member to push their biased judgement onto the product output. As a designer, it is your responsibility to communicate the logical basis of your designs to the client/team member when you pass down your work. Small gestures like adding comments to explain nitty gritty, indicating the start & end of flows, color-coding different flows, naming your files descriptively or even organising your designs in sequential format go a long way to get the entire team in sync.

1. Know Basics About Other Department Functions

It’s not an expectation for you to be an expert at all departments. But it’s always
recommended to brush your skills on their functionalities. Why? Coz it ensures clarity to
de-code certain details in a brief & when you deliver, how your final design will be
implemented. More so, you’ll get a distinctive viewpoint from individuals looking at your
design through different lenses, which will help you build a more holistic product.

Takeaway:

Ownership = Adding Value To Your Output

So practise this skill & make it your second nature.